#FutureOfWork Skills: Creativity

““The biographies of great artists make it abundantly clear that the creative urge is often so imperious that it battens onto their humanity and yokes everything to the service of the work.”"

— Carl Jung

Creativity can feel like a fickle thing, and when it arrives, it won’t be inconvenienced.

When the stars align, the temperature is neither too hot nor too cold and there’s a prevailing sense of calm, you just may catch an idea or two.

Elizabeth Gilbert talked about inspiration this way, while describing the poet Ruth Stone: 

"She would be out, working in the fields [in rural Virginia] and she would feel and hear a poem coming at her from over the landscape. It was like a thunderous train of air and it would come barreling down at her over the landscape. And when she felt it coming... she knew she had only one thing to do at that point. That was to, in her words, “run like hell” to the house as she would be chased by this poem. She had to get to a piece of paper fast enough so that when it thundered through her, she could collect it and grab it on the page."

No matter what you believe about your personal creativity capacity, I promise you—ideas are there, waiting to come through. Creativity is an essential part of your human nature, and your ability to court and capture it is a competitive advantage, especially given the current rate of change in industry.

The key to creativity is that you create space for it.

Our best ideas are rarely found in front of a screen. Shower thoughts, anyone? 

Turn your phone off. Go for a walk. Be pleasantly distracted. Create the conditions, and see what happens.