Roger Von Oech has been a Creative consultant for large and small companies as well as individuals. This edition is the 25th year edition of this book. Creative thinking is a vital survival skill in this changing world. It is even more important to look at things in a fresh and different way. This book contains stories, anecdotes, insights and ideas from many different sources of how you can become more creative.
“Why be Creative? Why challenge the rules? Why run the risk of failing and looking foolish.”
Sometimes, what worked two years ago, does not work today. We live in an ever changing world and we need to adapt to the changes. Creative thinking is a lot of fun, sometimes things no longer work or become stagnate and we can either sit and complain or we can try to generate new ways of doing things. The real key to being creative is what we do with our knowledge. It requires curiosity and play with our knowledge and experiences.
Nobel Prize physician Albert Szent-Gyorgyi says: “Discovery consists of looking at everyone else and thinking something different.”
We don’t need to be creative for most of the things that we do. Most of us have certain attitudes that lock our thinking into the Status Quo and keeps us thinking more of the same. This attitude is necessary for most of our daily lives, but they get in the way when we need to be creative. It is hard to be creative if you are so focused on being practical, logical, afraid to make mistakes or with other mental blocks.
There are many reasons and phrases that we are told by others and by ourselves.
The right answer
That’s not logical
Follow the rules
Be practical
Play is frivolous
That’s not m area
Don’t be foolish
To err is wrong
I’m not creative
To be open to receive the teachings of thinking creatively we need to first “unpack”, or as VanOech says: empty out what you have in your mental cup. We need to unlearn what we know.
The history of discovery and invention is filled with the people whose routines were interrupted and who were forced to come up with alternative solutions. Inventions, new ideas tend to be discovered because we are forced to break our routine. Most of our education system is geared towards finding the “right answer.” What if I told you there were many right answers – all depending on what you are looking for. If you think there is only one right answer you will stop looking after you find it.
Some games:
Find the third right answer
Metaphors, find metaphors for something specific. The meaning of life….a box of chocolates??
The Phenomenon of “Magic: The gathering,” How analytical People Can Become”Creative”People, Finding the Third Right Answer, and How to Escape Your Need for Control.
I was hesitant to listen to this podcast since it was 2 hours long. I usually listen to podcasts in my daily hourly walk. My attention span usually does not last this long. I loved it, had to stop my walk several times to take notes. I want to share my notes, they were useful for my research, for my own personal life, for my work.
Justin Gary is a game designer, educator and coach. He designed many games, one of them is Discord. These are notes that I took while listening to the Podcast.
Elements a game should have:
Immersion- experiences tell a story
Connection – A place where you socialice
Aspiration- Competition, wanting to win, to achieve
Growth- Learn
Expression- customise- role play- make it your own.
He recommends book: A whack on the side of the head- by Von Oech, because it Demystifies creativity. Some games he suggests: Turn object around. Random constraints. Move past the right answer. Take a random page from a book. Throw scrabble on the floor and pick three- that is your constraint.
A trick he uses at work: Assumptions challenge. You write down all your assumptions and you challenge them. What if that were not true- what if you take it around. 1. Make it explicit and 2. Turn it around
He says: “There’s nothing the differentiates a creative person from a noncreative person other than process.”
How do you create: 6 step process.
Inspiration– what is driving you? The heart of what you are doing?
Framing-put constraints around it. Short deadline. Constraints with components and time.
Brainstorming – 3 steps. 20 minutes each. 1. Open exploring. Write down as many ideas as you can. 2. Organice- find patterns in your ideas. Put structure around it. Fill gaps in.
Elimination – get to as few ideas as possible. How can I test each of these ideas?
Prototype – What do I need to do- What is the smallest thing I can make/do to test my idea?
Test Idea – Show others and get feedback
Reiterating – See what you learn from testing and review idea.
Repeat process
Tips for everyday: Three goals a day- Three goals for the week. We have long “To Do lists”, every morning choose three and make a goal to to these three. If you do more great, just make sure you do these three.
One piece of advice for everyone that you live by: Cultivate comfort with uncertainty and permanence. So much of what we do is because we are afraid we are going to loose something. If you can be OK in that space of not knowing, accepting the fact that things are going to change, then life gets so much easier.
“Creativity can solve almost any problem. The creative act, the defeat of habit by originality, overcomes everything.” George Lois, American Art director, designer and author.
The author proposes a series of games to put in practice your creativity.
Types of Games
Games are divided into categories:
Convergent. Requires you to combine elements of more than one idea or thing. It’s like putting a puzzle together. You have many pieces and you need to figure out how they can work together.
