Are you Creative, or do you want to be?

Good morning everyone out there in the acorn land. I hope everyone is doing great and looking forward to warmer weather and COVID-free zones hopefully soon.

 I’ve always been interested in the concept of creativity and where ideas come from. In my last blog post, I briefly talked about the idea of throwing out a question into the universe, and many times the answer comes back to me after a short period. Many say this phenomenon is your mind being on the lookout for solutions, and so your brain is subconsciously taking in information throughout the day until it reappears as an answer. In short, your brain is digging down, connecting the dot’s and letting you know the answer is “42”. ( a little shout out to Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy)

Simply put, you’re being creative but on a passive level.  I’m going to expand this idea and discover ways that we all can become more creative, both passively and actively. All it takes is for us to be more conscious of things around us in our everyday lives and a little less concerned about failure.

 In this blog, we are going to talk about the idea of being creative. What is creativity, and can anyone become more creative? The simple answer is yes. We are all creative and able to generate new ideas because we are all wired for this to some degree. You might not ever be as funny as Jerry Seinfeld, able to paint like Picasso or innovate like Elon Musk, but everyone is creative to some extent. The only thing you need to do is practice at being creative.

In the science realm, creativity is simply a new way of looking at something or a new way of thinking. The brain is merely creating new pathways to come up with something new. I’m saying this in a very scaled-down manner because I’m sure my eye’s along with everyone else’s, would glass over, and we would be looking for a new shiny object to adjust our attention to within 30 seconds if I went into scientific detail.

The interesting thing is that these thoughts aren’t always 100% new ideas. They are layers of images, feelings, taste, and sounds that we have picked up in our lives and added together to create something entirely new. A simple example of this is Apple’s iPhone. Before this invention, we had computers, MP3 players, cameras, and cell phones. Remember the BlackBerry? It wasn’t until Apple came out with the iPhone that utilized all these capabilities together in one unit. I know that some will dispute this because other companies were working on the same thing, but Apple and Steve Jobs knocked this idea out of the park. Jobs had the ability to imagine the world as it would exist in the near future.  This could be said of Elon Musk, Bill Gates, and millions of other people in all different fields of study but are less known but equally as creative.

What are some examples of this? I’m glad you asked. The rock band R.E.M was very popular from the early ’80s up until the 1990s. Popular rock bands only survive a short period of time, and for the members of R.E.M, this was a problem for which they wanted to find a solution.

 Bill Berry, Peter Buck, Mike Mills, and Michael Stipe, founding members of R.E.M, realized that after playing together for a period of time, nothing new was happening with their songs. One song sounded like another, and if they were going to survive in the music industry, their songs would have to evolve. An easy way to do this is to get new members with new ideas for the band or new producers, which they did. Another unique solution is they could change up which instrument each member would play. All these musicians were incredibly talented and played more than one instrument, but they gravitated toward one favorite.  This changing up of instruments was used so that each member would feel a bit uncomfortable. If you have this uneasiness when trying to accomplish a creative task, you’re on the right track. Having a process that’s easy and feels good is usually a process that you’ve developed, and you are merely making carbon copies of the last project with only minor changes. Disruption in this process is a good thing and shouldn’t be circumvented. This feeling of uneasiness and trying something new is a reoccurring idea when it comes to being creative. In this instance of our band, the proof is in the pudding. R.E.M. released 15 studio albums, four live albums, 14 compilation albums, one remix album, one soundtrack album, 12 video albums, seven extended plays, 63 singles, and 77 music videos. Not bad for a college group out of Athens, Georgia. The band broke up in 2011 after 31 years of creating music but still get together from time to time to perform and are going on tour later in 2021.

Another example that we can learn from is Nathan Myhrvold. Myhrvold was formerly Chief Technology Officer at Microsoft, along with being the co-founder of Intellectual Ventures. This alone is quite impressive, but then you add that he is also the author of Modernist Cuisine and successor books in this genre. Myhrvold also helped create a new type of nuclear reactor, and when he’s not busy, he’s interested in dinosaurs, asteroids, and comets.  He is listed as co-inventor on 17 U.S. patents at Microsoft and is co-inventor on over 900 other U.S. patents issued to his corporation and its affiliates.

Nathan Myhrvold is a true believer in studying and mixing various fields that don’t directly connect to one another. Why does he do this, you might ask? Quite simply, he is what some would call the professional student or “forever learner.” Continuing to learn and master new skills, which then propels new theories and ideas in another field. This crossing over of unrelated disciplines actually helps him be more creative because he’s pulling information from one subject and applying it to solve problems in another. The more your exposed to new ideas, the more creative you will be. It doesn’t really matter if they don’t correlate because you actively engage your mind to mix and push ideas together to create new thoughts and concepts.  

Michael Chabon is another creative person who is a writer and producer, known for John Carter, Spider-Man 2, and Wonder Boys, just to name a few little movies you might have heard of. Like Nathan Myhrvold, Chabon likes to take in lots of ideas and then puts his own spin on them and then produces something creative and new. He’s said that he likes to take creative works like Tolstoy and Asimov and mix them together into something new.

He is noted as saying that creativity isn’t sitting around waiting for lightning or a muse to inspire you; you must get out into the world and experience it. He helps in his creative process by cutting out photos wherever he can, like magazines, photo books, or even advertisements, and paste them into his binder. He doesn’t do this once a year or two; it’s done continually. He can look back for examples from July of 1998; he can pull that binder and see what sort of inputs he was reacting to at that time. It’s a visual diary that he can reference whenever he likes, but also, he’s able to spot little Acorn Nuggets (sorry, shameless plug) that he may use in some future works.

The gathering of ideas and experiences is the best pursuit for creativity. That being said, the person coming up with these new ideas will be questioned and even downright attacked in their beliefs many times. You must separate the critic vs. the creator because if you don’t, nothing new will ever be created. These ideas from Nathan Myhrvold ring true in many articles I’ve read about creative people. I believe it was Sir Richard Branson who asked a reporter why all of his stories were negative toward Virgin when Branson first started his airline. His response was if you choose to stick your head above the castle wall, don’t be surprised by arrows being fired at you. With this in mind, creative ideas will always come under fire from someone. You must be resolute and not scared of the arrows that will be fired in your direction.

So, do you want to be more creative? Here is the Acorns prescription for you.

1. Do something new- When I say this, it can be anything. Go to a museum, take a community college course, look at a new type of magazine or book. Do something that you haven’t done before and is totally different.
2. Push your boundaries- When I say this, move down the scale from something comfortable to the point where you’re a little uneasy. You will know when you get there, and you might surprise yourself at just how far you will allow yourself to venture.
3. Don’t be afraid to fail- Failing at something gives you the knowledge you didn’t have before. Thomas Edison had some great quotes on failure, such as, “I have never failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work” when asked about finding a filament for his lightbulb.

I want to finish up with something that I keep running across in my research. In today’s world, we have created specialization in our work. The more we advance in a particular field, our knowledge focuses on smaller and smaller details within that category. We eventually get to the point where we know so much about one thing that we end up knowing nothing of anything else. This is a real example of being an educated idiot and no one wants to be this. Now get out there and start getting creative. You never know where that path may take you.

Well, take care and we will see you down the road….Acorn OUT and be safe.