5 habits of creative and effective people

2024 Author: Malcolm Clapton | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 03:44

Creativity is a skill that can be pumped. Read about what habits you need to develop in order to achieve flight of thought and excellent results in creativity, read this article.

When you’re about to develop a new skill, it’s a good idea to first choose a role model - someone who has interesting qualities for you, whose example will inspire you.

Dr. Art Markman has been doing creativity research for 10 years. And during this time, he collected an impressive collection of stories and examples that inspired him to develop a method to improve his own creative abilities. The people he watched know how to solve problems in practice in non-standard ways. Here are five good habits that creative people have.

1. Study the matter to the smallest detail

Many people fear that being overloaded with details will kill their creative impulses, and too much information will create a dam in the way of free creativity, or that new ideas will not be able to break through the layer of routine.

Creative people delve into the details of the tasks they need to solve. When Fiona Fairhurst worked with her team at Speedo to develop a swimsuit that would help swimmers improve their performance, she considered all possible ways to reduce friction. As a result, many sources influenced the design of the material, from the structural features of shark skin to the experience of using stretching materials that reduce muscle vibrations.

A Swiss engineer noticed that on every walk a burdock sticks to his dog's coat. He examined the burrows under a microscope and found that they are so difficult to pull out because of the tiny hooks that cling to the matted fur. He applied an open principle, created artificial analogs of hooks and wool - this is how the Velcro fastener appeared.

2. Do not be afraid of routine

A common romantic image of a genius: a person exhausted by creative torment, who works frantically in a fit of inspiration, and in between visits to the muse, he suffers and is engaged in self-destruction. In reality, most creative people are much better friends with discipline. They perceive creativity as work, so they constantly work.

A classic example of this type of creator is. If you try to imagine what result a suffering genius should get, then King's books can be used as a model. But he himself has repeatedly spoken about the essential role of routine. He writes every morning. According to King, routine is as important to creativity as it is to sleep.

There is no time to sit and wait for the appearance of the muse - you need to work hard so that she looks at the light.

3. Understand that everything is important

The question that students often ask teachers: "Will this be on the exam?" The correct answer to it is: “Yes. But maybe it will be a different exam. " You can't guess where the material for a great idea will come from. The stories of the most interesting inventions have incredible plot twists, but we can only understand which step led to the result by looking back.

For example, he invented a new type of vacuum cleaner based on knowledge about the operation of cyclone installations that purified the air in sawmills. When Dyson, out of simple curiosity, studied the peculiarities of the work of timber processing enterprises, he could not imagine that the information he found would bring him millions of profits.

The key to creativity is the pursuit of knowledge, whether it seems useful now or not.

Sometimes we think that we can estimate in advance what will be useful to us, and what will turn out to be a useless waste of time and effort. Creative people are always complementing the knowledge base, so they are ready for any opportunity that comes up at any moment.

4. Consider time and environment

Truly successful creative endeavors are the demands of the times. This means that creative people need to understand not only the technical aspects of their work, but also evaluate the environment.

Let's take a close look at an American jazz musician and trumpet player. His musical tastes were formed during the era. Beepop was characterized by a fast flow of well-played notes, sounding simultaneously with rapid chord changes. Davis has been going in a different direction since the late 40s, but it was only a decade later that the world was ready to embrace the sound of such albums as Birth Of The Cool and Kind Of Blue, which had a huge impact on listeners and other musicians.

In the late 60s, Davis once again tried to resist context with the release of the fusion LP Bitches Brew. Success lay in an excellent understanding of the system against which these works were created and listened to.

In terms of technological innovation, Steve Jobs was well aware of the role of the system. The iPod was not the first player on the market, but Jobs took a close look at user needs and thought about where the iPod would be used. The attention to the environment led to the creation of iTunes, and the player became a plug-and-play device.

5. Know when to surrender

Reading a lot about the lives of creative people runs the risk of idealizing persistence in achieving goals. Dyson not only managed to draw inspiration from distant sources, but also spent years working on the prototype of his vacuum cleaner.

It's dangerous to think that creative people work on every idea to the bitter end, until they see its embodiment. In economics, there is the concept of "stranded investment" - this is time, money and energy that have already been invested in a project. These costs should not be allowed to unduly influence choices. The project will not work just because you have already given it a lot of effort and money. Projects should be judged by how well they can succeed, regardless of the resources spent.

Richard Nisbett, professor of psychology at the University of Michigan, and his colleagues have studied the work of successful creative people (for example, academics who are leading the latest developments in their industries). In the long run, the most successful were those who were able to abandon hopeless projects, despite the serious costs.