Divergent. Taking things apart so you can look at their individual parts. The challenge of breaking dow something into smaller parts to tackle each phase of the process.
Lateral. Logical thinking process that must follow steps in order. When you solve math you are using lateral thinking.
Aesthetic. To focus on how an object or idea looks. It is when you look closely at how each part of something appears, or by imagining what would happen if things looked different.
Emergent. Daydream. Idleness. This way of thinking is when you are idle, walking, sleeping,, daydreaming. Usually these lead to AHA moments.
Specific Games- some samples
Convergent.People Watch. Challenge- Go to a public place, like a shopping center, a library and quickly write a short story for some different people you see walking about. Combine different traits and actions of your “characters” into one compelling story. Research done by NYU have determined that you’re more inclined to think creatively when you imagine yourself removed from a problem or situation. The act of people watching is one way to do it.
Divergent. List 100 Alternative uses. Challenge. Come up with a list of at least 100 alternative uses for a book. A doorstop, a hat, an umbrella. This allows you to think of the object in an entirely new light, simply because you’ll have to strain your brain to come up with a number of original ideas.
Lateral. Think Big to Small. Challenge. Pick something in your life that is simple on its face. Make a list of everything that makes that thing what it is. List all the smaller parts, then the smaller parts that make up those smaller parts. See how microscopic you can get with the details. There are an infinite number of things that influence and impact any larger thing right down to atoms and smaller molecules.
Aesthetic. Draw your face upside down. Challenge. Find a mirror and something to draw with then spend 10 minutes drawing a detailed portrait of your face upside down. Note the areas of struggle to draw most and why the change in perspective makes them so difficult to draw. Viewing familiar things from a new perspective (like being upside down) is an effective way to help you notice all the details you usually take for granted.
Emergent. Stretch out. Challenge. Take 5 minutes to really stretch out. You can do this by standing up or sitting down – simply move your body to loosen your muscles and connecting fibers. Then spend another 10 minutes sitting and relaxing while the benefits of al that stretching start to take shape.
The author says that by completing each activity you will have a better foundation for seeing the world with a more creative light.
Christensen, T. (2015). The Creativity Challenge. Simon and Schuster.
KH Kim, educational psychologist writes this insightful book based in research in the decline of creativity in America since the 1990s. Bellow are notes from the book.
America’s relationship with Creativity.
America became a beacon for freedom and opportunity. She calls founding innovators people like: Thomas Jefferson, Alexander Hamilton, Benjamin Franklin, John and Abigail Adams and Mercy Otis Warren. All these innovators set the foundation of entrepeneurial legal systems that minimized corruption while protecting intellectual property. Early education in the US from parents and teachers reflected values important to American creativity, intelectual diversity, curiosity, risk taking and nonconformity. Entrepeneurship culture emerged and encouraged exponential innovation and economic growth.
Competition for Creativity Russia launched Sputnik 1 in 1957, America humiliated, education and scientists came under scrutiny. As a result of this competition America boosted their spending on R&D to the highest level in history. During the 1960s, the education system followed suit investing heavily in Science and engineering, children wanted to learn these subjects, not simply get good grades, but to create something unique. To conquer space.
Causes for Decline
America’s insecurity. Mid 1980s there was such a desire for financial security and maintaining the status quo, instead of continuing to evolve. Fear of global economic competition have caused creativity to decline according to KH KIM.
Domestic Insecurity. Achieving financial security has become so hard, so parents encouraged their kids to pursue a more secure, safer career. 64% of Americans see “getting rich” as the single most important goal in life.
R&D funds has been reduced and this has affected the number of patents in the US patent office. (from 57 to 49 percent) from 1996 to 2014. China has become the number one Patent holder. “US federal spending on R&D declined (15.4 percent) from 2010 to 2015- spending in defense R&D has declined the most (24.1 percent.)
The decline in college and university and research funds over the last two decades is another indication of creativity decline.
Budget cuts from NIH force half of the research proposals to be rejected, the more creative your proposal the more likely it will be rejected. agencies want to take lower risks.
While the US has decreased funding, China has increased it.
Education Asian students 15 years and older consistently attain higher grades in reading, math and science that US students the same age. Asian success has made Americans reevaluate their education system. They decided to take action to try to fix this. Bill Clinton called for a national education standard in 1997, George W Bush announced No child left behind (NCLB) and Barack Obama announced the Common Core State Standards with a grant to a program called Race to the Top as a continuation of NCLB. It’s goal is that all students receive higher education, closing achievement gap between the advantaged and the disadvantaged. “The schools are rewarded or punished through federal funds, and NCLB has become the most controlling and intrusive federal educational policy in American History.” It has become a test centric society.
