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There is a natural cycle to creativity, as there is to all parts of life. For example, if you want to learn to cook a certain dish, you follow a cycle of first visualizing or getting an idea of how you want your dish to turn out. Then you consult the recipe, and get out your kitchen “tools”—pans, cheese grater, etc. (learning how to use each if needed), then you cook the dish, taste it and add more salt or basil, for example, to make it just right, and then you share it with others.

I’ll be covering each of these parts in detail to help you break down the whole subject of creativity into its components for ease of understanding.

What Does Creativity Mean?

Let’s begin with the word “creativity” and see how each part of the cycle fits into this definition by Oxford American Dictionary.

“Relating to or involving the imagination or original ideas, especially in the production of an artistic work.” The derivation is from create: “Late Middle English (in the sense ‘form out of nothing,’ used of a divine or supernatural being): from Latin crear—‘produced.’ ”

Note that when you are exercising your creative abilities you are forming or producing something “out of nothing,” which, by this definition, makes you a “divine” being. How true! When we are creating, whether as an art form or in some other aspect of our lives, we are operating in a higher state, which the Middle English originators considered divine or supernatural. But it turns out creativity is a natural ability that you can tap into any time.

Another important part of this definition is to see that when you are being creative, then go into action, you will have produced a creative product or result.

Now let’s look at the definition of art from the Oxford Living Dictionaries:

“The expression or application of human creative skill and imagination, typically in a visual form such as painting or sculpture, producing works to be appreciated primarily for their beauty or emotional power.” Also: “A skill at doing a specified thing, typically one acquired through practice.”

Let’s be clear here that “creativity” and “art” apply broadly across all of life not just to “artistic” activities. Don’t think of it as being segmented into small slices of your life or day, instead look for the many ways to use your imagination to “form out of nothing” with the end view of having produced a creative result, with emotional power. This could be as simple as planning and throwing a fantastic party, inviting your friends, resulting in sharing a truly memorable and creative evening thus adding art to your life.

You can see the cycle of creativity begins with your imagination, moves through the steps of producing it, and winds up at the final stage of sharing it with others.

The Most Important Step in the Creative Process

We begin at the first and most important part of the creativity cycle: it is what we call visualization, the process of forming a mental image of what you are going to create and how you intend it to look as an end result. That’s why it is in the center of the cycle (see illustration on page 20). After all, to even pick up tools to create with, you first had to have some idea of what you wanted to make, no matter how brief or vague. I will show you how to develop your powerful sense of visualization, which in itself will help you unleash your creativity.

Strengthening Your Visualization

A big part of visualization is looking at others’ work, in whatever form. This is not to copy their work, but to be inspired with new ideas from others based on how they were able to create their art. But it’s not good enough to look at it and say, “I like this, I don’t like that.” That won’t let you into the inner workings of their craft. Go deeper: if you like it, look at it and see why you like it. Did it have an emotional impact on you, and if so, what was it?

If you don’t like it, see if you can dig in and find out why. Maybe there was something distracting about it or it had a technical flaw. Or it simply didn’t interest you.

This kind of careful and deep exploration will help you when you create your own work. You’re building a kind of visual collection in your mind with which to work, which is vital in developing your ability to visualize.

As an example, my wife Jan and I have been able to find houses that others have overlooked because of design flaws and outdated or missing elements. But where others might turn away, we saw an opportunity to visualize and build exactly what we wanted, rather than paying more for someone else’s ideas, which rarely match ours.

For instance, when we were remodeling our home in Carmel, with its tired 1980s kitchen, its poor-quality yellow and blue cabinets, a really bad flow because of a peninsula that jutted out, and topping it off, florescent strip lighting on the wall that made it look like a parking garage, we knew it all had to go! But what to put in their place?

As a starting point, we had a feel for our desired look from our previous house, which we had also rescued from kitchen hell. There we ended up with a compact, warm, and very functional kitchen: cabinets with clean lines, with glass fronts in the doors openly displaying dishes, glasses, and other items. Our open functional design followed what Steve Jobs so clearly articulated: “Design is not just what it looks like and feels like. Design is how it works.”

One of the ways the kitchen worked so well is that we had a high-top table and stools at the end of the kitchen, that became the favored spot to eat, no matter how many people crowded around it, being a perfect design that worked and just felt right.

We looked through magazines for kitchens we might like or even elements of them and tore out pages, putting them in a folder (I recommend this simple action for visualization.) Then we hit upon the key points that resonated with us and added to those we wanted to maintain from our last house. Because we were able to visualize, it was easy to explain and convey the look to our contractor. He brought in his cabinetmaker who was also able to stay on track with our vision, but he made some important suggestions—getting rid of the peninsula and have an island that allows easy flow around the kitchen. Then, of course, adding stools around it to maintain warm and connected dining, made it all come together. Now we knew we had it.

