Creativity is often lauded as one of the ingredients in the arbitrary recipe for success. It’s the spark that can result in industry-defining products, magical artistic expressions, and scientific breakthroughs. Think about the iPhone, productions from Marvel Studios, or even the application of Artificial Intelligence to find a cure for cancer. They all have an inherent sense of creativity that we can immediately spot.
Let’s get pedantic—what exactly does it mean to be creative? According to design firm IDEO, creativity is the ability to look past the obvious—to transcend traditional ways of seeing the world to create something new. This a fitting definition since the etymology of the word creative comes from the Latin term creare, which means, you guessed it, to create.
Contrary to what my peers say, I don’t consider myself a very creative individual. There’s undoubtedly a baseline level of novelty that I find ways to employ, but I wouldn’t consider it my strongest skill set—and yes, the irony of that statement coming from a Product Marketer who writes blog posts is not lost on me. However, over the past few months, I’ve seriously struggled to tap into what I would consider my “creative genius”. Whether preparing for a new product launch at work or sitting down to craft a new article, finding inspiration to produce something unique is becoming more and more challenging.
A Glut of Creativity
As I’ve learned repeatedly, misery loves company, and this time is no different—thank goodness.
The Torrance Test is a gold standard assessment used to measure an individual’s level of creativity. It’s been in use since the 1950s when it was first created and is proven to be a more accurate predictor of a person’s potential for accomplishment in life than a standard IQ test.
In a recent study, researchers from the University of William and Mary analyzed 300,000 Torrence Tests over the past few decades. They found our collective creativity as a species has steadily declined, noting a marked drop in the scores around the 1990s. Unfortunately, the trend is projected to continue, which presents the concern of a creativity crisis on the horizon.
The revelation is alarming given the complexity of significant problems we still need to solve in the world—climate change, access to healthcare, and food insecurity, to name a few. For more of a capitalist view of the situation, creativity is the foundation of innovation. Without innovation, product differentiation is stunted, new markets are harder to discover, and growth stalls.
Why Our Cows Stopped Being Purple
Admittedly, age is a consideration when it comes to stifled creativity. Research from the University of California Berkley shows that we get less creative the older we get because our brains default to established patterns that have worked for us in the past. It seems only logical, as the education system, society, and the workforce condition us that being right is rewarded and being wrong is not; so naturally, we propagate behaviours that have rewarded us. However, age doesn’t explain why cohorts of people have shown declines over the years.
The prevailing theory amongst scientists is that our collective dip in imagination is due to our jam-packed schedules, consumption-centric mentality, and over-engagement with technology. There’s a lot to unpack there, but the crux of the issue is that we’ve built systems to prevent ourselves from ever getting bored and allowing our thoughts to wander.
Several examples in our lives support this trend. Rather than playing with friends after school, parents insist on structured fun by enrolling children in various regimented extracurriculars. If you go out for a walk, headphones might be the first thing you grab so you can listen to a podcast instead of soaking in the scenery. And before going to bed, couples won’t talk about their day but instead, brainlessly scroll through Twitter. For the record, I’m guilty of all of these except the part about kids—we’re not there, yet.
Beyond anecdotes, the data paints a similar picture, particularly around our addiction to technology. In his book Adrift: America in 100 Charts, author Professor Scott Galloway cites that in 2021, people spent 33% of their waking hours on their phones, up tenfold from 2010. An even more unsettling comparison is that in a given week, we eat and drink 21 times, laugh 120 times, and are intimate with our partners once, but unlock our phones 550 times.
Make The Time for Nothing
While the trend and technology might be working against us, there are effective strategies you can put in place to fight back and retain—or even improve—your creativity. The one that I’ve found most of my mentors employ and that is frequently referenced in literature is to be intentional about creating time for your thoughts to wander. Create the space in your life for your mind to be creative by blocking off an hour a day in your calendar to just marinate in your thoughts.
It might feel uncomfortable at first, as if we’re slacking at work or wasting time, but the reality is, this is something we already put into practice and have likely experienced a win from—remember that great idea you had in the shower?
Whether showering, driving, or walking, this method simply seeks to intentionally scale the environment for you to be creative. And if your own history of wonder isn’t enough to convince you, research from INSEAD University found that doing nothing is excellent for maintaining good mental health. It improves our imagination and allows us to participate in unconscious thought processes where we can generate novel ideas.
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We live in a world where technology is distracting and replacing us—seriously, Chat GPT3 might be a better Product Marketer than I am. It might feel like our very nature is being encroached upon because our ability to create is being cannibalized by computers. However, you can make an effort to use these tools for your good as opposed to being used by them. Being intentional and making the space to be creative is the first step. If you can follow through on that, success, however, you define it, will likely follow.
Quarter Life Views 