“To design something really well you have to get it. You have to really grok what it’s all about. It takes a passionate commitment to thoroughly understand something – chew it up, not just quickly swallow it. Most people don’t take the time to do that. Creativity is just connecting things. When you ask a creative person how they did something, they may feel a little guilty because they didn’t really do it, they just saw something. It seemed obvious to them after awhile. That’s because they were able to connect experiences they’ve had and synthesize new things. And the reason they were able to do that was that they’ve had more experiences or have thought more about their experiences than other people have. Unfortunately, that’s too rare a commodity. A lot of people in our industry haven’t had very diverse experiences. They don’t have enough dots to connect, and they en up with very linear solutions, without a broad perspective on the problem. The broader one’s understanding of the human experience, the better designs we will have.”

— Steve Jobs

I agree with that quote. This is the real value of experience, and it is what differentiates it from knowledge. People can have a great lot of knowledge, but no experience. This experience will show him how he can, and cannot, use that knowledge. Connecting all pieces of knowledge in an effective way is only possible with experience.

Steve talks about the IT industry. The experience he is talking about, is not just one of software development, it is about all life’s experiences. Past jobs, past studies, past human interactions, etc. Everything is knowledge, all experience is good, the only thing people have to do is to connect them to create something in a non linear fashion, to see a problem with a broaden view.

I got this quote from the book The Art of Project Management by Scott Berkun. He say about that quote:

“The only criticism I have of this quote is that it implies something special about creative people that can’t be obtained by noncreative people. I don’t believe people are born into one of two exclusive piles of creative geniuses and unimaginative morons.”

I think that Scott wrote this because of this: “[…]When you ask a creative person how they did something […]”. But if I read a little further: “And the reason they were able to do that was that they’ve had more experiences or have thought more about their experiences than other people have“. So, I do not think that Steve said that considering that there are only two classes of people: the creative ones and the unimaginative morons. The only think that differentiate a creative person from the unimaginative one is their experiences. So you have the creative person and the uncreative one, but in the middle, you have all the others that have more or less experiences. There is a lot of different grey between the black and the white.

Technorati: creativity | jobs | stevejobs | berkun | management | manager | gtd | it | experience |

Since the beginning of humanity, we always needed creativity to solve the problems that we encountered. Creativity has many faces. Each person has his own definition of what creativity is. All these people also have their own tricks to exercises it. Effectively, creativity is like the brain or muscles, if you train it, it became more effective at his task.

Some people think that creativity is only good for art freaks; thank God, it is not. As a knowledge worker, I face many problems that I need to solve. I not only need my knowledge to solve them; I also need to arrange that knowledge in such a way that it will resolve my problems. For me, this is one of my definitions of creativity: a way to organize the knowledge I have to try to solve a problem I encounter.

As I said before, you could train your creativity. Why do I train my creativity? To be more effective at arranging my knowledge; to train me to see the problems I face differently, to look at them from another point of view. I need to check out-of-the-box.

How do I train my creativity? There are two main things I do to change my mind and train my creativity. I discovered the first one many years ago: it is fighting. I already talked about it in a little essay I wrote on the combat’s rhythm. I discovered the second 312 days ago, when I started to write daily (for this blog). It forced me to concentrate on the task, to try to say exactly what I think with the words I have. I needed to get these words (pieces of knowledge) and organize them (creativity) in such a way that people would understand me (solving the problem).

Tonight I discovered a new one: photography. The night was beginning; I had nobody with whom drinking a beer to check the evening pass. Then I got the digital camera I bought for my India trip, put it into my packsack, and I assaulted my city. I live here since about 13 years, and I never done this before. In fact, it is the first time I really get the time to take pictures (the last time was 5 years ago in my European tour). What a discovery. I saw the city, which looked at me growth since about 13 years, for the first time. I was looking everywhere, I wanted The picture. I checked people wandering in the street: I was practicing my creativity in such a way that I saw things differently; I checked out-of-the-box. It is really new to me. Then, the next time I will have a mind block; that I will not be able to get any inspiration in fighting or writing, I will get my camera and see at things from another point of view; see things from the digital window of my Kodak camera.

By the way, I will put some of these pictures in the headline of this blog probably tomorrow.

Technorati: creativity | inspiration | photography | gtd | Kodak | camera | knowledge | exercise | writing | training |