How Changing One Word Can Spark Creativity
Questions We Usually Ask Ourselves
Have you ever caught yourself working on a project and asking, “what is the fastest way to get this done?” Other questions we might ask ourselves include, “what is the easiest way, or what is the most efficient way, or the most cost-effective way?” But rarely, if at all, have I found people asking, “What is the most creative way to do this?”
Why is that? I think it is because the creative way is not always the fastest, easiest, most efficient, or most cost-effective. At times, it seems like it is in direct opposition to those other approaches.
Andy Sparks edits a section of a talk by John Cleese on the Five Factors to Make Your Life More Creative. Cleese says that creative professionals always played with the problem for much longer before they tried to resolve it. Thus, more time is needed to identify a creative solution.
In the Art Studio
When I am painting, if I ask myself, “What is the fastest way to make this painting?” I will go down a path in the painting where I am not happy with the results. I end up with a less than stellar painting, and I end up disappointed with the outcomes.
When I am in the studio and working on a painting, you should understand that I am not asking with every brushstroke I lay down, “what is the most creative way to apply this mark?” Sometimes, I ask that question, but I don’t ask it with every brush mark. But at the same time, I am not looking to interfuse the fast and easy with the creative.
How I Use The Creative Question
Here I am in the studio asking some creative questions.
Here is how I implement this into my daily disciplines. When I am in the studio and want to create a painting, I start with the creative questions. I ask:
What is the best approach to express what I want to communicate in this painting?
What is the creative color palette I want to use?
What size would be best for this painting?
And when I get the answers, I have to proceed based on those answers. In contrast, if I start by asking, “What is the fastest way to make this painting?” the answer will be different, and you can probably guess that the results could be a dull and mundane painting.
I am currently working on a 48 x 72 inch painting. It is a relatively large-size painting. When I asked at the beginning, “what is the best size for this painting?” The answer was plain to me. It needed to be significant because a smaller canvas could not adequately express the subject matter. And when that came, I had to be okay with that direction. Anything less than following that answer would have been choosing the “fast and easy choice” over the “right creative choice.” The creative thing was not quick and easy. But it was the right path to follow.
What Would It Be Like To…
I wonder what it would be like in our everyday lives and businesses, if rather than say, “what is the fastest, easiest, or most cost-effective way to do this project,” we ask the creative questions: “what is the most creative way we can do this?” What kind of new answers could we generate, and new solutions could we see if we simply changed one word in the question we are asking? I think you just might discover a plethora of ideas that would have otherwise been left hidden. Of course, when you ask the creative question, you might need to sort through a long list of ideas that suddenly bubble to the surface to select the best idea to implement. That wouldn’t be too bad since it is always more productive to eliminate extra ideas than to generate ideas from a dry well.
How about you? Why not try the creative questions and let me know the results? Please leave your comments in the comment section below.
Until next time, stay on The Creative Edge!
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Other great articles I found beneficial are:
J.D. Meier, “Change Your Question, Change Your Result”
Terry Heick, “Questions Are More Important Than Answers”
Norman Fraser has a great video “Change the Question, Change the World”
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