Why Adults Suck at Creativity (and how to fix it)

Why Adults Suck at Creativity (and how to fix it)

I’m not a creative person. Have you ever said those words? In a world where creativity is constantly evolving and we thrive on innovation and ideas, why does it feel like only some people are born creative? Are you a creative person? I definitely have to say that I’m not.

Are you a creative person? No. Not really. You’re not good at taking photos, and so you’re not creative? I think that way, yeah. Can I disagree with you there? Maybe our entire concept of creativity is flawed. Or maybe we just don’t fully understand what creativity is.

I’ve made it my mission to figure out what it means to be creative. This year for me is going to be all about discovering what creativity means to me through new experiences, stretching my skills, and talking with as many people as possible about what creativity means for them. And it starts here.

In this video, I’ll be taking a deep dive into how creativity is shaped by our world, how different people experience creativity, and even how it looks at a neurological level. I want to figure out why some people are

More creative than others and find ways that we can all learn to be more creative. Whether you’re overflowing with ideas or don’t have a single creative bone in your body, this is an important discussion to have, and I hope you’ll join me for this exploration into what it means to be creative.

Are you a creative person? I like to think I am. To a certain extent? I’d say yeah, sometimes. Yes or no? Yes or no. It depends what it, creative, means. For you, why would you say you’re not creative? I associate creative with art and writing, and I don’t do that.

As an adult, I’ve met so many different people from different backgrounds with different interests and with different skills. Time and time again, I meet people who tell me they aren’t creative. They couldn’t possibly draw like I draw or learn a creative skill like music or painting because they aren’t a creative person.

This frustrates me. At a really deep level because I believe anyone can be creative. So, what am I missing? Why is creativity so hard for some of us? What actually is a creative person? Is it an inspired visionary with an eccentric personality and a unique fashion sense?

Is it the genius outcast who lives in a world outside reality, someone who sees things other people don’t see? And is it actually Is it more about being good at creating, or is it more about having a go? And if we’re not naturally creative, can we learn to be?

I asked my YouTube audience what was the first word that came to mind when they think of a creative person, and I got a huge range of answers. Some agreed that creativity was about seeing the world differently and thinking outside the box. Some people suggested specific personality

Traits, and others connected it to being artistic. When we think about creativity and what it means to be a creative person, many of us immediately think of the more creative activities like art, drawing, painting, music, or writing. I spoke to Kristy Rice and Scott Christian-Sava, both amazing water color artists here

On YouTube, and it’s no surprise that they consider themselves to be creative people. Do you consider yourself a creative person? Yeah. The problem isn’t creativity for me. The problem turning creativity off. So, yeah, I definitely would say I’m a creative person.

My mind is always running, and I wake up with ideas, and I shower, and I get ideas, and I just can’t stop my mind. But my ideas about it and the way that I see how it happens in our lives has changed a lot.

I don’t want it to seem callous because I know that there are people who go through creative blocks and who want to be more creative. And I don’t want to make light of how hard it is to be creative. Think about the most creative person you know. How would you describe them?

Inventive, artistic, imaginative. Some people are so creative. It’s obvious to everyone around them. But I think, even unintentionally, that we’ve created this separation between creative people and not creative people. If it’s true that we can all be creative, then we need to move past these

Stereotypes of what a creative person should look like. Just like creativity can look like anything, creative people can look like anything. I wouldn’t say so, actually. I mean, creative and not an artist, but I have an open mind. Let’s put it like that. What do you do that’s creative?

Try to solve problems, I guess. Problem solving? Yeah. Finding another angle. An ability to think outside the box. I’m a tour guide around Melbourne, so I make it very creative. They can be extroverted and introverted, chaotic but also disciplined, childish and serious, open-minded and stubborn, energetic,

But also quiet, smart but also naive, humble and proud at the same time. They know how to be both mindful and mindless. These seemingly conflicting ideas of mindfulness and mind-wandering, organized chaos, play and seriousness. These can all be traits of creative people, and sometimes all at once.

Maybe it’s not something that is supposed to be defined. After all, putting creativity in a neat little box doesn’t feel very creative. I think a lot of the struggles we have with not feeling creative comes down to this thinking that creativity is a personality trait

And that somehow it’s only available to certain people. Creativity is not a personality trait, it’s a skill. Like any other skill, it can be developed. It’s like assuming that only athletes have muscles. I’ll come back to that soon. Are you a creative person? I think so. What would you describe as being creative?

Painting, thinking outside the box, drawing, building. Doing things that are different many ways of solving a problem. Often I solve a problem in a different way than I did the last time before. I guess my first question for you is, are you a creative person?

I certainly like to think I’m a creative person because I think I work in a field where creativity is valued and where actually you can almost track how successfully you are creatively through your income. So I run a few channels.

Jet Lag, which is the easiest way to describe it, is a travel-based game show, Wendover, where we do a longer form explainer, mini-doc style stuff, and Have As Interesting, where we do much shorter explainers about fun facts and trivia and weird stuff that doesn’t really matter like that.

I guess Jet Lag is a really good example of something that involves a huge amount of creativity, but it’s not what some people consider to be creativity in that it’s not art. You’re not an art channel. We’re continuously asking the question of, how do we change what we know

Has worked in the past to make it feel fresh and different while still being confident that it’s going to be good? So I think perpetually, it’s a question of how much creativity do we apply here confidently? Since I think the more you apply novel

Ideas, the less confident, inherently, you’re going to be about them. So you got to manage that balance, I think. I’m Laurie. I run the channel, The Icing Artist. I do a lot of cake décorating, but a lot of it’s more me attempting cake decorating trends and different foodie,

Dessert things and me stumbling through it and finding my way. I think creativity is anything you want it to be. I mean, what is creativity, right? To me, right now, it could be decorate a cake, or it could be developing a recipe, or it could be designing a room.

I just bought a new house where we’re redesigning the whole space, and I’m designing what color is going to go here, what hardware is going to be this, and how that’s going to match the tile. And that’s creative, too. I mean, it’s just everywhere in my world.