There are state mandated standardiwed tests and they don”t measure things like creativity, so this becomes unimportant in the classroom. Teachers need their kids to get good grades so they can continue having their funding so they teach to the test. The test does not measure innovation or creativity so they don’t teach that.
This leaves disadvantaged kids further behind. They have no time for creativity and cannot participate in enriched programs, they are not allowed since they do not get the grades in the common core subjects.
If education only focuses in tests it ignores developing the whole child, it inhibits teachers from incorporating multiple intelligences (music-smart, body-smart, picture- smart, people – smart, etc).
All this takes on more problems such as depending on federal funding makes everything more bureaucratic, which limits schools autonomy and makes them less responsive to their students needs and more about complying with requirements from the government.
What to do….
According to KH KIM we need to create a creative culture, called a CAT (climate, attitude and thinking skills) to achieve innovation.
KH Kim finds that high intelligence isn’t necessary to win a Nobel prize but you do need creativity. High intelligence and creativity are not the same.
The challenges she encounters with teaching creativity is the belief of what children and adults believe is creativity. Only a flash of brilliance from gods or geniuses, if they believe only artists are creative, they might not even try to explore their own creative potential.
She developed a science to teach creativity: 1. Cultivate Creative Climates. 2. Nurture Creative Attitudes. 3. Develop Creative – Thinking Skills.
Climates
Creative Climates are controlled by parents and teachers. Climates include both physical and psychological surroundings.
Soil: exposure to all kinds of diversity and views.
Sun: introduces encouragement and excitement introducing PLAYFULNESS.
Storm: provides high expectations and challenges, through both positive and negative feedback.
Free Space: freedom to be alone and unique.
Attitudes
Attitudes are the ways individuals react to the climates.
Open Minded attitude involves considering other people’s views, different from one owns.
Bicultural Attitude means embracing new cultures, while maintaining your own identity.
Mentored attitude describes individuals that trust others and are teachable.
Complexity seeking attitude embraces equivocal and conflicting views. It allows us to resolve complex situations.
Resourceful attitude means finding and using all kinds of resources/opportunities effectively.
The Six Sun Attitudes. For curious optimists, which enable creative thinking.
Optimistic attitude means seeing the positive outcomes regardless of criticism.
big Picture thinking attitude comes from being inspired by others words, deeds or values. Curiosity towards the big world.
Curious Attitude means thinking in a childlike manner and always seeking more information.
Spontaneous attitude means being flexible and acting on new ideas and opportunities in a timely manner.
Playful Attitude means approaching situations in exploratory ways and seeing the lighter side of things.
Energetic Attitude comes from being motivated from within.
Eight Storm Attitudes. These help you become resilient hard workers.
Independent Attitude. Acting freely from others influence and support.
Self Disciplined. Comes from individuals motivating and controlling themselves to accomplish goals.
Diligent Attitude means committing to building skills to achieve your goals.
Self Efficacious attitude comes from being confident to perform well on a specific task.
Resilient Attitude comes from recovering after challenges and failures.
Risk Taking attitude means leaving secure situations in pursuit of uncertain rewards.
Persistent Attitude consists on continuously striving for your goals regardless of the immediate rewards.
Uncertainty accepting attitude means acting without complete information regardless of potential outcomes.
The Eight Space Attitudes. These you become defiant dreamers.
Emotional. Recognising, understanding and expressing your own feelings.
Compassionate. Internally empathizing with others and externalizing by helping them in meaningful ways.
Having a self reflective attitude. Enjoying solitude to understand the essence of your and others experience and views. Connect with nature.
Autonomous. Being independently motivated to pursue goals.
Daydreaming. Sustaining unrealistic goals but goal oriented thoughts while awake.
Nonconfoming attitude. Choosing to be different from the mainstream patterns of thought and behaviour. Being comfortable being an outsider.
Gender-bias-free attitude. Rejecting stereotypes based on gender. Using views and strengths from different genders.
Defiant. Courageously rejecting or changing existing norms, values, traditions, hierarchies, authorities in order to pursue goals.
Thinking Skills. ION thinking skills – inbox, outbox and newbox.
