This past year I have been building the Blackbird Foundation and learning about creativity. In May, I gave a keynote at Southstart, a technology conference in Adelaide, summarising some of the things I’ve learned and painting a picture of a world where everyone is creative. I’m still on this journey, and the point of putting my ideas out there is so that I can continue to meet and learn from people who have made this their life’s work. #creativityisthemeta
Creativity is the meta-skill. I believe it is a higher-order cognitive power that makes everything else possible. It sits in the same realm as emotional intelligence. It sits above things like literacy and numeracy.
Before we get into it, go and check out these TikTok videos:
I wanted to begin this story by showing you what I think creativity looks like. The common thread between a sand sculpture, a nature enthusiast and a backyard scientist is that they are all creative.
Creativity is much more than we think it is. Creativity is innate. It is a fundamental part of being human. Every one of us is creative. By finding your creativity, you will find your purpose, your community and meaning in life. And the best chance we’ve got at solving some of the wicked problems we’ve created for ourselves is to value creativity as the meta-skill.
Defining Creativity
Traditionally, creativity has been seen as the domain of artists. Of course, artists are creative, but it would be wrong to think of creativity as some mystical talent reserved only for people who paint or draw. Artists employ their creativity to make art, but so do scientists, mathematicians, politicians and customer service professionals.
Creativity is a higher-order cognitive skill that each of us is born with.
There are many definitions of creativity out there. Ken Robinson defines it as “Creativity is the process of having original ideas that have value.” Neuroscientists say almost the same thing: “Creativity is often defined as the ability to come up with new and useful ideas.”
All of this is nice, but it isn’t very inspiring. I find it easier to think about the attributes of a person who is in touch with their creativity. These are confirmed by research, but I will refer mainly to Eric Boothe’s work and my own experience. Eric is a formidable arts educator from the United States - he’s on the faculty at Julliard and has taught at NYU and Stanford. He was given the highest award in the U.S. for arts education and was named one of the fifty most influential leaders in the U.S. arts.
The first attribute and I think the most important:
1. “They are willing to make mistakes. They recognise that creativity begins in failure.”
Problem-solving is a process that involves experimentation. Terence Tao may be the greatest living mathematician. In 2006, at the age of 31, he received the Fields Medal for mathematics. He says that discovery in mathematics is always about trial and error: “You come up with a wrong idea,” he says, “work on it for a month and realise it doesn’t work, and then you come up with the next wrong idea and then finally, by process of elimination, you come up with something that does work.” This isn’t a failure. To make problem-solving binary completely misses the point. The creative process is a journey through many ideas that may not work on your way to the one idea that does work.
People effectively using their creativity recognise this and are comfortable making mistakes.
2. “They have a high tolerance for ambiguity and a willingness to not-know for a while as they seek answers.”
This makes it possible for them to follow their curiosities. Productive people, obsessed with getting as much done in the most efficient manner possible, view this learning pattern as a waste of time because there are no apparent objectives at the outset. Being comfortable with ambiguity, not knowing where your curiosities might lead makes for a diverse set of interests and expertise. Getting caught up in a Wikipedia Rabbit hole is OK! Youtube rabbit holes aren’t always a waste of time! Sometimes you have to be comfortable not knowing where your curiosities might lead.
Creative people are comfortable with ambiguity.
3. “They are able to make distinct and diverse connections, the results of which are always somewhat unique.”
Intelligence is diverse, dynamic and distinct. So is the creative process. Creative people can bring together seemingly disparate ideas and concepts to make new things.
4. “They are good problem identifiers; an ability deemed more critical than good problem-solving skills.”
This is an interesting one. Of course, problem-solving skills are essential, but what good are they if you can’t apply them to the most critical problems? Creative people are great at problem discovery, and this part needs to happen before you can solve anything.
Putting all of this together, a person in touch with their creativity is comfortable making mistakes or missteps; they’re fine following their curiosities and sitting within ambiguity. They can connect different ideas and concepts, and they are excellent at identifying problems, which is considered more important than problem-solving skills.
All of these things together make for self-directed, lifelong learners.
“Creativity is tentative and exploratory.” - Sir Ken Robinson
Great - so all of these things sound cool, but why are any of these attributes better than others? Why is creativity so important?
According to the World Economic Forum’s Future of Jobs Report, there are three essential skills young people will need to thrive in the future. “Complex problem solving, critical thinking and creativity. “
Complex problem solving and critical thinking are all byproducts of creativity. A person who is creative by definition engages in critical thought and can solve complex problems.
Our education goals in Australia are similar. Heads of Education departments got together in 2019 and set out a vision for education in Australia. What they came up with is called the Alice Spring Education Declaration. It sets out the national vision for education in Australia. Goal two states that “All young Australians become confident and creative individuals, successful lifelong learners and active and informed members of the community.”
OK, great, so the WEF thinks highly of creativity, and so do educators in Australia. By why?
The Wicked World
The world is becoming increasingly wicked. The problems we’re facing are complex and unkind, and solving them will require creativity.
In his book, Range, David Epstein writes about the differences between wicked problems and kind problems.
Kind environments are distinct from wicked environments in that they are characterised by a set of known rules and a clear understanding of the problems to solve. Epstein’s key insight is that the environments within which humans seek to innovate do not provide human beings with rules beforehand. These are called wicked environments or wicked domains.
One example of a kind environment is golf. As Epstein points out, “the learning environment is kind because a learner improves simply by engaging in the activity and trying to do better.” Golf has rules, and those rules are readily shared with all participants. By contrast, “in wicked domains (a) the rules that structure the domain are often unclear or incomplete, (b) there may or may not be repetitive patterns, and they may not be obvious and (c) feedback is often delayed, inaccurate or both.” Thus, there is no such thing as complete prior knowledge of the game’s rules in wicked environments.
The world is only getting more and more wicked. Climate change. COVID. To name just two global, pressing problems.
Creativity is the meta-skill we need to get us out of these messes.
Now is the time.
The world is full of wicked problems that need to be solved.
The days of human beings performing repetitive tasks in rules-based environments are quickly coming to an end.
“STEM workers transfer repetitive jobs to software and robots. What remains is creative work and the demand for human creativity, in all facets of life, is unlimited.” - Naval Ravikant
Back on the World Economic Forums 2020 report on the future of jobs, Forty-three percent of businesses surveyed indicate that they are set to reduce their workforce due to technology integration, 41% plan to expand their use of contractors for task-specialized work, and 34% plan to expand their workforce due to technology integration. By 2025, the time spent on current tasks at work by humans and machines will be equal. Equal! A significant share of companies also expect to make changes to locations, their value chains, and the size of their workforce due to factors beyond technology in the next five years.
Despite what all the doomsayers and the “Future of Work” fanatics think, this is not bad. This will be the most significant evolution in human history, and I think the opportunity is unprecedented.
What’s left after all the repetitive jobs are taken by technology?
The pure, joyous and expansive expressions of individuality that we are each capable of. The greatest thing any of us have to offer the world lies within our creativity. When you don’t have to do any of the boring shit, and when robots are happy to do it all for you, there will be nothing left for you to do except create.
Your work, at its best, should be a creative expression of your unique talents, curiosities and passions.
Now is the time
Tik Tok
TikTok is the biggest driving force behind creativity in the world. No single medium, platform or movement is doing more to develop creativity than TikTok. It is not a social network like Instagram or Facebook. It’s a platform and set of tools for creativity. The mechanics, the barriers to entry and the intrinsic motivations for participation all hinge on a user developing their creativity. And what’s more, as Eugene Wei points out in his epic article, TikTok’s network effect is centred around creativity. “Every additional user on TikTok makes every other user more creative”.
TikTok has 689 Monthly Active Users. These are people who use the app every month. To succeed on TikTok, you have to be creative.
The more people who join TikTok, the more you need to be creative to stand out.
TikTok, on a month to month basis, is inspiring and requiring creativity in 689m people.
COVID
COVID is accelerating everything. Work is changing; social norms are changing; our priorities are changing. We have more time than we’ve ever had, and if you’re lucky enough to be still working, you probably have more disposable income than you’ve seen in a while.
According to McKinsey, COVID-19 has sped up the adoption of digital technologies by several years.
Translation - everything I’ve been talking about is happening years ahead of when we expected it to.
Creator Economy
The Creator economy is booming. Another name for the creator economy is the passion economy! The promise of the creator economy is impressive. Right now, people all over the world are making a living simply by harnessing their unique passions and their creativity. If you have a passion for anything, you can find an audience and make money from it. The videos I showed at the start are examples of people making a living from their creativity.
And this is just the beginning of this movement. Currently, there are 50 million people who identify as a creator, and this is going to explode over the coming years.
Learning
As an adult, it’s never been easier to learn everything. You could get a better education listening to every Joe Rogan or Tim Ferris podcast than you could getting an arts degree. I genuinely believe that. The range of guests and subject matter experts on those two shows alone is staggering.
Remember, we’re not trying to become experts on anything here. The goal is range and a number of different disciplines based on our uniqueness and your curiosities.
Education
Education is rapidly changing too. Very quickly, employers are cottoning on to the fact that the credentials offered by Universities doesn’t mean you're going to end up with a young person you can actually hire. Most companies have to put Graduates into some kind of graduate program. All the big tech companies offer these, and so do the big services providers who have the resources. The banks, law firms, consulting firms all need to run kids through a whole separate education program because they come out of University ill-prepared for the modern workplace.
The worst thing about this is that Universities admit people primarily through a set of standardised tests that result in a number that is meant to represent the totality of a human being and their value. There are plenty of people in education who will tell you that standardised tests are a terrible way of painting a picture of a person. Nevertheless, schools design their curriculums towards getting a score, which gets them into a tertiary education program that is out of date and gives them a credential most employers don’t value that highly.
Things are changing, though. Some of the best educators and academics are making it their life’s work to change the system. Check out Ripple or PMCT, Future Anything, Learning Creates and Sue Cridge’s work at SVA.
Tapping into your creativity
The first thing to do is to lean into your creativity in whatever form it may take. Don’t think that your interest in gardening or reading science fiction is not productive. I guarantee you - whatever it is has value - social, emotional and yes, economic.
How do you know when you’ve found it? Whatever you’re doing will feel like play to you, but it will probably look like work to others.
Follow your curiosities, and don’t worry about where they are heading.
Your journey will look like this.
There are many paths to take. None of them is right or wrong, and each of them leads to other paths. If you don’t turn off the main road, you can’t access all the little country roads filled with opportunities to learn and find things you give a shit about.
Clear your calendar
Creativity needs space and time. Give yourself time to explore.
“Creativity starts with an empty calendar and ends with a full one.” - Naval.
Get comfortable with messing it up.
Sometimes you’ll turn down a road that looks promising, but once you get down it, you realise it was a dead end. Don’t sweat it. Turn right on back and keep going.
It’s OK not to know what’s coming next.
There is a famous Steve Jobs commencement speech where he says that it would have been impossible for him to plan out his career in advance, but looking backward, it was easy to thread it all together.
I was a theatre grad. Then I worked in government. Then I was a band manager. Then I ran a beer festival. Now I work in finance! Go figure.