The way I see creativity is just ideas. My dad was very creative. He was a mechanical engineer, and he’d have an idea for ‘I’ve got this thing that’ll help fix your golf swing’. He getting out PVC pipe. I think he created one of the first VCRs.

It doesn’t even have to be an art. To me, when there is nothing and then you create it, that’s creative. There are so many different ways that people can be creative. In his book, The Creative Act, Rick Rubin says, ‘Regardless of whether or

Not we’re formally making art, we are all living as artists. We perceive, filter, and collect data, then curate an experience for ourselves and others based on this information set.’ I don’t remember who said it, but somebody said, Creativity is just connecting things, and that’s 100% what I think creativity is.

It’s the definition of it. Just collecting dots, collecting observations, lessons, experiences, and then putting them together in novel ways. Because at least personally, I consider being creative in large part, doing things that others haven’t. It’s easy to look at something and emulate it. I think what creativity

Means is looking at something and building on it to do something different. When you put something out that’s different, that’s never been done before, you maybe have a gut feeling about whether people will like it or whether they won’t. But ultimately,

The best way to find out is to just put it out there, and that’s a risk. Are you a creative person? I’m a very creative person, yes, even though I cannot draw. I take my mom as an example. My mom doesn’t draw, doesn’t paint, doesn’t make music.

She works in potentially the most non-creative job that somebody who doesn’t understand what creativity actually is would list, which is like an administrative assistant at a construction company. But just the other week, she’s like, I had this great idea where I took the idea of all these note cards to leave

Around my house, which gives me reminders and phone numbers and things like that. And I had the idea of making a little plastic bag with a note card with all the numbers our workers would have to call if they got into an accident.

And now they’re in every single truck and my boss was super excited about that idea. That’s an example of creativity right there, even in a non-artistic job. I love this definition of creativity being about connecting the dots, connecting different ideas to create something new.

It’s this creativity that brought us smartphones, hybrid cars, even the spork. The more dots you have, the more variations of ideas you can develop. Sometimes your ideas might feel similar to something that already exists, and sometimes your ideea might be so different that you don’t even know where it came from.

The microwave was invented when an engineer working on radar technology discovered that the microwaves melted the candy bar in his pocket, leading him to the idea of using microwaves to cook food. In 1941, another engineer went on a hike

And noticed how burs clung to his dog’s fur, which led him to invent Velcro. When you start making connections with the things you’ve already experienced and allow your mind to imagine new scenarios, you might be surprised at the creative ideas that start to come to mind. Sometimes it involves taking risks,

And other times it involves paying close attention. And not every idea is going to be a good one. But creative thinking is available to all of us. Creativity is absolutely for everyone. I firmly believe this. I think if you’re the driest accountant

With the plastic pocket pen protector, it’s in how you interact with the world. There’s artistry in everything that we do. I have an activity for you. In a moment, I want you to pause this video, and I want you to think about this box.

What’s the most unusual or creative way that you could use this box? Give yourself just 30 seconds and see how many ideas you can think of. And go. I’m drawing a blank. I mean, it’s a box.

I feel like I would draw on the outside of the box and make it pretty because it’s all white, so I would either paint it or color it or do something with it. I feel like that’s how I would add creativity to it.

I don’t know if I could use it in a creative way. Okay. I’m going to say microwave a cake in it. You put cake batter in, you put in the microwave. I don’t think it would burn down. I think it could work.

So you mean actually put the raw mixture in and then it turns into a cake? Yeah, I I don’t think that would burn. You can put cardboard in a microwave. I think so. If you can’t, you just get a different result, I guess. Yeah, true.

Yeah, it might not be edible, but that’s okay. One thing I think of because having kids is like making a diorama or turning this box into a treasure chest, making cuts in different places, decorating it like a treasure chest to put treasure in, or using it to make little houses.

And decorate it that way. I’d say build a really ineffective paper airplane. It probably wouldn’t be a very good one. Got little holes and stick cupcakes in it. But honestly, you saying that reminds me of more when I was a kid when you’d be

Given a random object, be like, okay, here, now turn this into a car, and then you have to add all the different things to it. So you’re holding up and like, maybe turn to a robot, maybe add some wheels, turn into a car.

I feel like it could be anything. Build a single shoe. You just cut a hole in it. A shoe? And it becomes your shoe. But only one of them, right? I mean, in the Jet Lag meta, you can turn that into a six-sided dive.

You roll to find out whether or not you can get a flight to Key West or not. Spoilers. Okay, time’s up. How’d you go? Let me know in the comments what some of your ideas were for this box. This feels like it should be such a simple task, right?

But most people struggle to think of ideas outside of what they’ve already experienced or seen. We struggle to think outside the box. I’ll do that. You can use any of those. Not all of them. Box can be anything. Kids would be really good at this activity. I should ask my kids.

We could use it as a chair. Break it. And sit right on it and it would squash. What are you going to do now? I’m going to break it. Fill it with the brim with water and then cut it open. Why are you breaking the box?

Because it’s a great… Golden apple is inside this. It’s called enchanted. What is the enchanted golden apple? There was an experiment similar to this in 2018. A study by a group of neuroscientists led by Roger Beatty, where they wanted to find out if they could predict someone’s creative ability by looking

At the patterns and connections between different areas of their brain. They gave 163 participants a common object and gave them 12 seconds to come up with unusual or creative uses while monitoring their brain activity with an fMRI. For example, if the object was a box,

A non creative answer would be using it to store things. A creative answer might be turning the box into a fun maze for a mouse or creating a mini puppet theater. They observed that people who came up with more unique or interesting answers showed different results in their brain activity.

Maybe you’ve heard the concept that our left brain is where we think logically and our right brain is where we think creatively. But this is a way oversimplified understanding of what really happens in your brain when you’re being creative. Scientists now understand that creativity uses the whole brain.

The study we’ve just spoken about analyzed the brain activity from all 163 participants. They noticed an increase in activity in three different networks within the brain that had previously been suggested to be involved in creative thinking. The executive attention network, the default network, and the salience network.

