The other day on Twitter, I accidentally nailed down what I’ve been trying to say on this blog for the past 18 months:
We so easily associate creativity with creative thinking that they are often treated as synonymous. Whereas, in fact, you can do a hell of a lot of creative thinking (brainstorming, lateral thinking, daydreaming etc) without creating anything at all.
On the other hand, if you start with creative doing – i.e. rolling your sleeves up and trying to actually make something amazing, the ‘creative thinking’ bit tends to take care of itself. If you’re hammering away at a prototype in the garage, or the first draft of your novel, or the first iteration of your website, it’s hard not to obsess about it, and keep thinking about it – even when you’re supposed to be relaxing out of working hours.
And as we all know, it’s when you’re in the bath/on the golf course/on the dancefloor at three in the morning, that that brilliant idea is most likely to strike. It’s not the bathing/golfing/clubbing per se that produces the idea – let alone any fancy creative thinking techniques – but the fact that your previous creative doing set the wheels in motion in your unconscious mind.
Creative thinking doesn’t (necessarily) lead to create doing.
Creative doing leads to creative thinking. More importantly, it gets results.
Awesome insight.
You may as well make this post your “about” page!
To go even further, launching is better than endless creating. There’s something about preparing for a launch that focuses creative work.
Yes. Why creative doing beats creating thinking? It feels really, really good to do.
The aha moment feels great – and yes, I had one in the shower the other day – but making things feels better.
These days, I’m paying more attention to how I feel when I create something. Last week I produced a video course on creativity. It wasn’t easy – I wrote the script and did all the filming myself. Setting up the lighting seemed to take days and really annoyed me.
But the satisfaction I felt after I’d finished all seven films was much, much better than the glow of initial ideas.
I treated myself to a walk and a sandwich at Snarfs, all the while savoring the work I’d done and the empowerment I felt from pushing through the difficult parts. While in the happy post-creating bliss, other ideas came to me.
It’s my hope that others savor the deep satisfaction that comes from doing enough to drive past obstacles or the initial flash that comes from bright new ideas.
Creating shouldn’t be an act you do only by punitive measures. Creating can feel very good and in tough times, don’t we deserve a little thrill?
Thanks for posting this, Mark. It’s true that doing begets thinking and more ideas are coming all the time!
Thanks Hashim. Yes, this is an updated version of what I was getting at when I wrote the articles for our About page, esp. Creative Thinking Is Not Enough and Beyond Getting Things Done.
Thanks Cynthia, excellent point. I actually just wrote this piece on the back of feeling good after writing another one. đ
Finally, something written about creativity that’s actually simple and make sense.
I’ve read so many scholarly articles, books, seminar, all these wasted hours.
Thank you.
Its a wonder why so obvious things like that eludes us everyday.
Excellent insight and nudge!
Here’s a paradox. People recognized as thought leaders have to produce things, they can’t just think about producing them.
Their creative thoughts and ideas may be produced in forms as divergent as blog posts, objects, systems or solutions but their creative thinking is definitely reflected in their creative doing!
Definitely.
The more I collaged and painted and DID, even when I thought I was being derivative and boring, the more I was able to think creatively and come up with new stuff.
The more I wrote blog posts for something like Inventing Elephants, the easier it was to come up with new ones and interact with people and develop insights that were creative and relatively unique to me.
One of my problems for the last few months has been a lack of doing these types of original things, which makes me think about them less and not as successfully when I do think about them. Which makes it feel like I have a wall to push past to get going again…
So perhaps there’s a corollary
Creative doing inspires, instigates, and improves creative thinking.
@ dedude – I try to keep things as obvious as possible. đ
@ Mark – “People recognized as thought leaders have to produce things, they canât just think about producing them.” Very true.
@ Beth – Doing begets doing!
Great observation. I think part of what makes the creative doing so powerful is that it takes whatever you’re working on out of the abstract and into the real. That in turn gives your brain something concrete to engage in.
