John Cleese: Creativity 🙋‍♂️

Es gab mal ein Video auf YouTube, in dem John Cleese über den kreativen Prozess gesprochen hat. Das Video ist weg, aber meine Notizen sind noch da. 😉

Meine Notizen

Creativity

Creativity is inexplicable

Creativity is NOT a talent, it is a way of operating.

Creative = being child-like, being playful

• it is unrelated to IQ
• allow your natural creativity to function

OPEN and CLOSED mode

CLOSED mode

• a feeling that there is lots do be done
• slightly anxious mode
• purposeful, impatient with ourselves, stressed
• tension
• creativity is not possible in the closed mode

OPEN mode

• relaxed
• less purposeful
• humour
• more playful
• curiosity for its own sake
• we’re not under pressure to get a specific thing done quickly

Hitchcock: “We’re pressing, we’re pressing. We’re working too hard.”

Once we’ve come up with a solution, we need to change to the closed mode to implement it (narrowing our focus)

• We need to be able to switch backwards and forwards between the two modes

We too often get stuck in the closed mode

Certain conditions make it more likely to get into the open mode

1. SPACE
   1. sealing yourself off
   2. a quiet space for yourself where you will not be disturbed
2. TIME
   1. space for a specific period of time
   2. specific start and specific stop
   3. play begins and at a certain time it is over. Otherwise it is not play.
   4. Create an oasis of quiet
3. TIME – PONDERING TIME
   1. tolerate the racing of your mind; it will slow down
   2. about 1:30, not longer; better to have more sessions than one long session
   3. don’t settle with the first (and easy) solution
   4. the most creative professionals play with the problem much longer than the others
   5. tolerate tension, discomfort 
   6. allow more pondering time, don’t be too quick to take decisions: When does this decision have to be taken?
   7. Give yourself maximum pondering time
4. CONFIDENCE
   1. fear of making a mistake will stop all creativity
   2. playfulness = openness to anything that will happen
   3. You can’t be spontaneous within reason
   4. While being creative there is no such thing as wrong
5. HUMOUR
   1. gets us to the open mode more than anything else
   2. serious things can be discussed in a humorous way without making the subject less serious
   3. essential part of playfulness
   4. “Giggle all you want”

Thinking Creatively

Keep your mind gently around the subject

• don’t wander off too far
• eventually you will be rewarded

Playing together will create more ideas

• make sure you trust and like your playfriends
• never say anything that will squash their ideas
• Ask questions, try to understand, don’t judge

New connections generate new meanings

Use absurd ideas (impossible intermediates) as stepping stones; nothing is wrong

START by making random connections and trust your feelings on which connections create a new meaning for yourself