Each of these networks are made up of a number of different parts of the brain from both the left and right sides. The executive attention network activates when we try to focus on a specific task. It helps us concentrate, problem-solve, plan, and strategize, and uses our working memory.

It can block out distractions and help us to maintain a focus or make complex decisions. The default network helps us to understand stories or experiences, reflect on our emotions or the emotions of others, and imagine other perspectives. It often activates by default when we are

Relaxing or don’t have a specific task to do. You know those moments where you find yourself lost in a memory or deep in thought about the future? That’s the default network working as your mind wanders, which explains why it’s also known as the Imagination Network.

This network is especially important for brainstorming or for coming up with creative ideas, but it can’t work on its own or we’d never get anything done. In fact, scientists have discovered that people with ADHD often struggle to focus and are easily distracted by new

Ideas or imaginative thoughts because their default network remains active more than it should and competes with the executive attention network. I’ve explored this further in the extended version of this video over on Nebula, where I’ve also included more conversations from my interviews and a longer discussion around creativity.

But there’s a third network also involved in creativity, and this is the Salience Network. The Salience Network processes all the information that comes through our brain from our senses, experiences, and thoughts, and sends that information over to the other networks. It helps us decide which information is

Interesting or useful and which information it should ignore, and it switches between the executive and default brain networks. It helps us to stop daydreaming so we can get back to focusing on a project and helps keep us motivated. The Salience Network switches between the default and executive networks.

These usually operate at different times and are activated or deactivated depending on what we need for the task we’re working on. But when we are thinking creatively, these networks activate and deactivate more quickly than usual and are sometimes active all at once. Just like creativity is messy,

These networks connect in a messy, complex way, allowing us to focus, daydream, and be selective with our attention. We use our imagination to think of ideas, the salience network to decide what to focus on, and then we focus to refine our work and remember our training or past experiences.

Creativity involves constantly switching between these connections in our brain. Researchers suggests that creative people can switch between these networks more quickly than people who aren’t typically creative thinkers, and that people with stronger connections tend to produce more original ideas when trying to think outside the box.

The takeaway for me from this science is that we all have access to creative thinking. It’s not exclusive or in some people’s DNA, it’s in the way our brains connect between each of the networks, and these networks can be strengthened. If creativity is available to everyone,

Why do some people find it so hard to be creative? Why are some people so much more creative than others? Many of us would agree that kids are naturally creative. As a parent, I’ve definitely given my kids a gift at Christmas only to find them more excited about the box it came in.

But something happens as we grow up. We start to notice our mistakes and take less risks. We stop trying new things unless we pick them up right away. We expect to be an expert at something we’ve only been doing for a week. And somewhere along the line,

We start defining ourselves as creative or not creative people. As children, we experience much less interference between receiving ideas and internalizing them. We accept new information with delight instead of making comparisons to what we already believe. We live in the moment rather than worrying about future consequences. We are spontaneous more than analytical.

We are curious, not jaded. Even the most ordinary experiences in life are met with a sense of awe. Deep sadness and intense excitement can come within moments of each other. There’s no facade and no attachment to a story. But that interference of other things and knowledge and stuff like that,

Is that what stops us from being creative as adults? Yeah, absolutely. We don’t lose it. We are born with the aptitude to be creative. It’s part of us, but it gets lost. It gets muddied. It gets all the things as we age, the fear, the self-loathing, the self-judgment.

I always tell the story about when I taught ceramics, I was in high school and I was teaching ceramics. In the mornings, I would teach the older women, and in the afternoons, I would teach the kids. And you know where the story is going to go.

The kids would just sit down and be like, Oh, I do this, and then I just go like, Okay, boom. And they would throw a pot. They would throw a cylinder. And the adults were just so self-aware. And they’re aptitude for that creativity and that creative experience

And that creative release was so far diminished compared to their young counterparts, their youngster counterparts. So, yeah, I just feel like the aptitude is always there. It’s just masked as we get older. I think as we get older, we get more afraid

Because we have more experiences where our creativity is met with a negative response or with people saying, just do the work I asked you to do. Stop trying to be fancy, all that stuff. We get to this point where we don’t want to express our creativity because we are anticipating that negative response.

I think everybody is creative. I don’t think anybody loses it. I think people suppress it or they doubt themselves or their creativity. They lack the confidence to share it or pursue them. But I think everybody has creativity. My cousin Chris is a mechanic, and he calls me with the stupidest ideas,

Just laughing at his own absurdity of, Wouldn’t this be a great TV show? We got to write this as a TV show, Scott. But, he’ll never act on it because he’s got a career, but he still has that creativity, and he at least feels confident enough

To share it with his crazy cousin who’s an artist who lives in a hobbit hole. But I’m sure everybody has that creativity that they’re just not willing to share it with somebody, or maybe you just have one or two friends that you’re willing to share it with. And that’s okay, too.

But I don’t think creativity is something that is only gifted to the artists. I think it is something that the artists embrace and the others don’t. Childhood development is instrumental to the development of creativity. And a lot of the environment that children are exposed to is linked to how well

That they at least as a baseline are, at creativity, which, important to note, creativity is not something that certain people are good at, certain people are bad at. Just naturally, it’s something you develop. But of course, like all things, you can develop it as a kid really

Effectively, and it a lot comes down to environment. The point you make about the cardboard box where a kid sees it and turns it into anything, that is the scenario that creates creativity, and especially play in unstructured environments. This is why childhood access to nature is so important. There’s a very, I think,

Well-regarded book about this called Last Child in the Woods, which is basically about how children have less and less access to nature these days than in the past due to a variety of things, like the places where people live, especially in North America, where the suburbs have been really built up.

And while there might be trees, there’s not true nature. Also just rising fears among parents about letting kids roam free. But what that leads to is that kids are less and less exposed to these environments where they’re able to basically turn one thing through their imagination into another thing.

