The Hindu Business Line : Real creativity begins with first breakthrough

Congrats! You have achieved the first breakthrough. It may be quite normal if you feel like stopping now, but don’t. “Our single greatest temptation is to stop as soon as we make a first breakthrough, as if some sort of final exam has been passed and now there is nothing more to be done,” writes Anthony Weston in Creativity for Critical Thinkers ( www.oup.com ). But don’t fall into the trap of such a complacence, he exhorts. “In fact we have usually only taken the first step of what could be many more. We’ve only cracked open the door. Real creativity only begins with the first breakthrough. Walk through that door — and keep going.”

Creativity, according to the author, is the art of expanding possibility. “It is the art of finding unexpected space in problems that seem totally stuck to everyone else. It is the ability to think ‘out of the box’ while the rest of us barely realise that we are in a box.” Creative people are critical, says Weston. “They don’t stop with the ‘given’ and the (supposedly) ‘obvious’. They are imaginative: they make a habit of thinking in more open and supple ways, keeping their minds two steps ahead of things as they are. They are inventive: they consciously seek to devise new things and new ways of thinking.”

Most important, creative people are disciplined and persistent. Creativity can require a certain kind of playfulness, but it does not mean just letting go, explains the author. “Creativity takes work. Thomas Edison famously said that genius is 1 per cent inspiration and 99 per cent perspiration. Maybe he overstated a little — I’d say it’s 20 per cent inspiration and 80 per cent perspiration — but that’s still a lot of sweat.”

Enlightening.

Spot the time wasters

Mixing and matching personal-official and avoidable-unavoidable, Ramesh K. Arora describes four types of time wasters in Time Management ( www.paragonintpub.com ). The AP (avoidable personal) time wasters include, for example, gossiping, addiction to soap operas, repeatedly watching the same TV news, getting angry often, eating frequently and so on. UP, the unavoidable personal type, includes social occasions. Also in this category are ‘demanding friends, surprise visitors, irregular water supply, power failure, and irresponsible domestic assistance’.

In the AO (avoidable official) variety, the author mentions lack of planning, absence of clear-cut policies, complex rules, unspecified priorities, lack of clarity in objectives, unscheduled or unnecessary meetings, ambiguous job descriptions, absence of deadlines, and so forth.

Ruefully, the UO time wasters at office, which are beyond one’s control, can be many. Such as: “untrained staff, a nagging accounts department, centralisation of powers at the top level, frequent calls by the seniors, archaic computers, office politics…”

Well analysed.

D. MURALI
http://BookPeek.blogspot.com

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