Triangular Experience

A post I read recently was lamenting about creativity. This individual wanted to be more creative and asking for advice. Although a few of the replies were interesting, it started me thinking about why: why are we creative?

I think we use creativity as an exercise in problem solving. The act of being creative, in art, or gardening, or cooking both exercises the mind and provides us with practice finding new solutions when there does not appear to be an obvious answer. The actual question was how one can be more creative, though, and a question which seemed obvious at first but is now something of greater doubt. 

To me, getting better at an activity is primarily built around practice. The more experience one has at an activity the better one gets at it. The more one experiences something the more we become more aware of when you are doing something wrong and more adept at correcting it. This is the same premise with which we train advanced computers. Thus it follows that creativity -- something computers suck at -- is a bit different.

It seems to become harder to be creative when you have more experience because the mind falls into pre-established methods of solving problems. For an athlete, or student, this is what you want. You practice to generate the solution that you and thousands of others like you have determined to be the best path forward. Soon everything you encounter begins to resemble something prior and eventually those pre-established solutions supercede the  inefficiencies of creativity. Thus experience, at least alone, is not the best way to be creative.

This sort of recognition is something I've learned to embrace. I used to revile being wrong. However, that was wrong in itself and finding out your preconceived notions are wrong is actually an opportunity. Education and the working world tends to punish these instances so we grow shy, but they are great moments for learning as your mind becomes more open in a search for understanding. Although it is a known path, perhaps it can be applied to this question, too. 

Because creativity is not improved exclusively by practice. Sometimes being exposed to other solutions or ideas outside of oneself, is the only way forward. For example, if someone says draw a triangle, you can do so. If they ask you to draw another and another -- each subsequent triangle as different as possible from those previous -- you can do so. But as you draw more and more you begin to grow frustrated because there are only so many ways, so many angles to draw. However, if someone shows you a cartoon lion with a triangle for a nose, you might suddenly recognize a whole new way of thinking of the problem and begin to see outside of the geometric shape of choice. 

It seems that a better path to being creative is experience through exposure, rather than just exploration on one's own. People who have never seen snow will be limited when they describe severe weather, as will those who have never been in a monsoon. They are not uncreative but lack exposure. That in turn will lead them to consider entirely new interpretations and combinations and explanations and from those creativity seems to flow.