You can see how our initial vision was sparked by looking at examples, but it developed as we collaborated with others, which I have always found to be a key point of success in any creative activity. But it’s vital to collaborate with those who will further your vision, not stop it or alter it away from the core of how you visualized it. (We’ll talk about how to choose your people in a later chapter.)

Use Your Tools

The next stage is to use your tools of creativity, which could be anything from a chef’s knife to a pen and paper—whatever tools you need to bring your vision to life. The key here is to know your tools so well that they don’t get in the way of your vision. And a word of caution here: Don’t “geek out” with tools. When tools become an end-all and having the latest/most expensive/complex version becomes an obsession, the creative process stops right there. The purpose of tools is to enable you to create, not to distract you. I also believe in a minimalist approach to them: Use the fewest and least costly until you have mastered them and add new ones only when a tool really will help you create more effectively.

Let’s go back to the kitchen and imagine you were learning to cook in a well-equipped one—which made your head spin with all the appliances, cooking utensils, pans—and on and on!

But say you decided to watch and follow a chef at work who made it look easy and simple. You noticed they also used the same key “tools” over and over, no matter how many dishes they cooked: knives to cut with, pots and pans of different sizes, spatulas and spoons—and they seemed to do all their work with just a few key tools of the same kind. Then it really hit home that it’s simple and that you, too, could learn to cook.

Work Your Craft

Now you enter the stage of working your craft, which means to apply the skills of creativity using the correct tools to bring about what you had envisioned. The key at this a stage is to get into action and go to work! Don’t think about it, don’t procrastinate, get to work on your vision. Be ready to side step excuses, i.e. “reasons,” and anything other than getting into action! And then, a key point is to continue. You have visualized an end result, so work until you complete it. Don’t let feelings of “it’s not good enough” or “I can’t do it” stop you. Keep going until you complete what you set out to do. You’ll edit or fix it in the next step.

I’ve always found it better to get my first version out, let it flow. This could be my first draft of a short film, of prose or poetry, or the first product of a business, or any sort of creative activity. I recommend that you take a “go-flow” attitude, meaning let it flow, don’t stop the flow by trying to edit as you go. Get version one out there in the world!

Editing and Refining

Then, the next stage we call editing or refining your work, based on how you visualized it. Having produced your art, you now have something you can refine.

When I’m editing a film, my first objective is to put the first draft into a form that tells the story I want to communicate. Most often this comes down to cutting out what doesn’t help the story. Less is more in this case, and you’ll find that to be true with most artistic creation.

Going back to the collaboration of remodeling the kitchen I mentioned, we were all the way to the stage of getting the work done which meant that the cabinet doors were in place. Now is when we hit this step of editing—something wasn’t right but I couldn’t quite spot it, they just didn’t “feel right” somehow. It was while I was on a walk (and much more later about the power of walks) that I realized the design had strayed off our visualization somewhere. Then it hit me that there were no glass fronts on some of the doors as we had in our previous kitchen and were in a magazine clipping. Somehow this was lost in translation.

By revisiting the original concept with the cabinetmaker and our contractor we arrived back to our vision of how it would look, feel, and work. Some of the doors had to be redone in order to fully achieve our original vision. By editing we were able to get back on track. The final outcome was the design we wanted and envisioned.

The go-flow approach in the creative process no matter what art form (yes, even life itself) is very workable when you follow it with this stage of editing and refining.

As you’ll hear echoed in my interviews that follow, use editing as a creative tool, not a destructive or self-critical tool. It is there to further what you have visualized, not to turn yourself inward.

Sharing Your Work

Now we come to the final stage of sharing which means getting your work out to the world. There are so many ways to share what you have created, but the important thing is that you do it!

Don’t let your art sit in a drawer, on a hard drive, folded up in a closet, or even in your head. Share it and get it out to the world! By sharing I don’t mean that you give it away; sharing includes selling it and getting paid for your creation, which I’m sure you’ll agree is tremendously satisfying. In today’s world of social media where “likes” are seen as a reward, there’s really no better result than sharing your work with someone who has paid you and is truly happy with your product. But “getting paid” isn’t just with money, there are many other ways to bring about an interchange for your work with a happy “customer” who may happen to be a friend, co-worker, or family.

Now that we’ve covered the full cycle of creativity and its parts you can see that your ability to visualize connects with each part of the cycle; your vision is the common thread connecting all steps. Additionally, each part of the cycle interacts with the others in the natural course of creativity.

By understanding each of the stages of the cycle of creativity, you will be in control of the whole process and able to apply these to any part of your life, making art an everyday experience. We’ll be taking up each of the stages in detail in the coming chapters, but before we go on, answer these questions.