I was reading about the death of philosopher Richard Rorty recently when I noticed the following quote after his was asked to write a poem:

“I now wish that I had spent somewhat more of my life with verse. This is not because I fear having missed out on truths that are incapable of statement in prose. There are no such truths; there is nothing about death that Swinburne and Landor knew but Epicurus and Heidegger failed to grasp. Rather, it is because I would have lived more fully if I had been able to rattle off more old chestnuts?—?just as I would have if I had made more close friends.”

Professor Rorty died shortly after saying that.  It got me thinking about something I had heard a while ago about dieing with the music in you.  So, as you can see here someone as imminent as this professor was still unsatisfied that he hadn’t spent more time creatively expressing himself.  Don’t wait to do it I say… get it out.

As the great former leader singer of House of Pain once uttered, ‘I am fed up.’ The latest in mind numbing lack of creativity from the publishing monolith is yet another technological solution to a social problem. Presenting Kindle. I am using this to demonstrate with I think is a discernable lack in creativity of an industry that is increasing going up it’s own pipes. So why is this so uncreative?

This is not the problem it’s part of the problem

A few years ago the great Stephen King attempted to sell his Plant novella (still unfinished I might add) online through what many thought was a clever system at the time. The problem? The honor system. Apparently it wasn’t worthwhile to write something for online audiences. In plain English, you can’t take what people expect to be free and sell it to them. The problem: the publishing and writing world is notoriously unfair. It’s dog eat dog eat publisher eat author eat audience. We needed a different way of doing things.

Authors are no different

I recently read about the Sobol prize being cancelled for a lack of interest. Even more evidence of a lack of creativity. Sure, there are probably other reasons for the prize being canned. But for a lack of interest? Where are the next generation of writers? Blogging, reading their ‘e-novel’ on their ‘Kindles’… I doubt it. Whatever happened to writing a few good short stories and having them accepted and moving on from their. Hardly none of the publishing industry have done anything about the way it operates (including the authors who are a part of the system) for over 100 years. I haven’t seen one single non-technical innovation from the publishing industry. So now we have Kindle… great we can read the latest novels on an e-reader that feels like a book. Wow. How’s that going to sustain a failing industry? How’s it going to feed forward to the next generation of creative writers? It’s not.

What we can do about it

I have no idea. I am guessing that the majority of the 1/10 of 1% of authors that write books make money and don’t want things to change. The creative thinker says: ‘what can we do differently that we haven’t done before that would attract new talent to take the torch forward.’ How can we address the imbalance so that people who are considered to be unpublishable, at least have a shot at making it. The same goes for the film, art and other creative industries as well.

The non-creative plague

Think of the countless movies, television shows, books and the like that are the same old same old. Whatever happened to making new things that were interesting or being innovative. See, this is what happens when you put the dollar ahead of the art. You wind up with an imbalance that gives precedence to formula and spits on creative endeavour.

What to do about it?

I am not sure anything can be done. Have we gone too far in the wrong direction? I can shoulder the blame at the university level and say… yes we should be teaching the next generation of creative people instead of feeding them into the meat grinder. I am still amazed at the amount of movies that are released last year that you can predict point by point. I think I am well and truly alone on this. Never mind… that’s why I took up blogging!

Start being creative today.  Burn your CUBE!  Get out there and create.  If your boss stops you… do it anyway.  You must do something.  The world is in a very non-creative state of affairs.  For the love of God… do it!

I am proud to announce the lukehoughton.com creative project of the week. Rather than suffering for my art (which I think is an appalling concept) I have decided to post a creative project each week to my blog. I would say day but I just don’t have that much creative energy. Those of us who have creative ability yet no means to support it that other than side business and work have this on-going internal conflict where we know we should do something but usually sit on our bums (or asses) and do nothing. I think we could easily overthrow the publishing industry for example, if we really wanted to do but we think the world should come to us.

Well I can’t wait any longer. I have ideas and almost nobody to share them with so I have to let it out. I am therefore proud to announce my ‘commitment to creativity‘ project. In order to fester that inner creativity I have I am going to post something I do each week that is deliberately creative. I am also working on making a website for daily submissions for people who are creative minded as well. The problem is getting the funding and finding the time. What a bugger! There is also the other problem of offering the project to people and having them commit their intellectual property with no foreseeable way of financial return. I am working on it as I have said so hang on to your hats for that one. It will be a cracker.

