Creativity
Presentation Zen, Garr Reynolds, Chapters 2 and 4
Chapter 2 leads with a focus on one word: Creativity.
Creativity is complex. It is inspiration and a certain fearlessness of unrestrained thought. It is a way of seeing and interpreting the world that is not only unique and stylized to an individual but is also uncaring of others’ perceptions. It allows someone to try something new, whether to create or experience, with the mindset and desire to learn from the outcome and improve.
Creativity is often under-described and under-appreciated. As humans, we often classify people into categories based on where someone might fall in a spectrum from analytical to creative, implying that one can be purely analytical, purely creative, or some amount of each that ends up classified as mediocrity. Those that are classified as “creative people” or “right-brained”, while praised for this desire to think and learn and grow and create, are often thought of as less useful to business or society under the school of classical thinking, as analytical and methodical people are simply thought of as more valuable since somewhere along the line, it was decided that mathematics and supply chain management were mystical arts that drive business and the livelihood of nations. However, society is run by people, and since people are far more complex than numbers, I argue that we shouldn’t classify analytics and creativity as two opposing sides of a spectrum.
In my own life, I think that creativity is extremely important. In my career, not only will I have to create and build code in my work as a software engineer, which is arguably as creative of an art as story writing at times, but I will have to make business decisions that involve coworkers, bosses, customers, and companies–people are complex, and decisions involving people are far easier to define if creativity is leveraged well. A purely analytical way of thinking could be successful in short term or in some decisions, but code is complex and often has multiple solutions for the same goal, and people are not always 100% efficient or fully responsive to 100% efficient decisions and plans. Analysis goes a long ways, but without creative energy to fuel it and respond to it, it falls flat in the long run.
The creativity talk in the second chapter of Presentation Zen mentions that everyone starts creative, but fear of the perception of the outside world, self-doubt, habits, conventions, etc. get in the way of that as people get older and more accustomed to existing in the complex world. Losing this creative spark seems common, but I think it is a common thread to the make-up of highly successful people, so I plan on doing my best to regain and retain as much of it as I can as I enter my career and adult life in full.