Understanding The Creative Process

One of the brain’s many mysteries is creativity — how exactly do we come up with new ideas? While it may be a long, long time before we truly understand the details of what’s happening inside our heads, we can at least break down the more tangible steps that occur from the point you have nothing, to the formation of the greatest idea ever (at least, as far as you’re concerned).

In this video, entitled “How To Be Creative”, from US channel PBS, author Julie Burstein, cognitive psychologist Scott Kaufman, filmmaker Kirby Ferguson and computer scientist Ramsey Nasser talk about creativity from their respective viewpoints.

I found Kaufman’s explanation of the stages we go through to be creative fascinating, with “verification”, the final piece of the puzzle, perhaps the most important:

And then once [you have the idea], you’re not done, you’re not creative yet. So that’s why it’s really important for this last stage of the creative process — verification — where you use these executive processes or critical thinking skills [and] think about your audience and you really craft the message so it’s best received by people. Because some the best creative ideas of all time can easily be lost because they’re not packaged in the right way or not consumable.

There’s nothing more frustrating than not having the skills to properly translate your thoughts into a form others can understand (or the ability to bring them to fruition yourself). That’s when effective communication is most important — at the very least, you should be able to articulate your ideas.

How To Be Creative | Off Book | PBS Digital Studios [YouTube]