See a stream and imagine, Oh, I’m going to damn this up and do that, or see a bunch of sticks and decide, Oh, we’re going to do a lightsaber battle with these sticks. And that scenario building through exposure to an environment

That they can manipulate like the woods, maybe more so than a playground where there’s nothing really that you can manipulate. You can go down the slides, you can climb up the ladder, but there’s nothing to manipulate and turn into your scenarios as much. That’s why access to play in the first

Place, and especially access to nature, is so important for kids. Because I know for me at the moment, we are really aware of raising kids in an age where technology is so prominent. When we have kids on technology all the time, is that actually reducing their overall creativity?

That’s something that I ask myself a lot. That’s something that I’m aware of when we watch them and what they’re doing, of if they’re just consuming videos, they’re not actively using their imagination and they’re not growing that creativity. At least anecdotally, I have heard that one thing that is

Observed by teachers nowadays is that kids are getting worse at problem-solving. They’re getting worse at being able to tackle a problem because I think what’s speculated is they’re so used to just googling the answer. If they don’t see an answer, then it’s like, Oh, Okay, what do I do?

Because there’s so little friction to getting answers these days. I was in a cooking class and I decided to substitute the coconut for sugar because I had a massive aversion to coconut, which, as I grew up, discovered was actually a food allergy. But in high school, I switched the food around.

I actually really liked the recipe with this change, and the teacher marked me down because even though, I guess in hindsight, I had used creativity and had chosen to adjust the recipe and had made it work, I didn’t follow the recipe, and therefore I got graded down.

I look at those situations, and I wonder if… I feel like schools are getting better at this. I’d like to think that teachers are more open to problem solving and recognizing those skills, because if you did decide to take on cooking, being able to adapt a recipe is actually a really crucial skill.

Instead of being rewarded, I was punished for using my creativity. I wonder how many other people have similar experiences to that, where because you are taught so much to follow the rules and do things a certain way in school,

Do we then lose that ability to take a risk or make an adaption or just adjust something because of what we’ve been taught? Yeah, I feel like for people, maybe their creativity doesn’t really develop because of it. I think schools squash out creativity a little bit,

Even though there’s music classes and art classes and drama classes. Everything else is so structured, and even those classes are so structured that it squashes you and puts you into this little box and doesn’t really feed and fuel your creativity.

Someone once told me that schools were trained and built around people to become factory workers and yes men, so that we can just go through life and we push the button here and say yes here and do this then.

And that’s what schools train us to do, is just to follow these exact strict rules. You got penalized for not doing your recipe. I feel like you should have gotten rewarded for thinking outside of the box and being creative in that way. I feel like schools can definitely not

Foster creativity, but can also squash creativity. There is some debate about whether schools nurture or kill creativity. On one hand, the structure of schools can help us to build good habits and expose us to all the possibilities for the future. But on the other hand,

Kids are taught to conform, not make mistakes, and do things a certain way. When I was in school, I was jumped from eighth grade to 10th grade, and I excitedly chose a range of creative subjects like art, visual design, and media.

I was quickly told that it would be a waste of my talents and that I was only allowed to skip the ninth grade if I studied history, geography, and sciences. They ended up being my least favorite subjects, and my lack of motivation showed in my grades.

On the flip side, I had some incredibly supportive teachers who encouraged my creative thinking. They let me submit a homemade board games and creative videos as homework instead of the written projects that were assigned. They gave me room to think differently

And explore new ideas, and those were the projects that I poured my energy into. I think that a lot of schools love to try to help you be creative. I just don’t know it’s always the right environment for that. But growing up, my mom found other environments for me

Because she knew that I loved all creative and artistic things. So I was in dance classes and music classes and in acting classes. I was in this, that, and everything. I feel like that really helped me creatively. Our education system is predicated on the idea of academic ability.

If you think of it, the whole system of public education around the world is a protracted process of university entrance. And the consequence is that many highly talented, brilliant, creative people think they’re not because the thing they were good at at school wasn’t valued or was actually stigmatized.

And I think we can’t afford to go on that way. The point of this video isn’t to blame the education system for our lack of creativity as adults. But maybe as a society, we need to value creativity and its role in our schools so the next generation

Doesn’t experience the same loss of creativity that many of us did. Imagine how different our world would be if creativity was celebrated as much as academics. I’m curious to hear what your experiences have been like in your school years. Please share your thoughts on this in the comments.

If you’re finding this interesting so far, it would mean so much to me if you would share this video with a friend. When the world is teaching us to conform and think inside the box, it takes courage to do things differently.

It takes a deliberate creativity when you can learn not to be afraid of failure and not to be afraid of making a mistake and just enjoy the journey of exploring something that actually unlocks a level of creativity that you can’t access

If you have a specific plan or you’re trying to make things perfect, I think sometimes that can actually suppress that creative thinking. Why does this all matter anyway? Why is it so important to cultivate creativity? Creativity isn’t just a nice trait to have or something to work on if you’re an aspiring artist.

It’s essential for all of us to communicate, to solve problems, and even to avoid boredom. It’s not just about what you create, it’s the process of thinking differently. Learning to see the world differently is what creates compassion. It allows us to imagine the world from other people’s perspectives.

Have you ever tried to cook from a recipe book and found yourself How short an ingredient? You need to think creatively. Oh, yes. It definitely happens a lot. I feel like it happened to me last month. I ran out of all-purpose flour. This is usually the flour that I use.

I was like, okay, well, I’m halfway through my recipe and I have no flour. I don’t want to run out to the store because I’ve got all my wet ingredients mixed. I was looking through the cupboard and I found I had cake and pastry flour. I looked up the ratio difference because

There was rising ingredients and stuff in the cake and pastry flour. So I looked up what that alteration was and then altered it to that. Living inside the box and following the world is comfortable and safe. Thinking differently is risky, but without risks, the world would never change or grow.

It’s creative thinking that allows us to follow our curiosity, learn new things, and visualize the future. Yeah, being creative is about exploring. And so that can always feel going out at night with a flashlight is always your, I don’t know what’s going to be around the corner.

