The pencil case model of creativity
A PhD candidate, frustrated by the constraints of academic writing, envies her artist friend's spontaneous creativity. But when the friend points out that her own work is also bound by client demands and technical limits, the author realizes creativity thrives within boundaries, not in spite of them. She reflects on her childhood imagination and recognizes the creative spark in her own research, from connecting concepts to structuring her thesis.
But maybe creativity exists precisely within boundaries, because they define the space in which our ideas can play with one another.
- hungryhobbit
>But maybe creativity exists precisely within boundaries, because they define the space in which our ideas can play with one another.
This, so much: boundaries are the origin of creativity!
If I say "fill this blank page with something", the least creative person in the world can do so. But if I say "fill it with a picture of a crow fighting a snail" or "fill it with an essay justifying the right to free speech", that is when the creativity will come out.
This is why I find it so frustrating when TV/movie writers for established franchises feel the need to get "creative" and completely change their work from the original. No, you are not "creative" for making something that doesn't play by the (meta-)rules of that show/universe! (Star Trek Discovery, I'm looking at you.)
To the contrary, you lacked the creativity to make fun new material to watch ... while staying within the boundaries of what made people like the show/movie in the first place.
- FinnLobsien
There are some occupations (artist, author, founder, scientist, etc.) that are popular forms of escapism because they look so self-actualized. From the outside, it looks like:
1. They only work on what they like.
2. Their work exists for its own sake, not to accomplish some other motive (e.g. the painter's paintings exist to be enjoyed as paintings. It's not graphic design, which exists to sell something else.)
In practice, that's usually not true. A founder deals with compliance forms, a novelist only writes a vampire book because that's what the market wants, and the scientist applied for 27 research grants this year.
When it comes to work, humans seem to need to believe that perfection exists, that there is a situation in which all of our problems would be solved.
I've been lucky enough to have had multiple situations where I reached the exact career goal I set a few years prior. The career that seemed like the situation where all problems would be solved. I was (and continue to be) happy with my career, but as soon as you live in yesteryear's idealized reality, you realize that even within that exist some annoying things and you idealize the next thing.