Inbox (narrow and deep) includes traditional ways of thinking. To gain or evaluate knowledge and skills. It is essential for developing expertise- mastering a subject by understanding and applying knowledge and skills. Requires memorisation, comprehension, application, critical thinking.
Outbox Thinking (quick and broad). It is when we imagine diverse possibilities. Is divergent or outside the box thinking that seeks non conforming ideas. It generates fluent, flexible and novel ideas.
Newbox Thinking combines elements of previous thinking and transforms them into a new creation. It uses zoom and wide angle lenses to uniquely combine unrelated ideas and transform them into a creation. It ensures both uniqueness and usefulness so it can be recogniced as an innovation by others.
The 4S Chart
4S chart by Kim KH
If parents and educators learn to cultivate the 4S climates that nurture children’s 4S attitudes at home and in school- rather than fostering un-creative climates that minimise children’s creative potential- they can greatly increase future innovation.
“Creativity has to power to transform the good to the best, and history has sown that all it takes is a few parents and educators to make striking advances.”
Kim, K.-H. (2016). The creativity challenge : how we can recapture American innovation. Prometheus Books.
Facts have been key in education. Flexibility and problem solving have been assigned to
Creativity.
Is it painting or sculpting? Simply using your imagination to create something new.
It includes works of artists but also analytical types like CEOs or data analysts.
We are all born to be creative. As we grow, many of us stop acting out our creativity. Creativity is a muscle, we just need to put it back to work.
Creativity is becoming a highly desired quality. Creativity is for the artsy type. LIE. Traditional work environment often is limited by creativity. Creativity is smothered by rationality. Paul Mc Cartney was recommended to not pursue a music career.
Anti creativity mindset is changing. Companies have discovered the importance. Most important leadership skill to innovate in the future.
Discover your own creativity.
Develop the courage to explore your creativity. Confront your fear of being creative.
Strategies:
Give up the notion that you cannot be creative. We can all be creative. Adapt a growth mindset. Create a roadmap on how to get there. Identify human needs and find a different solution. This is now called Design Thinking.
Allow yourself to fail. Don’t give up. Mistakes are a gift. Everyone fails. Creative geniuses fail more than usual but they build resilience. “A failure is only a failure if nothing was learned from it.” Tomas Edison.
New Experiences will help you get there quicker. They allow us to see the world in a different light. Think like a traveler. See mundane things with new eyes. Ask why at every opportunity. Show curiosity.
Work with people that share your passions. Collaboration. Innovation is the product of teamwork. Be part of a team. Find your own team. Talk to others about your ideas.
Do something with your mindset. Just do it. Just try. Go for it. Don’t think about it. Change from I should to I will. Better to try than to not do.
Creativity makes you happier. At work and in your personal life.
These are highlights and annotations from:
Kelley, T., & Kelley, D. (2015). Creative Confidence: Unleashing the creative potential within us all. W. Collins.
The truth is, human beings are all improvisers by nature. Everybody, unless performing a scripted play, makes up his life as he goes along. We are all improvisation.Improvisation is a metaphor, a path, and a system. The world of improv is a portal into mindfulness and magic.
Improv provides a workout that helps to shake loose rigid patterns of thinking and doing. For many of us, age produces a tendency to rely on known patterns. AS we grow it becomes harder to take risks. We rely on what we know to be secure. It becomes more natural to say NO. We criticize and complain. We are all artist, we just need to show up and get started.
Improvisation helps us connect with others, to lighten up and look around, it offers an alternative to control. It offers us a chance to do things differently.
We plan, make lists, worry, theorize, choose safety. We seem to have lost the knack to look at things differently every day, with fresh eyes or doing anything out of our comfort zone.
Taking an improvised step always leads you somewhere.
Notice where you are going.
Principles of Improv:
Say YES. Humans long to connect.Yes glues us together. Yes, the juices rolling. Yes might get us into trouble, but trouble is not bad when we are in it together. To say Yes is to make a leap of faith, to risk oneself in a new and often scary relationship. Exercise 1: Choose a person close to you: and for one week agree with all of her ideas. Find something right about everything they say. Look for every opportunity to offer support. Give him the spotlight. Notice the results. Exercise 2: For one day say yes to everything. Set your own preferences aside. Notice the results. See how often it may not be convenient or easy to do. Obviously use common sense!! Exercise 3: Group Game – INVENTING PROVERBS. One word at a time and at the end of sentence put your hands together in prayer and say YES, YES, YES. Exercise 4: Cultivate Yes Phrases: you bet, you are right, I’m with you, Good idea, etc.
