Stick with it until you get to the stupid ideas

“Creativity is the residue of time wasted.” ― Albert Einstein

If we could chart it, what would creativity look like?

If anyone said all you need to do is start (and we do say that!), it could leave the impression that it's a straightforward time=result equation. This is kind of true, but it's nowhere near the whole story.

There's a reason why movies come out from different directors with similar themes and why fashion and car designs look the same; we're all feeding off the same inputs that deliver identical messages worldwide. We are all influenced by social media, streaming TV & movies, car design, fashion design, and even the news.

“We all feed from the same well; that's why everything tastes the same”

Because of this, the early stages of any creative process are likely to be simply picking the low-hanging fruit. It might seem fresh in the moment, but that response comes about because it FEELS fresh in the moment, but it probably isn't.

If you're giving up once the popular well is dry, then you're missing the critical tipping point

For quality creativity to emerge, we need to drain the swamp of the same old ideas. It's then, and only then, that we'll get to the bottom of the first curve. If we've lasted this long, then we start to reap the rewards of the idea clearance; it's where we get to the gold.

If you're not getting to the 'Dead Cat Bounce' stage, then you're probably not getting to the gold

I call the double curve Stefan outlines here "The dead cat bounce." That first curve is a mountain, one we have to climb before we can get to the top, one we can only fall from once we get to the top. We must clamber up through a mountain of the same old boring, standard ideas before we can ever fall straight down into the gold that lies hidden on the other side.

But this is no get-rich-quick scheme. We can only find the true gems lying deep in our creative psyche once we rid ourselves of the quick results of reacting to the same stimuli that we are all exposed to. We have to force ourselves to get past stupid.

Why not give it a try?