Push that box away!

The nail that sticks up will be hammered down. This is a rule of social conformity. From ancient times, people generally tend to imitate other people, consciously or unconsciously.  There is an example from an old video on YouTube, where the three actors face the back wall of an elevator, and the fourth person, who unknowingly was videoed, by looking at everybody else, also decides to face the back wall. Here is a question, how did we survive the “threats” of environment in a long human history behaving like this? It might seem very surprising, but besides of negative effects on decision making processes and personal freedom, this conformity bias, as a large part of cultural evolution, brought us some superior outcomes. Well, perhaps conformity is very helpful in collaboration, observation, or social problem solving aspects, but if it was enough, we would never know growth and success.  Conformity feels comfortable, like a safe and warm box, and when you get rid of that box, leaving that “comfort zone” to try something new, you come to creativity, which is a very important life skill. 

Conformity was never sufficient in solving problems we encounter every day.  According to Albert Einstein, "Problems cannot be solved at the same level of consciousness that created them", so we have to be flexible and imaginative because causes, conditions, and solutions of problems that we encounter are never the same. ENIAC, the first computer that was built in 1947 had thirty separate units, power supply and forced air-cooling; in addition to that, it had 19,000 vacuum tubes which were supposed to be changed about every twenty minutes because if one bulb stopped working it would literally take “forever” trying to understand which one was that. Why aren’t we using computers like that anymore? The answer is simple - we need innovations, to make our lives easier. Looking at all the latest technology, we see tons of applications of human creativity. One of the best examples is the latest IPhone by Apple (who are just experts of how to “Think Different”) which recognizes human fingerprints, and performs lots of other tasks.

On one of the first topics of our Business Opportunities in Engineering class we covered a lot of aspects of creativity, and now I will try to focus on questions like “Why can it be hard for us to be creative and what kinds of obstacles we encounter when we try to turn our ideas into actions?” Also I will talk about my “lessons” of creativity taken from my own experience.

Once I read that NASA performed some creativity tests on children, the result of which was that 98% of them had scored as “highly-creative”. However, when they retook that same test couple of years later, only 30% remained in a “highly creative” range. How can we explain the lack of creativity and why does it vanish as we get older? I think one of the reasons is that we get under a significant influence of family, school, university, clubs, and other social institutions. In other words, we get into a “box”, or system of standard rules, such as “There is only one right answer”. People are getting used to live in a comfortable system. Some studies show, that even if a person spends more than a decade in prison, he doesn’t want to leave it anymore, because the world outside is so different, unpredictable and “uncomfortable”.

I think, in general, fear and doubts kill creativity and dreams more often than failures. People are afraid of making mistakes and are scared of being criticized or misunderstood, and there always will be someone who judges and misunderstands. You just never have to stop and pay attention to killer phrases like “Don’t be ridiculous”, as well as you don’t need to explain yourself. I totally agree with what Steve Jobs said once: “People who are crazy enough to think they can change the world are the ones who do”. It does seem crazy when you try to be creative and extraordinary, just because it is NOT STANDARD and it’s not what other people usually expect from you; it doesn’t have to be successful, but at least it is different and it teaches you something new.

There is one thing I can tell you about creativity – it is all around us, and it is all inside of us. You can find beauty and ideas everywhere. One can cherish perfection, as well as one can be inspired by imperfections, just because they make a significant difference. Whenever I feel that creativity is “locked” inside of me – I let it go with a help of such activities as painting, coloring mandalas, playing musical instrument, exploring and learning something new. Whenever I feel I’m overwhelmed with classes, I give my mind a good respite from my
“noisy” and “ineffective” thoughts with a help of running, meditation, and meeting people. There is always an infinite amount of opportunities provided by my life, so you just have to push that box away and grab what you need, even if it’s impossible - my teacher is used to say that “there is less competition in doing impossible things”. A rule of thumb is not to resist the challenges which you encounter, but to learn through them. I learn a lot about myself in “bad” days, and the lessons of my “bad” days help me to move on and be creative. I considered my major to be highly challenging, but now I just laugh at such an early conclusion since I see how much it has to offer me, and how much it shaped my way of thinking.

There are so many ways and places when you can feel yourself as an excellent source of creative ideas; for example, Thomas Edison slept in his lab, so he could instantly right down ideas he saw in his dreams. J.K. Rowling sketched down Harry Potter’s world on a piece of napkin when she was traveling on trains, and Rene Descartes was working on his ideas when he was lying in bed. I have found it very interesting that usually the best ideas come to us when we are fully relaxed, not when we are on our work place, stressing out about homework and projects we have to do. Often I hear that the greatest ideas are coming at night, when a person wakes up or about to go to sleep. There are a lot of examples, like a Russian scientist Mendeleev claims that he saw the periodic table of chemical elements in his dream, and as soon as he woke up he took it down on a piece of paper. Another similar story happened to a famous Russian writer Gogol, who had a lethargic sleeping pattern; he used to wake up with ideas for his great novels like “Dead Souls”, “Vii” etc. When I was a child I used to write poems before I went to bed. I was trying to understand why it happens so, and found some good explanations in one of the most recent books that I read, which describes the energy levels on which our brain is functioning. The one that is responsible for our creative thinking in a relaxed state is alpha level.

As I have mentioned, all the aspects of creativity are important to us if we want to grow and succeed because it really does seem sometimes that “Knowledge is limited and imagination encircles the world”. Try to think outside of the box, or just get rid of it.

This speaker is great, by the way! I like the way she looks at creativity: