Title: Creativity Lessons from Charles Dickens and Steve Jobs
Context: Creativity comes to one only once one stops trying so hard to be creative.
Synopsis: There is an accidental nature to creativity that flies in the face of those people who work in creative fields where clock punching and cubicle dwelling are de rigueur. Creativity is a serendipitous act of discovery, not a meeting request in someone’s inbox. This requires a bit of procedural rework for most modern employees. But it’s not impossible to achieve. So here are your options:
- Sacrifice excessive creativity for efficiency (Quick, drop that pencil, I think an email just came in!)
- Regret not being able to be more creative due to your circumstances (Which invariably drives one to…)
- Drink (A personal favorite)
- Cry (Or whine for people who like to let everyone else sitting around them know that they are crying)
- Or – and this is just one option among many mind you – embrace the fact that creativity is not bound by traditional workplace rules and requires one to have experiences outside the meeting room.
But know this my creative brethren, before you immediately logoff to seek inspiration outside the office in sunshine or dimly lit tavern; there is a burden this places upon you as well. Should you choose to embrace the office-agnostic creative model, you will be inundated with flashes of inspiration at all hours of the day and night which you will be dutifully driven to bring back to your professional workspace and try – mightily – to affect real and true, lasting, imaginative change. May god have mercy upon your creative soul.
Best Bit: “ But innovation needs to be informed and sometimes provoked by the unpredictable hurly-burly of messy, surprising real life.”
via blogs.hbr.org
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