I’M A CREATIVE

In the last 5 years I resurrected and embraced the creative side of myself. Along the way I started to wonder about  how does this creativity thing works. I resurrected this creativity thing from a much earlier Matt from about 1970. Fast forward 40 years and here I am again creative Matt. So here are some general observations on the nature of creativity.  

Creativity is defined as the tendency to generate or recognize ideas, alternatives, or possibilities that may be useful in solving problems, communicating with others, and entertaining ourselves and others.  

Three reasons why people are motivated to be creative:

need for novel, varied, and complex stimulation

need to communicate ideas and values

need to solve problems  

In order to be creative, you need to be able to view things in new ways or from a different perspective. Among other things, you need to be able to generate new possibilities or new alternatives. Tests of creativity measure not only the number of alternatives that people can generate but the uniqueness of those alternatives. the ability to generate alternatives or to see things uniquely does not occur by change; it is linked to other, more fundamental qualities of thinking, such as flexibility, tolerance of ambiguity or unpredictability, and the enjoyment of things heretofore unknown.

 All who study creativity agree that for something to be creative, it is not enough for it to be novel: it must have value, or be appropriate to the cognitive demands of the situation."