School Killed My Creativity but I Got It Back!

Posted by admin on January 1, 1970

I’m hooked on listening to the Stanford Entrepreneurial Thought Leaders Podcasts. Every time I travel, I download a few to bring with. Each podcast runs about one hour and are presented by top thinkers in the entrepreneurial world. I think of them as my free weekly Stanford classroom lessons.

My latest lesson was “Young at Heart: How to Be an Innovator for Life” by Tom Kelley of the world-renowned design firm IDEO.

Through some great personal stories, Kelley gives a series of suggestions to make sure we remember to play in the right brain (our creative side).

- “Think Like a Traveler” – I recently traveled to SE Asia and when I first stepped off the plane in Bangkok, all my senses came alive. I noticed what the airport smelled like, the lighting, the advertisements, the bathrooms, the money, the coins, the door handles, the stores, the air, the trees, etc etc etc. At home, I’m much different. My senses operate on autopilot because I’ve “been there, done that.” Thinking like a traveler allows us to be more present in the moment and to notice our surroundings. Even the stuff we think we know really well. And, in noticing, we’ll start to discover new ways of thinking. Kelley also says that thinking like a traveler allows us to hold up our world view against what’s actually happening.

- “Be Childlike” – Being creative is about releasing your inner child. School does a great job of focusing on the left brain, and so it’s our job to keep the right brain open and fresh. As a student leader, all of your “out of the classroom” work provide great opportunities to use the right brain.

- “Think of Life as an Experiment and be Willing to Fail Forward” – Scientists get excited about failing because it means they’ve crossed off another possible solution. Be willing and excited about failing as long as it means it allows you to check another possibility off your list so you keep moving forward. Kelley tells the story of WD-40. WD stands for Water Displacement which makes sense, but what does the 40 stand for? Bonus points to the first person to share the answer in the comments below.

- “Finding Your Creative Hour” – I don’t drink caffeine, but when I wake up in the morning I’m wired for action. I often do most my reading and writing in the first two hours after waking because I feel amazingly creative. When’s your creative hour? Kelley says finding your creative hour is like finding gold, but so many of us waste our best creative hour on our inbox. I don’t open my email or internet until two hours after I wake up. Those two hours are my golden creative hours and a gift that is lost if I don’t use them.

If I had to pick one of these four tips as the most important, I’d pick the last one. Spend some time over the next couple days to figure out when is your creative hour (and post it in the comments below). Then, once you’ve found it, grab a book or start a blog and never let go of that time.