For now I am trialling my own stuff to see what I can achieve. There is no bigger fool than a hypocrite I heard somewhere. That and we must practice what we preach if we are to be considered credible. If I am telling anybody who reads this to be creative then I must first lead by example. If I don’t then all I am doing is making it up and that is a crock! So in order to be a real person I have decided to unleash my own creativity on my small readership one week, day or minute at a time. I have put the time limit of ‘one week on it’ but it will be sooner but NO LATER than that. Why? Well I keep saying I will do this or I will do that and never got around it. So I have just decided to do it.

In order to begin the festivities I have included in my fiction tab The Woman in the River. This is short story I wrote for a woman’s magazine that the bastards didn’t publish! So, my commitment to being creative begins. I am now without excuse. I am not being paid so it’s not for money it’s for the pure exercise of being me and being creative. Enjoy. If you like it give it as many people you can so we can get a community going around this thing. We could start a revolution of creativity and destroy the world! Okay, so maybe that’s a bit excessive. I hope you enjoy it anyway.

Technorati Tags: creative project of the week, creative, commitment to creativity, fiction

How do you know if you are being creative? Today I want to talk about five ways you can check your creative pulse.

1. Staleness

Staleness is the problem of being used to creating things that are not working. Ultimately I think we become stale when our lives fall out of balance or something distracts us from what we are supposed to be doing. Staleness is when what we create is not fresh. This can happen for a variety of reasons all of which you need to seek out. Staleness often opens up the door for people to question your ability when really you are just having a bad week. Find out what is causing your staleness. I can almost guarantee it will be pressure of some sort. Find it and get rid of it.

2. Repetition

The oft used quote about repetition goes something like this: ‘the definition of madness is doing something over and over again to get a different result’. When repetition emerges out of you it’s because you are finding the same answers to the same problem over and over again. That is, you have not given up your favourite solution yet because you are still applying it to different problems. This sounds counterintuitive but think about it. We often have solutions in mind (i.e. the garbage can model of decision making) looking for problems or decision making opportunities to air those solutions. Repetition often occurs because we think our solutions are sound. If this is you write down the solution you automatically think of in each context. I think you will find over time that you are indeed apply the same old ideas unconsciously. To change this you need to perhaps talk to other people or read this or this to help you out.

3. Innovation is not innovative

Innovation is a word thrown around a lot. When we innovate we are really changing something slightly or tremendously NOT representing it as something different. In places I have worked (no names) there have been strategic initiatives introduced that looked like something new. Over time you realise that it was just a smokescreen to maintain the status quo. It’s not innovative to keep things the same. If you are being innovative then change must come through on the building blocks of the effort made by yourself and others. Re-presentation as such is not making things new… it’s simply re-presenting the old as if it were new. This is sleight of hand trickery not innovation. To be innovative you must present something that was previously working as improved, better or totally transformed.

4. Ideas don’t make anything better

Have you ever noticed how your ideas don’t make anything better? That’s a problem! I have had entire periods of my life in recent times when my ideas simply did not improve anything. This is troubling. Here is where you need what Napoleon Hill calls a mastermind group. You need to find a handful of people you can trust to be honest who will tell you like it is. For me my wife and a fellow by the name of John Beard are the people I turn to. Whenever I talk to them I can know that they will tell me if I am stuck in a rut. If your productivity wains find people you know and trust to help guide you out.

5. Trapped in the logic box

Sometimes you are simply stuck for ideas because of wrong thinking patterns. No amount of counsel or otherwise will help you there. I have spoken about how we become trapped in our own ideas here and here. Again, the problem in such cases is our limited perspectives. When we commit to something that we know isn’t helping we trap ourselves in our own logic. In such cases we need a perspective shift to get us out.

In all of these things remember that true innovation occurs when we are internally committed to improving things. If we are finding ourselves stuck creatively it can be for reasons as varied as: stress, tiredness, false beliefs and so on. Life becomes very hard to manage when you are stale. It can be terrible when you know you have to do something and you aren’t doing it. The problem is, you will never really have the answers laid out until you try something. When we rely on these predictable patterns of thought and action, all we are really doing is deceiving ourselves instead of admitting fault and moving on. It’s good to make mistakes! Remember this as my final point… there are more reasons that I can think of that true creativity is inhibited. Search yourself carefully for the answers and when you need to, talk to people who can help.

