Creativity can help you change yourselves...

This blog is an attempt to comprehensively define creativity, bifurcate the methods and processes, and check its helpfulness in our day to day life.

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My daughter already has identified the PhD problem and now is in the process of writing the synopsis. Yesterday when I checked, we found it not satisfactory. When further checked specially the outline.for the synopsis, we noticed that everything is in mind. Nothing documented. This gave me space to talk to her about Stephen's 'all things are created twice.

Stephen Covey talks about two creations that make one’. His position made us wonder if Colgate' decision to increase the size of paste tube opening for more sales, which later became the norm of Industry, was not creativity? Or, builders' decision to install the lift on the side but outside of the building which also becomes the norm of the buildings, was not creation?

Both sets of understanding talk about creativity. Creativity is the unique gift of nature that applies in every walk of our life. It was more visible in the work of Stephen Covey who conceptualised 'Seven habits of highly effective people. In this book, we found him talking about two creatures making one creation. He explained his two creation hypotheses with examples of designing and execution of the construction of a building.

As said, we find that Stephen Covey is more closely explaining how we can benefit from our ability to create. But before that let us clear the dust lying on the creativity.

I. What is creativity and how it is different from Stephen Covey position:

Creativity is our ability to create and Stephen is correct when says all things are created twice. In fact our tendency to see creativity as a unipolar identity is making us doubt creativity as above. otherwise say in colgate, the first creation was a decision for opening increase and 2nd creation was application of decision into action ie., physical size increases. So, there isn’t any issue in Stephen’s definition.

As such, creativity is defined as one ability to generate a new idea, a new possibility or new options which are original and solve the problem. So creativity is something new and original. Robert E Franken defined creativity as one's tendency to generate or recognize the ideas or possibilities that may be useful in solving problems.

This is one set of definitions. Another set is headed by Stephen Covey who talked about a more comprehensive definition of creativity. This school suggests that the definition of creativity which was suggested earlier was only mental creation for Stephen Covey. But creativity is more than that mental creation. Another aspect of creation is the translation of mental creation into physical reality.

Let us make it clear with one example. Suppose you want a building then first, you will get the blueprint ready for the building and then call meson for the job. Here getting the blueprint is mental or 1st creation and, translating blueprint into a physical entity is your physical or 2nd creation. The same explanation applies to an artisan creating a pot or an artist preparing a painting.

II. How can we use the ' all thing created twice' approach in daily life?

You might remember my daughter preparing a PhD synopsis. If you transfer Stephen teaching into this episode, you will find two things essential for doing a job. One is mental creation which demands her severe homework -thinking, envisioning, referring, researching and so on so she can scratch a perfect outline or blueprint of synopsis. This will be her mental creation or first creation when this part is done, she may go for writing work for her synopsis, not otherwise. If she avoids the homework or does otherwise, she certainly may not do the work which she is capable of.

This explanation shows the magnitude of opportunities that we otherwise miss. We can check such losses by building the needed habit. It does not need a lot of effort. You simply decide that whatever you may be asked to do or, whatever, you want to do, you decide that you will do it, you apply your both creations to get the job done. If so, then gradually your mindset will be created which will make you set habits for practising two creation approaches in daily life.

Given what you intend, we will suggest methods and processes.

III. Methods for the creativity:

By now, it might be clear to you that we may require methods for the generation of ideas, understandings, logical connect, strategic ways and so on to first create. Sometimes when methods fail in giving new ideas, we may need a process for generating new ideas. Overall, when mental creation is done and we have the blueprint then only, we go for physical creation.

For mental creation, many such methods may be referred to. Some of these methods are as below:

Brainstorming.

Negative brainstorming.. ...

Brainwriting

Five W's and one H.

Random words.

Gallery method.

Storyboarding.

Role-playing.

and so on…

IV. Processes of creativity:

Technically, a creative process is a process of creating a new idea from two or more old ideas. It defines the way you allow the progression leading to the creation of new ideas. For example, if you are an artist then your generation of ideas, doing artwork, applying creativity and the final output are your...creative process.

There are two sets of processes of creativity. One is required for mental and another for physical creation. Both processes will be different. For example, your mental creation will need processes to create new ideas and your physical creation, we need process and skills both.

a) Mental process for creation:

From the creative process point, we may put ideas into two groups. One is those ideas that are easily attainable and mostly generated by applying creative methods. And another is difficult ideas which aren't easily available. They may require intuition, insight or something like that.

The mental creation process needed for generating difficult ideas was evolved by James Webb Young. He earmarked five steps for creating an idea. You can know about these steps better with examples.

We have projected this example for the real work of…. for inventing …… the printing machine. Suppose you are a scientist of the 18th century. You want to invent a 'photo printing machine'. In that case, you may create by adopting the following practice.

First, keeping your need and intent, you will gather all needed materials, all data, all information from all the sources available. You will be into it from top to toe, fully absorbed, day in and out, maybe mad for it and daydreaming.

You will continue the above process more deeply, maybe evolving some strategy, testing, experimenting, failing, changing, retesting to evolve new ideas or strategies and adopting the same process. You sleep only when you are tired.

This state is of eureka effect. When you are tired by working on the problem and sleep, you sleep with the problem. Chances are that you will have a flash of light with every detail of the photo machine on your mental screen, it was a wonderful experience you were working on for years.

Now is the time of recording your insight in every detail. Maybe you will note down the main clues of your insight fearing that it may otherwise wash out. It happens. Once when doing my PhD and had issues with data, I had a similar insight when taking tea in a local shop which helped complete the job.

Now is the time to test, retest, your photo machine and keep refining over time till you are fully satisfied. You can because great ideas always evolve from Initial.

b) Physical process of creation:

As stated, your physical creation process requires two sets of abilities -one process or method and another is the skills for the physical creation. Further, which procedure is to be used, the physical creation will be defined by mental creation only. Say, the physical method for transferring the HR strategy into practice will be different from building the house.

i) Physical creation process:

Though the process will vary with mental creation the trend will remain the same. Say mental will always be followed by physical creation or physical creation will always be noticeable.

Let us try to learn the physical process of the invention of the photo printing machine. You may take measures to get the product ready.

Your newly invented machine is a fully tested design of the said photo machine. Now keeping that, you will set a goal for getting the product ready. This is physical creation.

You will now contract an agency for manufacturing, get everything okayed and let the manufacturing start.

Finally, when the physical creation is complete, you can test, retest, make changes if needed and so on ensuring success.

Overall when you complete both, mental creation and physical creations then only it is complete creation.

ii) Physical creation skills:

As always, physical creation skills also vary with the nature of the physical creation process. Yet, some skills are commonly needed in physical creation practises. These are:

Continuous improvement ability

Risk-taking ability

Monitoring ability.

Delegation ability

Planning and organising

Change management

Attention to details

Handling risk ability

Managing Initiatives

etc.

V. Your takeaway:

This blog has two-fold objectives: while demystifying creativity, its methods and processes, we tried to get the dust shaded out. When creativity is dustless, your racket feeling is out and then you can let creativity be your homely affair.