Teaching Creativity
What is creativity if there is no problem to solve?
When a problem is solved, we refer to the solution as being creative. We delight in imaginative solutions to seemingly intractable problems. Enamored with this way of thinking, we often begin work with the express goal of finding a creative solution. With the hope that this will generate ideas, we may even tell ourselves, “let’s begin with a creative problem.” But by conflating terminology, we have unwittingly created a trap. A problem is a situation; creativity is a process. Our focus then is an imaginary problem and not the act of creating. In other words, the process is not generative. We have made things difficult for ourselves from the onset. Why? Being creative is supposed to be hard? If it comes easily, it can’t be any good? What if creativity were effortless? What is creativity if there is no problem to solve?
The trap here is not that problems are difficult, that creativity should be effortless, or even the conflation of the two, it’s that we have entered a creative process at the midpoint with the wrong mode of thinking. In Daniel Kahneman’s book Thinking Fast and Slow, he writes about the two systems of thought. Fast thinking is our intuitive response, which is often wrong; Slow thinking requires effort, which we avoid. So, if we begin with a creative problem, we have started our creative process using Kahneman’s system two. The trap is that we are trying to apply effortful logical thought to what should be an intuitive associative process. Thinking slow is for analysis, fast-thinking for is for sketching. This is your Draft Zero.
Einstein wrote that before language and symbols comes “combinatory play.” Combinatory play is an associative process. In this mode of thinking, Einstein saw bridges between things where others saw only chasms. He didn’t invent speed of light, mass, or energy, he saw the connection between them. In a sense, he “played” special relativity into a theory by playing his violin. The “thinking behind not thinking” is to avoid engaging known forms too soon. You are drawing, figuratively, and perhaps literally, from knowledge.
Nonetheless, there is a point at which to stop playing and engage with language – or notes, paint, stone, chemicals, or symbols. It comes before we feel we ready, but it’s essential in mitigating flow. The anxiety of committing pen, brush, or chisel to the chosen material aside, is there a problem to be solved? Execution, maintenance of style, and realization, yes, but the creative process continues in the face of difficulty.
Perhaps we cannot teach creativity. You show examples in other people’s work and techniques for generating ideas, but it is up to the individual to make things in the end. What can be taught is the process of playing to thinking. Controlling the point at which we stop playing and start making is a learnable skill. This skill is the essence of Teaching Creativity.