The resulting creative ideas might come from starting to see the concept take shape and better understanding how to sculpt and refine it. Or they might come because you bump up against the obstacles that inevitably come up in the implementation of just about anything. And that forces you into creative problem-solving mode.
Like many people, I can get caught in the creative idea stage and never get to the actual reality-making stage. This is a great reminder that the two can actually work together in concert.
Oh so true, Mark.
@Hashim – I agree with you about launches. Or appearances of any kind. It’s good to think of ourselves as idea-shipping people, I think, rather than just idea people. Sending stuff out means we receive stuff back that sets us off again.
I find that thinking is probably at its most creative when conjuring up ideas about how to avoid the creative doings we’ve lined up for ourselves. Most of my housework/correspondence/tweeting etc etc is done as a result of such creative not-doing.
And blog comments, too. đ
Ho hum…back to the novel…
@ Curt – Yes, the results may not be very impressive at first, but it gives you something to work with/learn from.
@ Orna – “thinking is probably at its most creative when conjuring up ideas about how to avoid the creative doings weâve lined up for ourselves”. Exactly. That’s why creative people procrastinate so much. đ
This is true for artists as well. If you sit around and wait for inspiration to strike, you’ll never make anything. Instead, the creation of new art comes from working at it day after day.
For me, inspiration is the reward: if I am focused and disciplined in my art creation, sometimes I am granted the small blessing of a moment of clarity and vision. But without the work, I don’t earn the inspiration.
Exactly Daniel!
I like the 50# of clay story which I feel undergirds this concept: http://www.lifeclever.com/what-50-pounds-of-clay-can-teach-you-about-design/
@ Mark Love the simplicity. It’s a simple, motivating mantra for me. The simpler, the better. I get caught up in the trap of if I just think/consider/ponder, somehow it’ll come to me.
It’s in those moments that I let go, surrendering of the fight, that my brain can process more freely and the ah-ha moments come.
AMEN! I’ve been trying to preach this idea at work for the last couple of years.
First, you don’t learn anything until you try it, fail at it, and figure out a better way to do it. Doing = Making Mistakes = Learning.
A quote that I’ve always loved, very similar to the title of your post, comes from David Kelley (Founder & CEO of Ideo Product Development):
“Enlightened trial and error outperforms the planning of flawless intellects.”
You can think and plan all you want but the person that actually jumps in and tries something will win every time.
Hey Mark,
On the other hand, simply *doing* doesn’t necessarily mean what you’re doing is productive, or more to the point of this discussion, creative
Although I have found that for me, often just starting is enough to my creativity going. Even if I’m not sure where to go and I’m weighing my ideas, just putting pen to paper or fingers to the keyboard (or guitar strings) and seeing what comes out is like a self-feeding creativity machine. I write something, I don’t like it, I write something else – and that may spark an idea in my head, which leads to better, more creative things – and before I know it, without really “thinking” I’ve started getting towards a solution, or whatever it was I was trying to do.
I have two books full of ideas of stuff to write about and ways to get backlinks and you are right. Writing that one post and commenting around…the doing of the blogging…is so mmuch more important than a book full of ideas
This post reminds me of something my Mum used to say when I was growing up – a bit less thinking and a bit more doing…
All the thinking in the world gets you nowhere if you don’t act, but once you start taking action the thinking just happens alongside.
Thanks, Topi
I’ve just spent a day of writing after a couple of days of thinking and planning and the writing feels a hell of a lot better and healthier. A friend popped round to see me and thought I’d had an afternoon tipple as I was excited and pepped.
Roll up your sleeves and tap into those creative resources with action. It’s why we’re here đ
@ Daniel – “But without the work, I donât earn the inspiration.” Exactemundo!