Technorati Tags: creative, problem, repetition, problems, mind, ideas, Innovation, innovate, strategic, the status quo, change, transformed, the logic box, wrong thinking patterns, answers, patterns of thought, mistakes, creativity

Have you ever been stuck to come up with cool ideas? Today I thought that it would be nice to share some of the things that have worked well for me over the past few years. So here goes: 4 ways to come up with cool ideas.

1. Write (journal) your ideas down

There is a lot to be said for the art of writing. One of the most helpful things I have found in coming up with cool ideas is to write about the topic and see what flows out of my pen. Now this is really the free flow of intuition coming out of your pen. I don’t really know why but writing is a really easy way to find new ideas. Try this: take a blank piece of paper (or open up an office document… open or MS variety for you lovers of Bill Gates) and simply start writing about the topic. Those of you who have experimented with journaling before will understand what I am talking about. This is a wonderful way to find new ideas. When you switch off your reasoning process and move to the right side of your brain you will begin to think in a creative manner. Writing stuff down is a great way to do this.

2. Build a mind map

Mind mapping for me is a fruitful activity. It’s helps to see your assumptions about an idea right there on the page. I have used many modelling techniques over the years but this one is the simplest and quite possibly one of the best (maybe with the except of rich picture building) techniques available. If you aren’t familiar with it I would recommend reading the wikipedia article. Remember though, you can make more than one and then compare your results. This is also very important!

3. Synthesise

This is the art of putting two old ideas together where it was previously thought impossible (roughly speaking). To synthesise means you take one idea and add others to it to see what results. The process of brainstorming is a good example of this. Of course synthesis is flawed because it relies on the premise that you can put two things together and there will be a good result. Clearly this is not so (consider the Pug?). However, sometimes the right amount of synthesis can be a good thing. Adding one idea to another can spark a revolution of creativity which leads to new perspectives not previously available. Try it!

4. Talking to yourself (meditation)

In the bible we find the term ‘meditation’ which I think really means talking to yourself or thinking out loud on one concept for an extended period of time and doing so from different angles. I am not sure why this is so but I have to admit when I talk to myself about a topic my creative processes (I would argue intuitive processes) take over. Once I was stuck on a topic for a model I was building for one of my lectures on the Mobile Workforce. I began to think it through and talk about the concept from every possible angle when suddenly the idea spontaneously formed within me. The students in two classes responded so positively to it I believe most intuitive things are like this. We are often one good meditation session away from the answer!

Remember that when you are creating you are building things up from the inner you. Our minds prohibit this in general because of our capacity as humans to build overly large mental structures which form rules for us to live by. I think that when we engage in creativity we are putting the logical process aside so we can create new things to build. That is, when we build things from the inside we are creating things for the outside. I honestly believe our educational processes set aside creativity and intuition as a second order concept. In a later article on faith I will develop this idea further. I hope you have enjoyed this post and I look forward to hearing from you if you would like to add some techniques to the very short list I have here. Thanks for reading!

Technorati Tags: cool ideas, creative processes, creativity

A cardboard box is great for storing things isn’t it? Does it help you think? NO. It’s a square storage box for you to put stuff in. In the same manner that the box is used for storage so do we store things in mental boxes. When it comes to ideas you can create the form they take by building logical structures that you think represent reality. Take for example your concept of work? What is it?

Do you think you work to get money or you get money because you work? That is a logic box. The truth is you are being paid because you have something of value to offer someone else. If you conceptualise work in a box you will say: ‘Well I have to do it.’ No you don’t! You must begin to break out of the logic box you have built and make new ideas work for you. Starting thinking of yourself as adding value because that’s why you were hired. I think of the logic box as a set of ideas that you use to define something in a rigid, non-flexible logical way. Consider the following examples:

Well that is just the way it is…

Why do we accept things the way things are… well that’s just the way it is? No that’s a box. Things are the way they are because we made them that way and continue to agree that’s an acceptable way of doing things. Take poverty for example. A problem that is worldwide. Is there enough wealth in the world to fix this problem? I would argue there is more than enough yet the problem is still there. Why is it still there? Corruption? Bad politics? Greed? There is no one answer that makes complete sense.

