Creativity
by :
Wednesday, May 9, 2012 at 1:50pm ·
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‘Creativity is not a talent. It is a way of
operating.’
Much has been said about how creativity
works, its secrets, its origins, and what we
can do to optimize ourselves for it. In this
excerpt from his fantastic 1991 lecture, John
Cleese offers a recipe for creativity,
delivered with his signature blend of cultural
insight and comedic genius. Specifically,
Cleese outlines “the 5 factors that you can
arrange to make your lives more creative”:
1. Space (“You can’t become playful, and
therefore creative, if you’re under your usual
pressures.”)
2. Time (“It’s not enough to create space; you
have to create your space for a specific
period of time.”)
3. Time (“Giving your mind as long as possible
to come up with something original,” and
learning to tolerate the discomfort of
pondering time and indecision.)
4. Confidence (“Nothing will stop you being
creative so effectively as the fear of making
a mistake.”)
5. Humor (“The main evolutionary significance
of humor is that it gets us from the closed
mode to the open mode quicker than
anything else.”)
The lecture is worth a watch in its entirety,
below, if only to get a full grasp of Cleese’s
model for creativity as the interplay of two
modes of operating — open, where we take
a wide-angle, abstract view of the problem
and allow the mind to ponder possible
solutions, and closed, where we zoom in on
implementing a specific solution with
narrow precision. Along the way, Cleese
explores the traps and travails of the two
modes and of letting their osmosis get out
of balance.
A few more quotable nuggets of insight
excerpted below the video.
Creativity is not a talent. It is a way of
operating.
We need to be in the open mode when
pondering a problem — but! — once we
come up with a solution, we must then
switch to the closed mode to implement it.
Because once we’ve made a decision, we
are efficient only if we go through with it
decisively, undistracted by doubts about its
correctness.
Cleese goes on to caution against a trap in
this duality, one particularly hazardous in
politics:
To be at our most efficient, we need to be
able to switch backwards and forward
between the two modes. But — here’s the
problem — we too often get stuck in the
closed mode. Under the pressures which are
all too familiar to us, we tend to maintain
tunnel vision at times when we really need
to step back and contemplate the wider
view.
This is particularly true, for example, of
politicians. The main complaint about them
from their nonpolitical colleagues is that
they’ve become so addicted to the
adrenaline that they get from reacting to
events on an hour-by-hour basis that they
almost completely lose the desire or the
ability to ponder problems in the open
mode.
Cleese concludes with a beautiful
articulation of the premise and promise of
his recipe for creativity:
This is the extraordinary thing about
creativity: If just you keep your mind resting
against the subject in a friendly but
persistent way, sooner or later you will get a
reward from your unconscious.
operating.’
Much has been said about how creativity
works, its secrets, its origins, and what we
can do to optimize ourselves for it. In this
excerpt from his fantastic 1991 lecture, John
Cleese offers a recipe for creativity,
delivered with his signature blend of cultural
insight and comedic genius. Specifically,
Cleese outlines “the 5 factors that you can
arrange to make your lives more creative”:
1. Space (“You can’t become playful, and
therefore creative, if you’re under your usual
pressures.”)
2. Time (“It’s not enough to create space; you
have to create your space for a specific
period of time.”)
3. Time (“Giving your mind as long as possible
to come up with something original,” and
learning to tolerate the discomfort of
pondering time and indecision.)
4. Confidence (“Nothing will stop you being
creative so effectively as the fear of making
a mistake.”)
5. Humor (“The main evolutionary significance
of humor is that it gets us from the closed
mode to the open mode quicker than
anything else.”)
The lecture is worth a watch in its entirety,
below, if only to get a full grasp of Cleese’s
model for creativity as the interplay of two
modes of operating — open, where we take
a wide-angle, abstract view of the problem
and allow the mind to ponder possible
solutions, and closed, where we zoom in on
implementing a specific solution with
narrow precision. Along the way, Cleese
explores the traps and travails of the two
modes and of letting their osmosis get out
of balance.
A few more quotable nuggets of insight
excerpted below the video.
Creativity is not a talent. It is a way of
operating.
We need to be in the open mode when
pondering a problem — but! — once we
come up with a solution, we must then
switch to the closed mode to implement it.
Because once we’ve made a decision, we
are efficient only if we go through with it
decisively, undistracted by doubts about its
correctness.
Cleese goes on to caution against a trap in
this duality, one particularly hazardous in
politics:
To be at our most efficient, we need to be
able to switch backwards and forward
between the two modes. But — here’s the
problem — we too often get stuck in the
closed mode. Under the pressures which are
all too familiar to us, we tend to maintain
tunnel vision at times when we really need
to step back and contemplate the wider
view.
This is particularly true, for example, of
politicians. The main complaint about them
from their nonpolitical colleagues is that
they’ve become so addicted to the
adrenaline that they get from reacting to
events on an hour-by-hour basis that they
almost completely lose the desire or the
ability to ponder problems in the open
mode.
Cleese concludes with a beautiful
articulation of the premise and promise of
his recipe for creativity:
This is the extraordinary thing about
creativity: If just you keep your mind resting
against the subject in a friendly but
persistent way, sooner or later you will get a
reward from your unconscious.
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