I can’t see what’s going to happen. And that’s what creativity feels like. But once you realize that there’s nothing outside in the dark that can hurt you, you feel a little more relaxed and you can go and explore a little more. And it’s the same thing. There’s nothing bad about being creative.

It can’t hurt you. Explore it and just embrace it is the best way – explored and embrace it. We all have access to be more creative, even if it’s something you’ve never really explored. Creativity is not a personality trait. It’s a skill that can be developed by anyone.

I often talk about using your creative muscles. Your brain isn’t literally a muscle, but when it comes to creativity, muscles give us a perfect analogy. If you stop using your muscles, your body will start to break them down, making them smaller and weaker. But with exercise and specific training,

You can grow your muscles and strengthen them far beyond their usual capacity. If you haven’t been actively exercising your creativity, it’s no surprise that you don’t feel creative. Brainstorming meetings can feel like you’re running a marathon after sitting on the couch for a month. But it doesn’t mean you don’t have

The ability to be creative, and it’s not too late to start rebuilding those skills. Certain people do have genetic advantages to building muscle. There are slight differences in how effective different people can build muscle, but you still have to build it. It’s just like you still start with the same amount.

It’s more about how effective you are at exercising that muscle and all that. But anyway, glad we’re on the same page. It’s a great analogy. I think totally makes sense. Research tells us that we can develop our creativity. It’s like any other skill.

We have it, although some people have a greater tendency towards being creative or have actively strengthened their creativity over time. But what we know is that through deliberate practice, through training, and through learning, you can enhance your creative thinking. So if you’re not creative or you want to be more creative, how?

What do you think creative would mean? Having a mind to see something and make something different out of it or have a new idea when you see something that exists already. That’s pretty good definition. And you don’t think that’s you? I don’t know.

I do some art stuff at school, but I always find it hard to find inspiration. And I think that’s a big part of being creative. In the last section of this video, I want to look at 10 ways that you can increase or rediscover your creativity,

No matter how creative you think you are right now. Firstly, seek out new experiences. Let’s think back to this idea of creativity being about connecting the dots. If every experience in your life creates a new opportunity for connection, then naturally, more experiences gives you more ideas to draw from.

But doing more of the same types of things will only get you so far. It’s the unique and varied experiences that allow us to really innovate and bring out divergence in thinking. Read novels, watch movies, visit museums, expose yourself to creative works, and try new things.

Pick up a new hobby outside your interests. Take a different way home. Make new friends. Research has shown that being open to new experiences can help increase your capacity to recognize new patterns and find links among seemingly unrelated pieces of information, connecting the dots.

I like to color cards, like birthday cards for my friends and family. I like to do that. I like to puzzle a lot. Yeah, just draw sometimes. The ironic thing about asking people on the street if they’re creative, when we know that creativity is about

Exploring your experiences, is that the people who we’re asking are probably going to be creative because they’ve said yes to doing it. My question is, are you a creative person? No. No? No, I’m not at all. Why not? I’m not arty or I don’t come up with good ideas. I’m more practical.

Can I challenge you on that? I guess my definition of creative is someone who is open to new experiences, can look at things a different way, can maybe see a bit more meaning in things. Yeah, fair enough. Yes, I am definitely open to different experiences. I mean, you’re doing this.

Have you ever tried learning a Rubik’s Cube or juggling? These might not feel like they are creative or have practical applications, but they are great exercises to train your brain to think differently. Number two, build creative habits. I think this is where it gets tricky

Because I am of the belief that to reclaim that childlike creativity and that childlike lack of fear You have to learn new habits. So it’s this weird dichotomy because when you think of creativity, you think of the free spirit. You think of, Oh, I’m just dancing through life. But to reclaim that,

You actually have to be self-aware, realize the ways that you’re thinking and functioning in what you hope to be a creative space, what’s not working, and then establish new habits to make it work again. So it takes discipline. Yeah, it does. I believe so, which is annoying. It’s super annoying.

I think the discipline especially happens when you’re in the transition, when you first become self-aware again as an adult, that you’ve lost part of that, that you feel like you’re unmasking some of your fear and being really aware and honest about it. It’s in that transition where you have to be more disciplined.

But then there will come a time where you’re going to get that freeness back and you are going to feel that delightful chaos again. Just like everything else, with adulting, that we have to… There’s moments of seriousness and self-awareness that have to happen

For us to reclaim the joy and have the joy in the front and all that. Building a creative habit can look different to everyone. It might mean dedicating time in your schedule to explore new ideas. Many companies like Google are implementing this concept by giving their employees dedicated time for side projects.

In fact, the Post-it note was invented during one scientist’s own project time at 3:00 AM. Or maybe it’s about pursuing a specific creative goal with intention, booking classes to take on a new hobby instead of just doing it when you feel like it. Right now, I am working on the habit

To draw every day, and after just 20 days so far, I’m already noticing a huge improvement in my skills and creativity when I’m drawing. That’s my own creative journey that I’ll be sharing in detail in my next video, so please subscribe if you’d like to see more of my progress.

Number three, pay attention. If you want to better understand the world and make more connections with your experiences, you need to actually experience them. In a world where everyone is attached to their phone, it takes intentional effort to stop and pay attention. Train yourself to see the awe behind the obvious.

Learn to be more sensitive in the moment. Be curious. Ask questions. Look for connections. The world is constantly changing, so there’s always more to discover if you just look deeper. Four, build a creative environment. When Walt Disney worked on some of his

Earlier movies like Snow White and Pinocchio, he set up three physical rooms for different thinking processes within his team. Room one was the dream room. Ideas were shared with no restrictions, no limits, and every creative hunch was explored. Room two is where the ideas from room one

Were developed into a realistic plan or storyboard. And room three was the sweat box. It was a small room under the stairs where the whole crew would critically review the whole project, holding nothing back. Criticism wasn’t personal because it was a team effort, and individuals weren’t singled out for their ideas.