It’s been this way for years… it’s better the devil you know than the devil you don’t…

This is a logic box that is really saying… I don’t have the courage to make the changes and I would prefer to live with the devil I have rather than the devil I don’t. I would prefer for the devil to be gone. Why live with the devil? It takes just the same amount of fear to fail as it does to succeed. Why not take a step out there into the big beyond and try it? Things could get better as they could get worse. If they do get better then you will have gained something and if you make a terrible mistake you will also have gained something. See my previous post on learning from your past mistakes. Don’t settle for what the population in general settle for mediocrity… do what you know to do. Break that sucker!

Things are never going to change…

Really never? They will change if you begin to make steps towards making them change. You don’t build a great building overnight. It starts with a vision and you then build it step by step until the thing is complete. We have this terrible idea that things we have are simply never going to change. If you think it will never change… it will never change. If you begin to think change is possible… then it will become possible. This not some mysterious notion. Consider this, when you are looking for a new house to live in what do you notice in the television shows you see… things you like in a house. In like manner if you set your mind on something you will begin to explore possibilities, seek new avenues of thinking and eventually make small steps towards change.

That’s just what I believe…

People somehow have gotten this idea that what we believe is static. It’s almost as though changing our perspective is so hard that we would rather live with a worse explanation of what we believe that using a better one. Why do we do this? There are many reasons why but I think a major factor is that we simply grow comfortable in the ways in which we create things in our mind. We get so comfortable that we would rather hurt ourselves by believing something that’s just there rather than changing perspectives to a better more healthier belief.

This is just the way I am…

The picture you carry around of yourself is what you will think, speak and act to whoever is listening at any given time. This inbuilt image will be with you for the rest of your life and if you don’t do something to fix it… you will find it dominating you until you die. If for example, you belief you are destined to fail, then the chances are you will make decisions that will make this a reality. If on the other hand you believe you will do well, you will make decisions in accordance with this belief. This doesn’t mean you will do well because you believe BUT that belief will reside in you and when opportunities come along you will know how to recognise them.

These are all versions of the logic box… ways of thinking that are put into little boxes for us to interpret. Another common one I have come across is found in the media. I call this a false dichotomy. Say you are debating a divisive issue like euthanasia. Immediately you think of the two moral high grounds for the issue… pro or con. In reality this is a false dichotomy because there may be other solutions rather than yes or no. By taking an extreme stance you automatically exclude the possibility of new and innovative solutions. There is nothing wrong with taking a stand for things you believe in… but there is something VERY wrong in creating ideas to believe in and then not changing them when the situation demands it. The tendency towards logical solutions in our thinking hinders our creativity because it forces us to make boxes. When we do this we naturally exclude alternatives which in any field is a dangerous practice.

There are a few ways I have found that break the logic box and I will discuss these in another post later in the week. In the meantime consider this: what things in your life have you boxed in? Family? Friends? Work? In any case you will not be able to see the problem until you begin questioning it, turning it over in your mind and looking at it from different angles. Start today!

Technorati Tags: box, mental boxes, the logic box, logic box

Do you like to create? Creative thinking is one of those things that requires no long boring lectures to work out. To be genuinely creative is to be totally spontaneous. Imagine for a moment that you have been put in charge of your city or town and your first job is to create a solution to the traffic crisis. What kind of solution would be creative?

1. Build more roads
2. Charge more for using the roads
3. Build more car parks
4. Any combination of the above

Actually none of those solutions are creative. Why? Well, because they are drawing on the same ideas that we have always used to fix the problem. It’s the first hand solution for goodness sake. A creative idea is something that makes the problem disappear. Why? If it’s not creative then it’s not creating and if that’s not happening then you are recycling through old answers. Notice all of the solutions about are the answers that are immediately obvious. A creative solution is one that makes the old ones obsolete. Here are some tips on how to create:

1. Imagine the answer you could have if you could have any answer
2. If you were able to start from scratch what would you do?
3. Come up with four answers before you understand the problem and write down at least two opposite points of view
4. Conjecture limitless possibilities!

Try this on a situation you are facing today and you will find it will kick start your creativity.

Technorati Tags: Creative thinking, creativity