searching for truth, ways of seeing

Creativity is just connecting (and remixing) things

visakanv
January 26, 2016

 

 

Steve Jobs:

“Creativity is just connecting things. When you ask creative people how they did something, they feel a little guilty because they didn’t really do it, they just saw something. It seemed obvious to them after a while. That’s because they were able to connect experiences they’ve had and synthesize new things. And the reason they were able to do that was that they’ve had more experiences or they have thought more about their experiences than other people.

Unfortunately, that’s too rare a commodity. A lot of people in our industry haven’t had very diverse experiences. So they don’t have enough dots to connect, and they end up with very linear solutions without a broad perspective on the problem. The broader one’s understanding of the human experience, the better design we will have.”

http://archive.wired.com/wired/archive/4.02/jobs_pr.html

====

Creativity is just connecting things. Imagine the world as a giant set of data points. Creativity is seeing a unique set of connections between a given set of data points, or a choosing an unusual subset unusual data points to tell a unique, different story. It’s about ordering things differently, selecting things differently. People applaud creativity when it shows us more interesting ways of seeing things. The familiar becomes unfamiliar. The unfamiliar becomes familiar. There’s a shorter, faster, more efficient way of doing something. Etc

How do emotional states (sadness, boredom, etc) affect creativity? They act as filters. When you’re sad, you focus on some things and not others. When you’re happy, you focus on some things and not others. When you’re bored… you get the drill.

It isn’t the state that makes you more creative. It’s CHANGING your state that makes you creative. It’s about seeing the world with new eyes. Going for a run makes you more creative. Being sleep-deprived makes you more creative, and getting a good night’s sleep makes you more creative– depending on what you’re working on.

And of course, the more you work, the more data points you have, the more different variations you attempt, the more you switch things around, the more creative you’ll be. It’s a skill you can practice, like improv comedy.

—

HN thread: There’s totally a parallel between this and the video game music of Mario, Zelda and Final Fantasy- they could only play 2-3 notes at once, so they had to work with those constraints. The music couldn’t be too complex, so every note had to go really, really far. The result? Extremely memorable tunes with catchy melodies. It was a matter of necessity.

There’s a lot to be said about creativity coming from being forced to deal with constraints. It’s counterintuitive, but we get most juiced about solving problems when they’re tough. It’s hardest to start writing when it’s blank piece of paper. Here’s one story on it: http://plumecopy.com/bach-picasso-on-the-creative-process/

—

===