Don’t PREPARE. Change the habit of getting ready for life in favor of getting on with it now. Excessive planning impedes our ability to see what is actually in front of us. Let go of your ego’s involvement in the process.When we give up the struggle to show off our talent, a natural wisdom can emerge. Exercise: Spend a day without a plan. Instead of following your ordinary routine, open your eyes and move with curiosity and attention. Don’t look at your To Do list. When you notice your mind is planning, make a conscious shift of attention to the present moment. Notice everything that is going on now. Look at everything as if you were going to describe it to the police. Exercise 2: Imagine a box beautifully wrapped in front of you. Take a moment to “see” the box. Touch the box, what color is the box, how does the box feel? Open the box, what is inside? Notice a detail about the gift and examine it. Thank the giver. Trust your imagination – there is always something in the box.
Remember: Fear is not a problem; allowing yourself to be consumed by it is.
JUST SHOW UP. Stop talking, Start walking – L.M. Heroux Procrastination, laziness, fears – it’s easy to find a reason for not going. Remember Time lost is never found again. Exercise 1: Create a ritual. Identify a habit you wish you had. (going for a walk, exercising, paying bills). Think of what will make this habit easy or more attractive to do. Set a time to do a preparatory ritual each day. Focus on doing it faithfully. Exercise 2: Make a list of 5 places that are your “hot spot” places where important things happen in your life. Go there right now. Exercise 3: Change the location of a familiar activity. Move a meeting elsewhere, meet at a new place with your friends, take your lung to a new place. Move your reading time to a park. Tips: motivation is not a prerequisite for showing up. Use rituals to get going. Change Location.
START ANYWHERE. This rule is liberating. Once a project is under way it does not matter where you started. Start from the middle, the end or the beginning. Exercise 1: Identify a project that you need to get done. Follow your first thought and begin the job. Do the very first thing that comes to your mind. When you choose your first though you focus on making your first thought a good thought instead of searching the the good thought to start, Exercise 2: Instead of writing your notes in precise language, try writing questions to yourself. Then answer the question. This is useful when speaking in public. Write down questions than answer them. Exercise 3: Start a monologue. Ask yourself a question and create a monologue. Prompts: If there were four more hours in the day how would you spend them? Talk about something beautiful you saw recently.
BE AVERAGE. Close enough is perfect. Dare to be Dull- Ketih Johnstone. Be nothing special- David K Reynolds, Cultivate the ordinary mind – zen saying. Changing expectations can take the pressure off and may even cheer you up. Step 1 is giving up on perfection. Step 2 is stop trying to come up with something different. This can actually block the creative process. “The real voyage of discovery lies not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes”. Marcel Proust. Try thinking inside the box, just look more carefully. Exercise 1: Look for a gift for a loved one and consider an ordinary gift of everyday use. A towel, a pillow, a pen, a clock,a blanket. Keep a list of useful everyday objects.
PAY ATTENTION. The detail of each day takes place right in front of us. How much are we missing? Exercise 1: Keep reading until I instruct you to: Close your eyes. Once your eyes are shut, describe in as much detail as you can the immediate environment. Don’t cheat by glancing now or studying the room beforehand. With your eyes closed point at specific objects in the room. Describe colors, shapes and the layout of the space. Include as many details as you can remember. When you finish remembering, open your eyes, see what you got right, what obvious items did you overlook? What surprised you? It is important to take time to reflect. Close your eyes again, try to remember three new things you noticed the second time you opened them. Exercise 2: Try to attend to one thing at a time. Choose an ordinary activity like brushing your teeth: pay attention only to what you are doing while doing this activity. Avoid multitasking. Look at the steps you take, what comes first, second and third. Reflect on the task and the objects involved in the task, who made them, where did they come from. Reflect on the order you do things. Reflect on how it feels. If you wander off, bring it back to what you are doing. Exercise 3: In a familiar environment like your living room or your office or your walk to work, try to notice something new. A noise, an object that changed places. When you notice it try to examine it carefully. Repeat this exercise throughout your day. Exercise 4: Listen completely. Once a day devote your attention to someone who is speaking to you. Focus completely on what is being said. Try to repeat what the other person said. Exercise 5: Become an anthropologist. Notice what people are wearing, what type of noses they have, how they wear their hair. Discern their manner or their mood. Learn something new every day about those closest to you.
FACE THE FACTS
These are notes and key highlights from the book.
Patricia Ryan Madson. Improv Wisdom : Don’t Prepare, Just Show Up. New York, Bell Tower, Cop, 2005.
