What is Creativity? - INKroverts

Anyone needs creativity. Otherwise, we’re robots.

For an artist, especially, creativity is essential. Doesn’t matter whether it’s visual arts, music, or performance arts (and con art possibly?), we can’t escape from improvisation, creation… and many things that can’t be helped by simply building your memories.

To know how to build our creativity, however, we need to first understand what it is.

Table of Contents

Creativity is Openness to Experience

“Openness to experience”, or openness, is one of the elements from the Big 5 Inventory for personality. It’s the degree we allow ourselves to connect with new concepts and ideas.

The higher our openness, the more perceptive we are to the unknown.

But how is exposing ourselves to new ideas related to creativity?

Imagine this- if you are happy to learn new things, aren’t you more willing to join activities that boggle your mind? Be it a lecture, a performance, or a workshop, you won’t turn down the opportunity simply because it’s “foreign” or “unconventional” to social norms

When you gain some new experience, it’s like discovering a new territory in an open-world video game. Your brain unlocks a new power or levels up.

Rather than thinking up something out of the blue, creativity involves association, which is linking different things together to make new but practical ones.

So your new experience, new knowledge, and new concepts will help upgrade your creativity.

Psychology in Art 101: Do You Have the Big 5 Personality of an Artist?

Creativity is Intrinsic Motivation

Motivation is… that random feeling we get and pumps us up! Right?

Well, intrinsic motivation is a different thing. Unlike the saying- about motivation comes randomly- intrinsic motivation is deliberate. It’s driven by “internal rewards”.

External motivation is the motivation driven by outside rewards, like salary given by our bosses, compliments from our parents, and even fame, which comes from people other than you.

Meanwhile, internal motivation is motivated by our personal satisfaction.

For example, if your goal is to increase our repertoire, learning a new skill adds to our internal rewards. And if your happiness comes from helping others, doing volunteer work makes us feel good. Therefore you’re internally motivated to do so.

If there’s no expectation of payment from others, that makes our motivation internal.

As long as you have one, there’s no limit as to what your intrinsic motivation is.

So why does intrinsic motivation enhance our creativity?

Intrinsic motivation makes you take action on your own. When there is no teacher, no parent to tell you to pull yourself together, you continue to work because you want to.

This adds more practice hours than people who only have external motivation.

To top it off, intrinsic motivation makes your brain more focused. You’re not constantly thinking when the recess is, and certainly not dreading your work.

That way, you’re more likely to enter a creative flow.

Creativity is Not Creating Things Out of the Blue

This is possibly one of the most well-known features of creative products.

Be original! Be novel! Many of us would say.

However, soon we’ll notice that “originality” doesn’t come so easily. In fact, most of the ideas have been adopted/ invented by now, after so many years of history.

So what seems “original” at first may have already been thought up by someone else! This sounds really pessimistic. Is there no way of coming up with real “original” ideas anymore?

Turns out, creativity isn’t just about thinking up ideas that “has never been thought up before”. Nor is creativity turning one from zero.

To make creative products, we actually need guidelines.

Have you heard of this famous question to test creativity?

“How many uses can you think of a paper clip?”

The paper clip is the guide. Just like any other creative project. Don’t beat yourself up for “not making something creative” out of the blue.

You may just need a more specific guideline. A brighter North Star.

Creativity is Problem-Solving

Creativity isn’t only useful when it comes to making things.

It’s also really great for solving things.

Imagine a baseline and a goal, there is a conventional way to get to the goal. But creative people can find out a faster, cleverer, or more meaningful pathway.

The “problems” that require creative problem-solving usually require us to satisfy multiple things at the same time, which seems difficult and even impossible to do at first.

You can look up “CPS Process”, which stands for Creative Problem Solving Process.

To sum it up simply, the Process includes 4 stages: “Clarify”, “Ideate”, “Develop”, and “Implement”.

“Clarify” means to find as much information about the goal as possible, as to have a clear vision.

“Ideate” is to brainstorm all the ideas related to the goal, which is the golden hour for creativity use.

“Develop” turns the ideas into solutions for the problem.

And lastly, “Implement” means to formulate an actual, doable plan.

What are some Creative Activities?

Basically, any activities that create. Rather than being the consumer, consuming, using, and enjoying products that others provide, we can think of a lot of ways to produce and create.

Below are some examples:

Drawing and sketching
Painting
Writing stories
Writing journals
Crafting
Composing/ improvising music
Cooking
Performing (performance arts)

Conclusion – Creativity Needs Action

To be precise, it needs both action and thinking. But most of us are stuck in the latter.

Many of us believe creativity is just a mind thing. And, in terms of psychology, you can be right.

But to make up a creative idea, and then what? And before we develop the creativity in our minds, how do we develop it? By thinking more? That sounds absurd!

When you’re high in openness, you still need action- to experience new things.

When you have motivation, it fuels you to take action.

When you have original ideas, you will turn the idea into reality- or at least note it down.

When you know how to solve the problem, you solve the problem!

Through all these actions, you slowly build your creativity. At one point, you’ll realise you’ve paved a long way to become a creative artist.

Have a great, artsy day!