Each project would cycle through these three rooms again and again until each idea was either ready for production or abandoned. This system has become known as the Disney method, separating the roles of dreamer, realist, and critic into three separate stages and three separate rooms. Disney even arranged these spaces

To change how the team interacting with each other during the process. There’s a study that discovered that ceiling height had an effect on the way we process information. The study suggested that more confined spaces with lower ceilings may help us focus better, while large spaces with higher ceilings allow for more creative thinking.

Even just adjusting the perception of space with furniture or decoration could affect the way we work. Beyond this, sound, lighting, and decor can also change how we work, and this can be different for everyone. For me, I have my I’m in the desk here where I do most of my art.

I like to listen to music or watch a video while I create, and I like to be surrounded by color. But when I need to wear my business hat, I sit at another desk with extra screens for my computer and with my team beside me to bounce ideas off.

I don’t mind interruptions and I’m usually juggling multiple projects at a time. When I want to focus more or develop ideas, like writing the script for this video, I find the best space is a small table we have set up in our other office, and I give myself quiet time alone with no

Music or interruptions and with all my notifications silenced. And when I have idea meetings with the team, we try to treat it like Disney’s first dreaming room. We encourage even the biggest ideas, like the suggestion that comes up every time that we should visit the biggest art store in Japan.

And all those ideas are embraced to keep the creative conversation going on as much as possible. Your space is likely very different to mine, and we all work in different environments. So it’s worth exploring what this looks like to you and even creating multiple spaces to help you switch from focus

To creativity, whether that’s a couch in another room or even a cafe nearby. Number five, take a break. Have you ever been working on something for hours with no solution and then have solved the problem in your sleep or when you’re doing something completely different?

If you remember back to the three networks in your brain that are responsible for creative thought, the Imagination Network activity usually decreases as the Executive Attention Network increases. This is why it’s often hard to come up with new ideas when you’re asked to focus

On a task and why those ideas often come when your mind is wondering and the Imagination Network has a chance to kick in again. I feel like when I feel boxed in and I can’t think of something, and I feel like it’s almost like a math

Teacher who can’t solve a problem, and I just get frustrated. It’s like, I’m creative. Why can’t I figure out how I’m going to decorate this or how I’m going to do this? And I feel like this should be coming together. I just need to walk away.

And it could be for a half hour. It could be for a couple of days. Sometimes I need just some me time, some relaxing time. Maybe that’s shopping with my mom or going to the spa or going for a run or something. It’s just taking a break from whatever I’m doing.

I think that’s the hard thing. I think some people, they push themselves so far, and then they’re so burnt out and are like, Why can’t I do this? It’s like, because you’re burnt out, honey, you got to walk away and take a break.

There’s this book I read when I was in college, I think. It’s called A Mindful Numbers, which would make you think it’s a book about math. Barbara Oakley wrote this book, but it’s really a book about learning how to learn.

And she builds this model of the focused mode and diffused modes of thinking. So the focus mode is this very prefrontal cortex-focused way of zeroing in on a problem and just trying to brute force solve and that’s when you’re solving a math problem or you’re building a spreadsheet or you’re

Performing a piece of music that you’ve memorized and you’re doing a performance of it, it’s a lot of that prefrontal cortex, just the little mech pilot in your head being like, okay, I got to control things very, very strictly here. And she talks about in the book how

Oftentimes you’re going to get stuck on a problem when you’re in that mode. And what you need to do is switch over into the diffused mode. And the way you do that is just by taking a break. It could be going to take a nap. It It could be going for a walk.

It could be playing guitar for a little while, especially in the way that I do it, where I just noodle around and make stuff up. And that’s basically giving your brain space to percolate on the problem in the background. And that is how you make connections. I honestly will tell people a lot

In my videos when they need a break to actually seek out a very different style of creating or creativity, if you will. So I’ll say, if you need a mental stop, not not just a break, but maybe a mental stop from the painting

Thing, then go cook a meal if you’ve ever found joy in cooking. Go forage outside if you like to walk. Go do something else that is still activating that part of your brain and your soul, but get away from the painting, per se. Which brings me to number 6, daydream.

We’ve been led to believe that daydreaming is lazy, that it’s undiscipline and a waste of time. But research says that structured daydreaming and mind wandering is really good for your creativity. As our minds wander, it activates that default network in our brain and can give us access

To information that we couldn’t reach earlier. It can help us with creativity, self-awareness, understanding our experiences, and even compassion. Some people, like myself at an early age, I was encouraged to let my mind wander and daydream and come up with crazy ideas. And so therefore, it’s a nonstop circus in my brain.

And whereas other people were told to suppress that. Stop being a daydreamer. Stop coming up with crazy ideas. Just be serious. And so I think a lot of it is our childhood, is our upbringing, and how we were encouraged or not encouraged.

And a lot of it is just us allowing ourselves to be creative. And I think also a lot of times people will have really weird ideas and then tell themselves, no, that’s too weird. I can’t. I shouldn’t mention it, or I shouldn’t write it down, or I shouldn’t pursue it.

And there are other people who have no filter, and they’ll just try anything that comes to their mind. And so there’s so many factors that go into what people perceive as creativity, but I think we all have it, but just some of us suppress it,

Some of us hide it, some of us don’t acknowledge it, and that’s sad. Daydreaming makes sense when you understand how the different parts of the brain work together. And personally, it’s not something I make nearly enough time for. It’s so easy to pick up our phones

And keep ourselves entertained instead of letting our minds wander. And for me, this means that most of my big ideas happen in the shower because it’s the one time I’m not focused on anything in particular. So I need to do this more, and I encourage you to do it with me.

Give your mind permission to wander. Try even scheduling daydreaming time, building a habit and an environment when you remove all distractions, where you don’t work on any specific project, and just let your mind wander. Try engaging in a simple activity that will allow your mind to wander

And see how it affects your ideas and thinking. Maybe it’s going for a walk, taking a shower, doing a puzzle, cooking, cleaning, or drawing. Number seven, think differently. We want to say that creativity is not just art, but that it’s more coming up with ideas, being open-minded, being willing to try new things.

