The Secret to Creativity

"The secret to creativity is knowing how to hide your sources." - Einstein

The biggest misconception about creativity is that it involves a moment of magical creation when the incredible appears out of thin air. The truth is less romantic. Everything comes from somewhere. 

All ideas have been thought before and all artists, especially the most brilliant, have their sources of inspiration. 

I’m going to break Einstein’s famous rule by revealing some of my sources and explaining how I use the genius of others to further my own ambitions.

Everyone starts somewhere so I might as well come clean from the beginning. 

By observing how others became creatively successful and combining their genius with your own, this is how I do it. BY SIMPLY OBSERVING AND CREATING MY OWN STYLE .....

If you want be more creative, you have to learn from people who are smarter than you are. Unless you can find a mentor this means learning from observation. 

When you see a piece of work you admire, dissect it scientifically and discover exactly what makes it great. Is it the tone of an article? the subject matter? the author’s personality? its usefulness? The same concept applies to design. What creates that feeling of visual pleasure? What made you click that ad? What made you subscribe? The clues to creativity are everywhere. You need to gather them and apply that understanding to your own creative work.

It’s important to note that collecting inspiration is distinctly different than plagiarism.

All art is imitation. The most creative people imitate rarer, more brilliant sources and cover their tracks. There’s a reason great artists are always clustered together, both geographically and chronologically. Interacting with creative individuals makes you more creative. Rival artists exchange techniques and competition increases effort. The present is the ideal age for creative people. The internet has connected everything, allowing us to draw inspiration from classic works of art and our finest contemporaries without leaving the couch.

It’s also important to draw from a wide array of sources. Your best option is to play the statistics. Creativity isn’t a spark it’s a boiling pot. Sample an enormous amount of creative work and you’ll produce an inspirational concoction. The most important creative asset is curiosity.