Creativity: How to Unlock Your Hidden Creative Genius

Creativity works, how to find your hidden creative genius, and how to create meaningful work by learning how to make creative thinking a habit. This page pulls together the basics of everything you need to know to start mastering creativity, even if you don’t have much time.

What is Creativity?

Creativity is the act of making new connections between old ideas or recognizing relationships between concepts.

It is not about generating something new from a blank slate, it is about taking what is already present and combining those bits and pieces in a way that has not been done previously.

Finish something

Anything

Step 5: Hold yourself accountable

Share your work publicly to hold yourself accountable to creating your best work

Provide feedback for improving your work and inspire others
Rallying people around you who believe in the same things you do will make your work more accessible and impactful

How to Find Your Creative Genius

Do the work, finish something, get feedback, find ways to improve, show up again tomorrow. Repeat for ten years. Inspiration only reveals itself after perspiration.

Step 1: Give yourself permission to create junk

Allow the muse to let the creative juices flow

Bits and pieces of genius will find their way to you, if you give yourself permission
Don’t be discouraged, you can always find more than you think

The Creative Process

Gather new material

At first, you learn. Focus on learning specific material directly related to your task.
Then, you work on learning general material by becoming fascinated with a wide range of concepts
Step away from the problem
Put the problem completely out of your mind and go do something else that excites you
Let your idea return to you

Create on a schedule

If you want to do your best creative work, then don’t leave it up to choice.

Set a schedule for your work. Genius arrives when you show up enough times to get the average ideas out of the way
The Difference Between Professionals and Amateurs

Stop Judging Your Own Work

Don’t let your discontent prevent you from continuing to do the work.

Practice enough self-compassion to not let self-judgement take over
Sure, you care about your work, but don’t get so serious about it that you can’t laugh off your mistakes and continue to produce the thing you love

Is There Such a Thing as ‘Naturally Creative’?

While we often think of creativity as an event or a natural skill, research suggests that both creativity and non-creativity are learned.

22% of variance in creativity is due to the influence of genes
Nearly every person is born with some level of creative skill and the majority of our creative thinking abilities are trainable