The Awakening of Creativity
My father is a very rational man. Analytical by nature, he loves numbers, calculations, and statistics. About fifteen years ago, he founded a food brokerage company, which he and his wife now run from their home. Every now and then, his wife goes looking for him. She eventually finds him sitting in an Adirondack chair at the end of their dock, gazing out over the water and the surrounding landscape. He can stay there for an hour or two without moving.
Yet my father isn’t the contemplative type. In fact, he’s not contemplating at all. He’s thinking. He deliberately gives himself the time and space to think deeply. To solve a problem. To devise a plan. In other words, to make room for creativity so he can think differently.
Creativity Is Not a Talent
I know plenty of people who are just as analytical and rational as my father. Whenever I bring up creativity, they immediately tell me they’re not creative. Some even go as far as saying they have no need for creativity in their lives.
I beg to differ. Or rather, I’d like to set the record straight.
People often have a narrow understanding of what creativity really is. To them, creativity is automatically associated with art. Painters, sculptors, musicians, and poets are creative by definition. But creativity isn’t limited to the arts. It exists anywhere we choose not to follow the usual path.
Change Your Environment, Change Your Thinking
The same is true of my father’s approach. When he’s faced with a problem and the obvious solution doesn’t satisfy him, he starts looking for a different one. And to think differently, his instinct is to leave his office. He steps away from his usual work environment, where he’s surrounded by the same colours, the same textures, and the same familiar objects day after day. The mental pathways are predictable.
His office is therefore reserved for action. For productivity. For implementing solutions—not for finding them.
The Conditions That Foster Creativity
Creativity thrives under two conditions: novelty and tranquility.
For our brains to explore new pathways, we need to place them in an environment that isn’t associated with the task at hand. That’s probably why so many good ideas come to us in the shower. After all, the shower is meant for getting clean. And somehow, away from our computers or our kitchens, the perfect slogan or the missing ingredient that will make a recipe truly delicious suddenly appears while we’re covered from head to toe in soap.
It’s also why so many remote workers have taken over cafés. Not only is working from home familiar, but the workplace and living space become one and the same. Nothing could feel more predictable.
The second ingredient behind creativity is tranquility. Unless our lives depend on it, it’s almost impossible to come up with a truly original solution to a complex problem under pressure. Our minds need time to settle. The mental buzz needs time to quiet down. It is only when calm takes over that our best ideas can rise to the surface.
The language we use around creativity is revealing. We let ideas percolate. Ideas take root. They emerge, mature, and slowly take shape. None of these expressions suggest urgency. Nothing is rushed. Everything unfolds gradually, at its own pace. Creativity cannot be forced.
Productivity Is Not Enough
Our world places very little value on creativity. Few managers give their employees hours devoted solely to thinking—let alone entire days.
By favouring productivity over creativity, organizations deprive themselves of original ideas that could become powerful sources of differentiation. In a world where competition is fierce and standing out has become essential, it’s all the more surprising that the mindset behind creative thinking is so rarely cultivated, and that the time creativity requires is so seldom respected.
Learning to Think Again
If your creativity hasn’t paid you a visit in a while, give yourself—or ask to be given—the time to think without pressure or constraints, somewhere outside your usual environment.
What emerges from that period of quiet reflection may well surprise you.
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Would you like to spark your creativity by exploring ideas with a thinking partner who will challenge your perspective and take you into unfamiliar territory? I’d be delighted to help you think differently.
