Prathap Suthan’s piece titled ‘What makes you creative?‘ is a wonderful read indeed. Some of the points are brilliantly captured, like the focus on words, reading everything, on everything having a purpose, the hobby part or even keeping a notebook to jot down things.
While Prathap starts the list by saying, ‘This isnâ??t only for advertising professionals. This is career-agnostic. This is for all those whoâ??d like to flex their minds sideways‘, I personally felt his 18 points largely catered to those who have a professional interest in being creative.
And I say this at the risk of sounding silly – we all have a professional interest in being creative, whatever our profession, and even in our personal lives.
And to address that, let me offer you just two points on being creative,
1. Be curious
2. Relish the smaller things in life
If you are not curious, you stop being anything. Curiosity enhances your thought process and lets you question things. And this curiosity need not be restricted to high level stuff.
The smaller things in life happen a million times more than the big things. And when you relish and focus on the smaller things, you seem to be living a fuller life!
Everyday creativity is all about relishing the smaller things in everyday life.
To give you some personal examples…I use creativity in everything I do – not the advertising-type creativity – let me rephrase it to a more life-friendly term – ingenuity.
To find an interesting way to wake up my son so early in the morning, without losing my patience and without making him cry – I find things that can interest him naturally to wake him with excitement. It could be a new paste, a new brush, a new mug (yes!), a new clue from his bed-time story from last night…there are so many things to choose from!
To do something different to bread everyday to overcome the everyday drudgery of eating the same thing for breakfast – it could be cutting the corners off, could be to add a new ingredient – have added Lays chips and Aloo bhujia between 2 bread pieces – try them!
I also have to excite my son to eat the same thing – so, cutting it in interesting shapes help!
I hate driving, but I need to drive, everyday. So, I work on the kind of music I would listen to, right up to the last song in the playlist – a new playlist excites me into waking up with eager expectation.
I also change the route almost everyday – sometimes, mid-way, at the last minute, just to surprise myself! And it always works – a different route is always more enriching…I see more cows on the way, a pot-hole that existed till last week has been hastily patched, a make-shift road divider has been broken just to let off 2-wheelers…there are so many things interesting enough to take note of!
At work, every little thing we do can be done differently and in hundreds of ways – it is just that we often choose to do it in one conventional way everyone thinks is the right way. In fact, one of the things that works brilliantly for me to unclog the brain and get more ideas is to read 2 pages of a favorite book right in the middle of the day. Usually, it is The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy, by Douglas Adams, for me – it always works…any 2 pages, from anywhere in the book. What works for me? I haven’t been able to pinpoint that, but to some extent, I think it is the way Adams frames his sentences – he may have written them spontaneously, but to me, it seems different from any other person’s expression of the same thought…the choice and order of words and the articulation of thought seem to inspire me…always!
Back home…there is immense joy in cleaning things – with a vacuum cleaner, even more so! There is a lot of fun in rearranging things in the home, sometimes every week! There is a lot to enjoy in washing dishes, the cleaner they look, the more exciting the activity. A new soap could be as exciting as a new smartphone, though the former will definitely not last long in the excitement quotient, to be fair given how much more one can do with the latter.
Sometimes I think I’m a marketer’s dream – I actually get excited about many of those mundane everyday products that marketers want us to get excited about. But – here’s the catch – I don’t get excited about those products for the same reasons as those marketers offer us, in their glitzy advertisements.
If you think about those 2 pieces of advice on top – be curious and relish the smaller things in life – they are just the way kids behave. I can see my son do those day in and day out! He’s hyper curious about everything, like any other child and asks tons of questions, usually to a hapless, distracted dad – me!
He loves every small thing he comes across – even a broken beyblade becomes something of a new toy to him since he has to camouflage the thought that he is the only one in his group without a functional beyblade till that day evening when he can pester his dad to get a new one. Like most other kids, he tries to do new stuff with paper, cardboard boxes, old toys, pieces of cloth, rope, stones, glue/fevicol, paint, sketchpen caps, refills…you name it – he has an idea to do something with it.
Coming to think of it – I was like this too, when I was a kid. I’m sure we all were. But somewhere down the line, as we grew up, we took in a lot more of real-life situations based on how others lead it and started conforming to certain norms of how to go about with life. With that, out went the child-like curiosity and child-like enthusiasm for smaller things in life.
That’s quite sad. Get that child-like trait back and see life become more interesting! It works for me everyday and I see no reason why it won’t work for you.
Pic courtesy Redhange via Flickr.