In the final chapter of his book on Creativity, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi pulls together the results of his intensive study of the lives of Creative People to distill some lessons on how and why we might increase our own personal creativity.
Starting with the why, he writes that while personal creativity may not lead us to fame or fortune, it may make everyday life more vivid, enjoyable, and rewarding—it banishes boredom and helps us find the promise of fresh discovery in every moment. Similarly, to his more eudemonic conclusions about flow, the end pursued in being more creative is a life full of optimal experiences. If there is such a thing as a “secret to happiness,” then enhanced personal creativity is an important part of it.
That’s all well and good of course. Who wouldn’t want to be happier? Surely most people would like a little more levity in their lives. But, even if we know that enhancing our personal creativity might make us enjoy life somewhat more, many things can get in the way of us doing something about it. Csikszentmihalyi identifies four main obstacles to expressing and exploring our personal creativity:
too many demands on our mental energy (exhaustion)
too many distractions (trouble channeling energy)
laziness (lack of discipline)
not knowing what to do with the energy we have (purpose deficit)
The good news is that Csikszentmihalyi has a number of different solutions for us to try, in whole or in part.
First, we can cultivate curiosity and pursue our interests. This involves adopting some new ways of paying attention. Most importantly, we first must pay attention to our attention, noticing when it is captured by something. When something sparks our curiosity, we should follow it. We should also attend closely to and celebrate surprises. We should let ourselves be surprised every day—whether that’s being more open to the stream of novel experience, breaking our routines, or doing something unexpected on a whim. It is also good to keep track of what surprises us and how we surprise others.
Second, we can cultivate flow in everyday life. Csikszentmihalyi’s research has demonstrated that when we have nothing specific to do, our thoughts quickly turn entropic. When there is nothing demanding our concentration, our default mental setting is to lose focus and take refuge in passive entertainment—a choice that only temporarily keeps mental chaos at bay. What is better for us is to have something specific to look forward to each and every day—some enjoyable activity that we undertake as an end unto itself for its own pleasure.
Third, we can cultivate strong habits. Through his hundreds of interviews, Csikszentmihalyi discovered time and again that the creative life is paradoxical, marked by the blending of numerous binaries, opposites, and polarities—one of the most important of which is possibility within constraint. Certain ways of living were common to most, if not all, the people Csikszentmihalyi and his teams interviewed. These include: taking charge of your schedule; making time for reflection and relaxation; shaping your personal and shared spaces; and prioritizing learning about likes and dislikes. The point for us is that these habits allow us to put our energy into the things that we really care about. Through organizing our time, space, social settings and activities, we can foster a mental environment in which new ideas will emerge in our consciousness without great effort. Indeed, a fundamental paradox of creativity is that the more you try to direct the process, the less creative your ideas will likely be. It is better to shape our lives in a way that allows us to move back and forth between conscious and unconscious activity with minimal friction.
Fourth, we can cultivate new internal traits. By learning new patterns of attention, we can change our personalities. By combining the cultivation of curiosity, interest, flow, and habits, we can develop greater self-awareness and magnanimity. This allows us to be able to see where we may want to change something about our lives, to break old habits and reach new levels of enjoyment in our everyday experience. We can re-orient ourselves to value new pursuits, such as mastering the play of openness and closedness (i.e., the generation and implementation of our ideas respectively) and increasing the complexity of what we are able to do for the sheer fun of it.
At the level of general principles, Csikszentmihalyi advises us to take a look at how we are living and to make a few changes in how we attend to our lives. By paying attention to what moves us, pursuing the things that we enjoy, creating a conducive atmosphere for ourselves, and shifting our values, we can enhance our personal creativity—and ultimately our experience of life.
On a practical level, this leaves the question of how we are to apply our increased personal creativity. Csikszentmihalyi focuses on the question of problem-finding, idea generation, and finding our special domain in which to apply ourselves.
We can use our enhanced personal creativity to gain clarity on issues that directly affect our experience and concerns in our daily lives. Why do some things stand out to you as an issue or problem? We can use our creativity to find a way to express that which moves us, to move from a vague sense or feeling to a concrete problem that is amenable to a solution. Once we have a toe-hold on such an issue, we can then look at it from as many points of view as possible, to draw out its implications, try out different solutions or resolutions, and continue to experiment and revise as we go along.
We can use our enhanced personal creativity to come up with new ideas. Naturally, new ideas emerge in our consciousness all the time, but with improved personal creativity, our ideas will have more fluency, flexibility, and originality. In other words, we will produce more ideas than we could before, they will be more different from each other than they were before, and they will be more novel than they were before.
Finally, through putting us in closer contact with our natural curiosity and interests, our enhanced personal creativity will lead us to explore new domains for no other reason than its own enjoyment. The key is to begin with things that you already enjoy and branch out from there. Keep trying new things until you find the right fit for you. As Cal Newport says, persons of genius manifest their greatness only insofar as they bring their powers to bear on something they’ve chosen to show their full measure on.
Csikszentmihalyi would surely agree—but would probably hasten to add—anyone can manifest greatness or genius, simply by enhancing their personal creativity, because in so doing, they sharpen the powers they can bring to bear and find that thing on which they choose to show their full measure.