How can I become more creative?
This FAQ expands on the content of "I would never send my kids to school" by Piotr Wozniak (2017)
Creativity boost needs time
There are no good tricks to improve your creativity fast. If you are sleep deprived, you can quickly improve creativity by getting good sleep, but this is probably not what you ask about. For a major change in your creative powers, you will need a lot work and a lot of time.
To increase creativity you need the following:
- changes to brain physiology that may take months or years of improved brain habits
- long-term changes to your bank of knowledge that will underlie the creative process
- protected creative environment
It is very hard to make quick changes to boost creativity. The biggest improvement may come from a change in habits. If you keep your brain healthy and well-nourished with knowledge, you may notice some changes in weeks or months, and dramatic changes after years of creative efforts. Those slow improvements tend to be cumulative and may keep building up well into your retirement age. It is very helpful though to start early.
IQ vs. creativity
Paradoxically, creativity does not rest on high IQ. IQ is all about algorithmic problem solving that primarily rests on fast thinking. High IQ is a lovely asset. It makes life easy. However, creativity might often trump IQ. When you face a well-defined problem with a well-known algorithmic solution, solving the problem may be just a matter of time. Average IQ will slow you down. If you have a calculus problem, you will just need the right book, and the right amount of time. However, if you face a new challenge in science, or business, or even in your private life, you may not find a book with the right prescription. Even the simplest problem can be hard to solve if you cannot step out of the box. The key lesson from this paragraph is that if you are convinced you are not that smart, if you did not score well in your last IQ test, or you kept hearing bad news at school, you need to start from ditching that toxic ballast. Your creative powers can still get a solid boost. All you need is a bit of luck with your health and a plenty of time. Sometimes it is even easier to make a spectacular jump from a lower level.
See: IQ is a dismal measure of intelligence
Brain health
Before you begin, see my Genius checklist, to make sure you provide a healthy environment for your brain to work in. Simple things like sleep deprivation or stress can easily derail your progress. Without the right conditions you can even regress despite working hard. Healthy brain is essential, and it is easy to achieve in theory. However, a healthy brain may also be very hard to achieve when you are set in a modern western lifestyle with temptations and pressures all around.
Creativity tricks
You can choose dozens of tricks that creativity experts suggest, but you are not likely to become a creative genius overnight. You can do random jumps at Wikipedia in hope of finding a creative association, but that is just a droplet in the ocean of needs.
Creativity tricks all work a bit, but they can hardly make a major dent in serious creative efforts. For a true creative breakthrough, you need a healthy brain equipped with rich knowledge of the right type. Brain health and power can be improved over time, but this is a slow process that is not likely to dazzle as fast as the same type of effort put into building muscle power in a gym.
One of the main stumbling blocks is that creativity must come from within an inner need. It is like a learn drive that grows well with free learning and withers at school. You cannot force creativity. You cannot spark it extrinsically. You cannot suddenly become more creative. However, you can become more creative if you keep working on it systematically over many years. This short text provides an outline of a prescription.
The power of knowledge
Creativity does not come from wisdom. The best source of explosive creativity is new learning. This is shown in the picture. Pay attention to the red color. Figuratively speaking, your knowledge needs to be on fire. You cannot be a cold expert to be creative. Constant unceasing inflow of new knowledge is essential for creativity:
Figure: Creative problem solving requires (1) vast expert knowledge of high stability, and (2) rich new knowledge of high retrievability. Vast stable knowledge makes it easy to solve algorithmic problems. Those problems can be solved at low energy expenditure with the help of fast thinking. Problems that require "thinking out of the box" rely on creativity, i.e. association of remote ideas. Creativity and learn drive are powered by "hungry knowledge", i.e. fresh knowledge that can easily be molded and generalized via forgetting. This plasticity provides for good pattern matching in new learning and in creative problem solving
Creativity program
Here is a simple program for you to execute. It will help. How much it helps it is up to your effort. I sorted the list by the "impact factor", i.e. easy tasks that make a big difference come first:
- get good sleep. If your sleep is not refreshing or not regular, entrain it first with free running sleep. If this does not work, see good sleep
- eliminate, avoid, or reduce stress. Stress will effectively take your mind away from your core problem to solve. People can solve problems in a hurry for a deadline, but they are rarely creative under pressure. Depression can potentially sap all creative powers (van Gogh example is misleading)
- allocate a big daily morning slot of dedicated time for a creative effort, and avoid all distraction in that slot
- morning cup of coffee may enhance morning creativity. Do not drink coffee later in the day. If you feel the need, you probably need to start from getting better sleep
- start a lifelong learning program. On a daily basis, keep learning new things, esp. around the area of the problem to solve. New learning is not just about expanding your knowledge. It is essential for the creative process itself. See: Knowledge in creative problem solving
- follow natural creativity cycle, and schedule protected creative slots at the right time
- set goals to focus the mind (see how the knowledge valuation network can power the learn drive and creativity)
- adopt a daily exercise routine. Exercise is good for the brain health, but it can also give you some time for pure thinking outside the confines of technology
- when creatively stuck, use neural creativity, as your ultimate solo creativity tool
- when creatively stuck, use brainstorming or incremental brainstorming to tap into the brain power of others
- use incremental reading for more learning and for further creative disruption
All those tools are described in detail in: How to solve any problem?
Neural creativity
Despite all my skepticism of creativity tricks, I do recommend one method for boosting creativity targeted at a specific problem. This is neural creativity. Feel free to be skeptical. I recommend it because I invented it. I tried it, and it works like magic.
In neural creativity, you build a database of knowledge related to a problem that you plan to solve, and then you simulate actions of a creative brain by following semantic links within that knowledge database along an algorithm known from neural networks: spreading activation.
Neural creativity works because it is powered by your learn drive. You will never use it efficiently unless you love the problem you need to solve and you are really curious about knowledge that is needed to solve it.