Creativity is vital for any idea worker. But it’s easy to let creativity die.
We get stuck reading the same things, thinking the same things, doing the same things in the same ways we’ve always done them.
Doesn’t matter where you live. A guy in New York can watch the same TV programming in San Francisco. A guy in Fargo, North Dakota can eat the same exact fast food as a guy in Houston, Texas.
Franchise businesses have painted the commercial landscape with a uniform color.
And take a look at the suburbs these days. It’s not much different. Nearly every house blends in in a sea of sameness.
It’s no wonder we have such a hard time being creative.
Copying Instead of Innovating
Here’s another problem:
Creativity often leads to valuable breakthroughs — then idea pirates copy those breakthroughs within days, weeks, or months. This can be very discouraging for the pioneer of ideas.
Not only that, when copying is rampant, it discourages creativity and only encourages more copying. Next thing you know, you’ve got copies of copies of copies.
A flaw in the first copy gets amplified in every successive generation. It’s devolution. For some reason, this process seems to happen faster than normal on the Internet.
Pioneers vs. Pirates
As an entrepreneur, business owner, or service provider, you have a choice. You can be a pioneer or you can be a pirate.
And although Hollywood has romanticized the idea of being a pirate (thank you Johnny Depp!), I believe the better choice is to be a pioneer.
Yes, I know: The pioneer is the guy with the arrows in his back. But making creative mistakes is not lethal. Just because one new idea fails doesn’t mean the next one will fail too.
Creativity takes work. It takes effort. It takes time.
How to Be Creative
Creativity (and its byproduct, originality) can only flourish when you are reading, thinking, and acting differently than you and other people normally do.
Creative action leads to creative thought.
This why it helps to get out of your routine every now and then.
Drive a different way. Do things in reverse. Read books outside of what you’d normally read.
Investigate a new hobby. Go somewhere you’ve never gone. Do something you’ve never done.
By breaking your routine and doing things that may even be uncomfortable for you, you’ll cause your brain to think in new ways. You’ll have new thoughts.
And perhaps you can incorporate some of those new thoughts and ideas into your own business. Perhaps you’ll have a breakthrough.
-Ryan M. Healy
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About Ryan M. Healy
Ryan Healy is a direct response copywriter. Since 2002, he has worked with scores of clients, including BoostCTR, Alex Mandossian, Terry Dean, and Pulte Homes. He writes a popular blog about copywriting, advertising, and business growth, has been featured in publications like Feed Front magazine, and is a regular contributor to WordStream.com, BoostCTR.com, and MarketingForSuccess.com.
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Cool! I haven't read that book in about 12 years or so…
Wallace D Wattle's makes it very clear in his great book, “The Science of Getting Rich” that there is plenty of material substance for everyone if you work in the creative arena and not the competitive one. Competition is a zero sum game of winners and losers causing fear to take root and limit your creativity and the flow of abundance.
Your post reminded me of what Napoleon Hill talks about in Think and Grow Rich, creative vs. synthetic imagination…
Thanks for the recommendation. I like Gladwell's books, but haven't read that one yet.
Lateral thinking is one of my favorite ways to be creative and get out of my routine. Malcolm Gladwell's new book What the Dog Saw is an excellent lateral thinking book.
A good recommendation.
For creativity, I read children's books. Seriously! Children's books do more to spark creativity than most book I've read about being creative.
I reviewed Eric Carle's “Draw Me a Star” for a friend's blog and seriously think it should be required reading.
I actually enjoy children's literature quite a bit. We get about 25 kid books from the library every 3 weeks to read to our kids. :-)
Ryan,
If you haven't picked up “What the Dog Saw”, you can just go to Gladwell.com and read the New Yorker archive. Most of the stories in that book re in the archive (or it might be ALL of them). You might be interested in the one called “The Pitchmen” where it talks about RonCo and the infomercial. As for books, I liked Outliers..
Being a creative writer requires a conscious effort. It should be about your own personal thoughts integrated with facts that you learn.
So many things I read are just regurgitated facts which doesn't make for much creative reading, or I read things that are so obscure I can't make any sense of it.
When writing online it's sort of like writing for a newspaper it has to be easy to read and painless to get through. Ryan, you write perfectly and I think most readers would agree. Your style and creativity is certainly one to mimic ;-)
WOW… a great post and an awesome list of books to read. Oh no…. more books. haha Thanks for all of the above!
WOW… a great post and an awesome list of books to read. Oh no…. more books. haha Thanks for all of the above!
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