Exercise 2: On Creativity

Creativity is nothing special. If you're a person of average or more intelligence then you are creative. Being able to have thoughts and ideas which you then turn into reality is simply an aspect of human intelligence and thought. The problem is creativity has become a calling card for a special magical class of person called The Creative. There's entire books describing this mythical priest of the art world who can imagine an idea, and with a wave of their insanely creative golden hands, craft pure emotionally intelligent empathic works of art that make the babies of heaven weep tears of pure platinum. Frankly the word "creativity" is an overused cliché that is used to segregate people from implementing their ideas, but I have no choice but to use that word in this book.

In my book the word "creativity" only means "forming an idea into the real world." I do not imply any superiority with the word, nor any magical significance to people who are adept at realizing thoughts. The only difference between me--a supposedly very creative person--and you is that I've practiced taking ideas I have and making them real. I keep a notebook of ideas and try to implement them regularly. I study painting, music, writing, and programming as a means of implementing and crafting my thoughts into realities. By simply attempting to create something on a regular basis I've become adept at doing it, and there is no magic to this. I just keep trying until I can do it.

The process of learning to create what I have in my mind has produced an epic number of mountainous piles of junk, but at the top of that pile of junk are some works I admire. If you want to work on your ability to create, then you too will have to make your own junk pile. But you can't just randomly create a pile of junk and hope to be awesome when you reach the top. The trick to being a productive creative person is learning to implement your ideas inside a process or set of constraints that guides you on a path of learning but avoiding the trap of a strict process that kills your creativity. The balancing act of an imaginative person is on the line between a process that guides you and the process that kills your ideas. It's my hope that in this book you'll find that sweet spot.