The Groove Issue 104 - How to Avoid the Biggest Hindrance on Creativity
HOW TO AVOID THE BIGGEST HINDRANCE ON CREATIVITY
A creative idea is usually a risky one. It’s the one that hasn’t been tested. But as our brains resist change, if you want to be an original, you’ll have to take chances even if your conscious mind says no.
According to a recent survey, the biggest hindrance to creativity inside a company is a risk-averse culture. This obviously applies equally to everyone regardless of whether they work in companies or not. Risk aversion kills creativity.
Those who take chances with their ideas always get the greatest rewards.
Chance Favors The Prepared
Kandinsky in his studio in Paris in 1936.
In 1896, at the age of 30, Wasily Kandinsky took the first of many risks that defined his life: he gave up a promising career teaching law and economics following a hunch that he wasn’t pursuing his calling. He enrolled in the Munich Academy of Fine Arts and although he was not immediately granted admission, he began learning how to paint on his own.
Starting with landscapes and cityscapes, the kind of normal things that other artists were painting, Kandinsky kept refining his ideas and taking chances with his colors and compositions. He tried fauvism, expressionism, and a bit of cubism. Whatever was happening in art circles in the city where he lived, he mimicked that.
Kandinsky’s expressionist oil-on-canvas painting Munich-Schwabing with the Church of St. Ursula in 1908.
But it wasn’t until 1910 that he made his first purely abstract watercolor. And even though we now know that Hilma af Klint pre-dated him in the invention of abstract art by at least by four years, Kandinsky was also a rightful pioneer of an innovative style and the reason why he had such a historic career.
What’s remarkable about Kandinsky is that he didn’t have to do something that seemed so far-fetched, impossible, or unattainable. Coming up with abstract work in a context where figuration and representations were the norm was the natural evolution of someone who had tried it all before and was taking consistent small risks with his ideas.
Lean Into Your Curiosities
Kandinsky’s first abstract work, an untitled watercolor from 1910.
The trick is to be able to lean into your curiosities and to express your ideas without tainting them with the “shoulds” that come from societal or cultural conventions or from doing things like everyone else.
We all have unique interests, we all have weird inclinations, so instead of running away from those, dig into them.
If you can train yourself to avoid sticking to conventional behaviors or using stereotypes and rigid formulas to make decisions, you have a higher chance of striking gold with your ideas than if you don’t.
Kandinsky started turning to places like music and spirituality, metaphysics, and Christian philosophies to find inspiration that he could translate into what then became, according to him, “a new world, which on the surface has nothing to do with reality, next to the real world.”
Take Small Chances
Besides fear, what deters people from taking risks are the platitudes that get shared in the media like “take big chances” or “go big or go home”. For many of you, this might imply placing bets that are so high that even if the reward is fantastic, the sole thought of doing that thing is simply paralyzing.
As the story of Kandinsky’s evolution toward abstraction shows, it takes one step after another, and interlinked phases of exploration aided by changes of different sizes to break with the past and get to the next level.
Think about mapping your next move following a hunch or doing things differently. You’ll get better at avoiding the comfort zone while not necessarily having to upend your entire life in the process.
Getting comfortable as a risk-prone person may spring from many other places, and not just from work. Step on that version of yourself following what Eleanor Roosevelt brilliantly once said: “do one thing that scares you every day”.
UNLEASH YOUR CREATIVE GENIUS
I’ve put together a free webinar for those of you who are not members of my online course, Jumpstart.
If you’d like to watch it, please register here (it’s on auto-repeat every 15 minutes once you have registered).
HOW CREATIVITY RULES THE WORLD
I am super thrilled that my book won the International Book Award in the Business/Entrepreneurship category!
Have you already gotten your copy?
It’s in three formats: hardcover, eBook and audiobook. Get it here.
TEDX TALK
Have you already watched my TEDx Talk: “NFTs, Graffiti and Sedition: How Artists Invent The Future”?
I share three lessons I have learned from artists that always work for anyone in their careers. Watch it here.