Genius…

By way of reminder…

I recently finished another book on creativity. This one titled The Origins of Genius. It represents the most expensive book in my library. I paid almost 50 bucks for it. One of my fellow builders just bought it for under fifteen…smarty pants!

The book is loaded with ideas that iluminate the creative process. The author puts forth his top six characteristics he found common in creative personalities. Check it out.

1. Highly creative people have broad interests culturally, intellectually, and aesthetically.

2. Highly creative individuals are open to novel, complex, and ambiguous stimuli in their surroundings.

3. Highly creative people are capable of defocused attention. They carry with them half baked ideas and “by chance” put the missing pieces of the puzzle together. Who knew?

4. Highly creative individuals are unusually flexible both cognitively and behaviorally. They do not work on one problem at a time. They play around with lots of ideas, people, and solutions. They experiment. They drive around 270 and “randomly” stop at Wendy’s.

5. Highly creative people are introverted. Creativity requires solitary time. Time to think…ALONE.

6. Highly creative people are independent, autonomous, unconventional, and perhaps even iconoclastic. They hire coaches/builders that are full of energy and attitude. They do what they want, when they want, with whom they want. They are hard to rein in. They are MUSTANGS.

These big six are the thoughts of one Dean Keith Simonton “anded” by me.

What do you think?

Where are you when you get your best ideas?

What experiments are you playing with right now?

What are you reading to source your new ideas?

Why do most of us want to follow an A, B, C, D recipe?