Would that change your perspective? Maybe. Galileo Galilei was a big thinker who wasn’t afraid to challenge what everyone else believed. When everyone thought the Earth was the center of the universe, he challenged the status quo and presented the idea that the Earth and other planets moved around the sun.

By asking questions and testing his ideas, Galileo helped us learn a lot about space. Almost every invention comes from people thinking differently. By connecting the dots with existing ideas and then thinking differently about solutions, we now have entire new categories of companies and products like smartphones, ride sharing, and dairy alternatives.

And thinking differently is something we can all practice and train ourselves to do, even with small activities like thinking of different ways to use common objects. Is there anything strange that you’ve ever used in your cake decorating that isn’t something that people would use for cake decorating?

I used all this stuff, and everyone be like, Oh, my God, where did you get all these cake decoring tools from? The Pottery Store. So in that way, a lot of my tools aren’t actually cake decorating tools, but are other random things that I found in different areas.

I even use, I think the weirdest thing I had for years, I found this sample piece of wallpaper at, I think it was Home Depot, it was a home hardware store, and it had this beautiful texture on it. I brought it home and I rolled that over

My phone to create this really cool texture on it. Actually, the last video that I did on my channel was essentially this concept of I went to a thrift store and I just bought all kinds of random things that I

Could find that look like they might have an interesting texture or might stamp interesting or just, I don’t know, just having a go. And I made a painting out of them. But the end result, it’s actually my favorite painting I’ve ever done. I feel like those projects that when we

Push ourselves so hard to our breaking point or we’re doing things that we’ve never done before and challenging ourselves in new ways. I feel like those always end up being the favorites in the end. If you’re struggling to think differently, try to imagine yourself as a different person completing the same task.

Read your script in a different accent or as a different character. Draw your art in someone else’s as a style. Imagine how you approach the task if you had a million dollars, or again, if you only had 10. A super useful activity is to think about

How you would approach the same task if you were a child. Putting yourself back in your childhood shoes or trying some of these other ideas can unlock your natural creativity and help your mind find ideas and connections that you missed earlier. Do you think you’re up for the box question again?

To see if we can think of anything else after talking a bit. What would I use? I’m like, lock into my childhood brain. I make a fairy house. Oh, that would be awesome. So you’ve actually gone into the child version of you to come up with this answer. What would child Laurie do?

It’s like, this is what she do. Or I’ve seen people do on social media where they take it, it’s almost like a book, and they put it in their bookshop, and then they’ve created this whole scene of one of their favorite novels. I’ve seen those. Do one of those, a fairy garden,

But a Harry Potter room scene in one of the things. Put that on the shelf. Number eight, find what makes you happy. Research has found that positivity can encourage creativity. Joy, love, awe, and connection build us up inside and stimulate creative thinking.

Motivation is also a key factor, but not all motivation is the same. There are two types of motivation. Extrinsic motivation, which comes from external sources like payments, awards, praise from others, or even negative things like threats that you’ll lose your if you don’t perform.

And intrinsic motivation, which comes from inside us, our hopes, dreams, goals, and our satisfaction in our work. It shouldn’t be surprising that the second one has a far more positive effect on creativity. So if you’re not feeling motivated, maybe that’s when a break or a change of focus can help.

Sometimes when I’m feeling super just like, and nothing, I don’t feel like making anything. I don’t feel like cooking. I don’t want to go for a walk. I certainly don’t want to paint because that happens. I will watch, rewatch a Downton Abbey.

I know that sounds absolutely ridiculous, but I can get lost in rewatching an episode of Downton Abbey because it’s so visually stimulating. And now also the Guided Age. I’ve already rewatched the first season of the Guided Age three times, but I watch it with a different purpose.

So that’s one of the super personal, strange ways that I can kickstart my creativity, you have to, again, that goes back to that self-awareness. Start to take notice of the moments in your daily life where you get that tingle up your spine, where you get that little that feeling

Warmth in your belly and you haven’t had a glass of wine. Take notice of those moments because I guarantee if you’re feeling a joyful physical physical reaction, there’s something that is inspiring you in your environment, but take notice. And yeah, take a note, have a notebook and be like,

I was listening to a podcast and someone was talking about this, and it made me sparkle a little bit inside because those are some of the things that you could go back to in your dull lack of creative moments and re-inspire yourself. Number nine, experiment.

Learn to take risks, embrace failure, and get out of your comfort zone. Accept that not every idea is going to be good, but just create lots of ideas. In another Divergent Thinking study, researchers found that a higher number of responses on the Divergent Thinking task was significantly associated with higher creativity.

The best way to get a good idea is to get a lot of ideas and throw the bad ones away. James Dyson created 5,127 prototypes on his way to inventing the bagless vacuum cleaner. Picasso is thought to have made over 50, 000 pieces of art in his lifetime. Hemingway wrote 47 different endings

To one of his books, and Thomas Edison tried over a thousand different ways to make a light bulb before finding one that worked. And bad ideas can often be stepping stones to good ideas. Youtube began as a video dating site. Netflix was originally a DVD rental service.

Post- it notes were born out of a failed attempt at creating a stronger glue. Blutack was also an accidental invention, and Playdough was originally created as a wallpaper cleaner. What I’m saying is it’s easier to start from a bad idea than no idea.

This means being open to failure and not shutting down ideas right away, just like Disney’s dream room approach to brainstorming. The more ideas you let in, whether they are good or bad, the more ideas will continue to come. So instead of waiting for the perfect idea, just start somewhere.

But wishing it’s going to happen is never going to be it. You have to do the thing. If you want to be a musician, make music. Yeah, you’re going to be horrible at it. But the more you If you’re going to do it, you’re going to get better at it.

And the difference between a successful anybody, whether it be the arts or anything, is the successful person had the passion to do it. It has nothing to do with creativity, has nothing to do with talent. The person with the most passion kept going, kept failing, kept moving forward because they loved it.