@ Brett – Great quotation and comments, reminds me I’ve been meaning to write about IDEO…
@ Sid “On the other hand, simply *doing* doesnât necessarily mean what youâre doing is productive, or more to the point of this discussion, creative” – which is why I wrote “creative doing” instead of “simply doing”. đ
Actually, as your example shows, the doing isn’t necessarily particularly creative to begin with. But even if I completely screw up a first attempt at making something, I get to learn from my mistakes and improve it at the next attempt. the important thing is to get started on the process of iterative development.
@ Bill – Well at least you’ve written the ideas down, which is further than some of us get. đ Which means you’ve already started…
@ Topi – Maybe I should invite your Mum to be a guest writer for Lateral Action! đ
@ Amy – ‘Creativity – even better than alcohol!’. Maybe Hugh could do a cartoon about that. đ
I love that – iterative development. Of course that’s how things happen. Perhaps we think otherwise because the ideas come in a flash, fully formed, and we immediately see the brilliance but not all the pebbles that make up the path to it.
Mark, you are so right. The insight that comes after starting the doing (the bathtub eureka or the middle of the night insight) reminds me of a phrase I heard that helped me get over the “analysis paralysis” and start doing (creatively).
The phrase was “Ready, Fire, Aim, Fire, Aim, Fire”.
To me, it says the same thing you are saying. But yours is clearer. I like it.
Hi Mark,
I find this post to be so true. I am always energize by the creative things I do and it seems to give me strength to do more. It’s the excitement!
I love all your post Mark, please keep sharing.
This false dichotomy between thinking and doing really gets on my nerves.
Who can claim thinking isn’t doing in itself anyway?
Hear this for obvious:
“You cannot do anything without thinking”.
If you deem your work as “creative doing”, then you were thinking creatively WHILE doing it.
I understand the whole idea of the blog which stresses the value of acting upon ideas, not just sitting on them. But how you put it in this post is too problematic in my eyes.
It starts with the assumption about creative thinking and (creative) doing, that one comes after the other. In reality, thinking is there all the time. One can apply creative thinking to things he does (~or processes). It is just that.
Actually not only that; how you put it in the above also devalues another thinking activity: planning. What if you end up hammering away a prototype that is unnecessary (didn’t think over its market potential), or that is not useful (not everyone may be a fan of your ideas)? [This reminds me of the Simpsons episode where Homer designs the perfect automobile. ] Not only you may miss out on the opportunity of hammering away a better design, you may even not realize that it was a mistake to start in the first place.
How does that get us a result now?
I won’t even go into how important theories and models are in science, where scientists take up on their colleagues’ work from decades ago with the newly available technologies. They couldn’t have made models of the human cell, the atom, the DNA if they categorized it as “just creative thinking”. Similarly this type of thinking goes against many of the established ways the business world works (ie. specialization). It is rare to come by a product that didn’t go through a collaborative process (think research, marketing, engineering, sales etc.)
To repeat, I fully agree with the value of acting on ideas, and I also agree with other ideas on this blog where you try to demystify the creative process in a way and to get people to realize that it is a skill that can be learned.
It is just too unfortunate that you beat up on “creative thinking” when you go about underlining the importance of action. Thinking doesn’t equal pre-doing.
I’d happily concede to “creative doing beats JUST creative thinking” but that would be somewhat tautological after all.
@ Necati:
But you CAN think something without doing anything. Hence the emphasis in my article.
That’s more of a black-and-white dichotomy than anything I wrote.
And it wouldn’t be much of a headline. đ
Sometimes creative doing involves NOT thinking CONSCIOUSLY. You have to learn to put your white-collar, concept-based, language-based, time-and-energy-saving mind in a box and just do intuitive, blue-collar, unarticulated, unconsidered ACTION.
It is a kind of thinking, yes. But it requires thinking on a LESS than conscious level. I’d compare it to thinking on a nonverbal level if you’re working with objects or code, or thinking on a non-conceptual level if you’re working with words.
Some of the best writing on creativity: crisp yet trendy language. This gets the message across with the right emotional weight. Thank you!