The Analysis Of The Book "Creative Confidence"
The book starts with a background of the Kelly’s life and “coming to” of this book. They both were always curious kids- taking apart anything just to see what was inside. In 2007, David battled cancer. David asked himself over and over again, “What was I put on this Earth to do?”. The answer was write a book that will reach as many people reach their own creative confidence, as possible. In 2013, 6 years later, that book became “Creative Confidence: Unleashing the Creative Potential Within Us All”.
Tom and David Kelly believe that we are all creative. Creativity is not a fixed trait that you are either born with or you are not; it is a muscle that we all have. This creative muscle can grow or deteriorate, dependent on how much it is exercised. Gaining creative confidence is about encompassing your ability to change the world. The first element towards creative confidence, the book discusses, is having a growth mindset, instead of a fixed mindset. You must look beyond the current situation. You must constantly look for ways to improve the status quo.
David Kelly uses the term “flipping” to describe going from a fixed, set mindset to a creative, growth mindset. Carol Dweck, a Stanford professor of Psychology, says that people with a growth mindset “believe that a person’s true potential is unknowable; that it’s impossible to foresee what can be accomplished with years of passion, toil, and training.”. This is essentially the idea that anybody can do anything they set their mind to do. Those with a fixed mindset are limiting their capabilities and not utilizing creativity.
The second element is letting go of your fears and being courageous. Albert Bandura, a famous psychologist, has discovered several small steps that can be used to cure a phobia. First, the phobic person is asked to face their fear. Then, the phobic person is taken through a series of challenges to get “warmed up” to their fear. After several challenges are complete, the phobic person is facing their fear, by themselves, and just like that the phobic person isn’t phobic anymore.
Bandura refers to this as a “guided mastery”. This technique can be used for items such as snakes, but also for things like public speaking or other tasks that might prevent you from being creative. If you want to be creative, you cannot be afraid of failure. If you want to be creative, you can’t be afraid of acting immediately no matter the obstacles If you want to be creative, you have to overcome any scars that people in your life may have put on you. You have to have the courage to believe in yourself.
Cultivating a creative spark is the third element to creative confidence. The Kelly’s explain that you have to be relentlessly curious and optimistic. You must think like a child and ask “Why?”. Making observations to better empathize with your end user can create a spark of creativity. You can also rediscover the familiar by looking at your day to day with a “beginner’s mind” to cultivate a creative spark. Bob McKim, David Kelly’s mentor also suggests engaging in “relaxed attention”.
Relaxed attention is when you are not completely focused on a problem/task. The problem or task is in your brain, but not on the forefront. Relaxed attention can be found when you first wake up in the morning or when you are in the shower. Another way to gain a creative spark is to reframe questions to increase the number of possible solutions. The best solution might require stepping outside the box. In the midst of cultivating your spark of creativity, you must have a creative support network. Find a group of collaborators that you can build ideas with.
Just do it. Leaping into action is a crucial element of creative confidence. If you see a gap that needs addressed, address it. Excuses will always exist, but it doesn’t mean you have to use them. Procrastination should never hold you back from reaching your creative potential. Steven Pressfeild calls this the “war of art”; he suggests that procrastination is resistance that can be overcome. Leaping into action can be encouraged by using short, strict time constraints. If you are confident enough to embrace the challenge, then you will get things done, and the results are usually more creative.
When you get passionate about your work you get creative. Going from duty to passion is another key element to becoming creatively confident. The Kelly’s suggest keeping a journal of activities you do each day and how they make you feel. Rate your day on an everyday basis. Rating your day will help you see what kind of activities make you feel good/happy. Another recommendation is to visualize a venn diagram with three questions:
“What are you good at?”,
“What will people pay you to do”,
“What were you born to do?”.
Whatever overlaps into all three circles of the venn diagram should be what you do as a career. Tom and David brought up a good point- some people think that being passionate about their job is impossible; that a job will always just be a job. This isn’t true. Perhaps people who think like this are only looking at their current hobbies as things they love to do. Your hobby can’t always be your job- Tom said that travelling the world was his hobby, but people won’t pay him to do that so travelling the world can’t be his career. Having and engaging in a creative culture and team is an important element of creative confidence. It’s extremely hard to make change in the business world without a team/network of support, maybe even impossible.
Kaaren Hansen from Intuit, says embody a creative team by focusing on deep customer empathy, seeking out several possible solutions before deciding on one, and having rapid experiments/prototyping with customers. Also mentioned in the “Team” chapter are multipliers and diminishers. Multipliers are those that lift you up and challenge you to the be the best you can be. Diminishers are those that are always negative and block creativity. Have multipliers on your team, not diminishers. In the seventh chapter of the book, the Kelly’s challenge readers to go into action now. They list out some creativity challenges for readers to try. Among these are mindmapping, speed dating, 30 circles, I like/I wish, and more. The challenges exercise your creativity muscle.
The book concludes in saying that most of us are all more creative and capable than we think we are. Steve Jobs urged us all to do something “insanely great”. Why not? The Kelly’s depict that creativity is in us all we just have to work towards it and we all should work towards it because the reward is worth it. They end to say don’t let your creative muscle deteriorate. Strengthen and grow your creative confidence.