And finally, surround yourself with creative people. The real creative process that I think is so unbelievably powerful is working together, working as a group, especially when you have a group of people who are not only experienced with it, but also willing to

Have the vulnerability that it takes to bring ideas to a group, even when they’re not formulated and not necessarily good. And fostering that environment of creative freedom in a group is both really tricky but also so powerful once it happens. When we get together and talk,

It feels like the most efficient hour or two hours or whatever we’ll ever have. Because the idea is just flow so quickly just based on the discussions that we have as a group. And it’s amazing. I mean, I find it amazing. So it’s clear that the group setting

Really unlocks a level of creativity that is just hard to get to solo. If we think back to the idea of connecting the dots, collaborating with other people gives you a multitude of extra experiences to pull from. You can make connections easier and faster, bounce ideas, and take advantage of your collective

Knowledge and experience to find solutions more quickly. Working with other creative people can be a catalyst for new ideas. And if you’re not feeling creative, surrounding yourself with positive creative people can be the very thing that gets your mind working. With everything we’ve covered,

We’ve still barely touched the surface on what it means to be creative. I’ve created an extended version of this whole discussion over on Nebula, which includes more from these interviews and a deeper look into some of the topics I’ve talked about in this video.

You can also get access to thousands of hours of ad-free content, along with a growing amount of exclusive Nebula-only content. This video is not sponsored, but if you sign up using my link, a portion of your subscription goes directly to my channel, and you’ll be supporting other independent creators like me.

But if there’s one thing I hope is clear, it’s that creativity is available to everyone, and it can be developed no matter where you’re starting now. I have one final question. Are you a creative person?

Watch the extended version on Nebula: https://go.nebula.tv/sarahrenaeclark

Are you a creative person?
In this extensive look at creativity, I’m exploring what it means to be creative, why some people are more creative than others, and how our brains are wired for creative thinking. It’s not as simple as left/right brain, and you might rethink everything you know about creativity after this video.

Special Thanks to:
Kristy Rice @KristyRice
Scott Christian Sava @ssavaart
Sam Denby @Wendoverproductions @jetlagthegame @halfasinteresting
Thomas Frank @Thomasfrank @ThomasFrankExplains
Laurie Shannon @TheIcingArtist

Chapters:
00:00 Why are only some people creative?
02:08 What Is a creative person?
05:48 Is Creativity a Personality Trait?
07:45 What is Creativity?
10:36 Connecting the Dots
12:03 Test: Can You Think Outside the Box?
15:59 Right-Brain Myth
16:16 The Neuroscience of Creative Thinking
17:36 ADHD & Creativity
18:00 The Special Switch in Our Brain
19:49 Are Kids More Creative Than Adults?
24:00 Are We Killing Creative Thinking in Our Kids?
31:30 Why Is Creativity So Important?
34:16 Building Creative Muscles
35:23 How to Increase Your Creativity

References and Further Reading:

Studies:
Robust prediction of individual creative ability from brain functional connectivity: https://www.pnas.org/doi/pdf/10.1073/pnas.1713532115
The Influence of Ceiling Height: The Effect of Priming on the Type of Processing That People Use: https://assets.csom.umn.edu/assets/71190.pdf
Thinking “Outside the Box”: Unconstrained Creative Generation in Adults with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/jocb.382
Quantity yields quality when it comes to creativity: a brain and behavioral test of the equal-odds rule: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4479710/
The Creative Brain: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7075500/
Creativity myths: Prevalence and correlates of misconceptions on creativity: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0191886921004451
Relationships among creativity indices: Creative potential, production, achievement, and beliefs about own creative personality: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0273303
In Pursuit of Everyday Creativity: https://dash.harvard.edu/handle/1/33840634

Books:
Making Ideas Happen, Scott Belsky
The Creative Act: A Way of Being, Rick Ruben

Articles:
The Walt Disney Creative Strategy: https://www.yumpu.com/en/document/read/6584819/the-walt-disney-creativity-strategy-wiredportfolio
Is a Creative Person Born or Made: https://www.occolondon.com/blogs/learn/is-creative-person-born-or-made
The Neuroscience of Creativity: https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/beautiful-minds/the-neuroscience-of-creativity-a-q-a-with-anna-abraham/
Embracing Bad Ideas To Get To Good Ideas: https://hbr.org/2016/12/embracing-bad-ideas-to-get-to-good-ideas
15 Myths About Creativity: https://www.psychologytoday.com/au/blog/social-instincts/202107/15-myths-about-creativity
What is Creativity?: https://www.csun.edu/~vcpsy00h/creativity/define.htm#:~:text=Creativity%20is%20defined%20as%20the,and%20entertaining%20ourselves%20and%20others.
Creativity (Wikipedia): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creativity
Ten Habits of Highly Creative People: https://greatergood.berkeley.edu/article/item/ten_habits_of_highly_creative_people
Creativity: The science behind the madness | Rainn Wilson, David Eagleman & more | Big Think: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zNHDTvqbUm4
Do Schools Kill Creativity? https://jamesclear.com/great-speeches/do-schools-kill-creativity-by-ken-robinson
Creativity as a Life Skill: Gerard Puccio at TEDxGramercy: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ltPAsp71rmI&t=1s
The Circuitry of Creativity: How Our Brains Innovate Thinking: https://caltechletters.org/science/what-is-creativity
The Neuroscience of Creativity – A Short Guide: https://www.jeffbullas.com/neuroscience-of-creativity/
The Importance of Creativity in Business: https://online.hbs.edu/blog/post/importance-of-creativity-in-business
The Creativity of ADHD: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-creativity-of-adhd/
The executive control network and symptomatic improvement in attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/26363140/
Interactions between attention-grabbing networks weak in ADHD: https://www.stanfordchildrens.org/en/about/news/releases/2015/interactions-between-attention-grabbing-networks-weak-in-adhd
ADHD’s Secret Demon — and How to Tame It: https://www.additudemag.com/default-mode-network-adhd-brain/
Side Project Time (Wikipedia): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Side_project_time

As you can see, a lot of research went into this video! So shares and comments are hugely appreciated, and please subscribe if you found this interesting!