type and length of laugh he gets for each joke and using that analysis to shave off a word, honing his routine until it is pitch perfect. For him, the creativity lies in what’s left out.
If you have creative paralysis, write a list of everything this is NOT. So if, say, you are planning a hen party for a friend, write down everything she would hate first of all. These are your guardrails – and you can create freely within them.
‘Think about fences for your creativity . . . and you might push yourself beyond the status quo.’
Rules can give you freedom from interruption. We’ve seen how insidious digital distraction can be today, sapping much more real time than the actual diversion took. The writer Zadie Smith has a zero tolerance policy towards social media and doesn’t connect to the internet during her writing time, leaving any fact checking until she has finished writing for the day. ‘If I could control myself online, if I wasn’t going to go down a Beyoncé Google hole for four and a half hours, this wouldn’t be a problem. But that is exactly what I’ll do,’ she says.
Experiment with using airplane mode on your phone, and setting strict times of the day (at the beginning and the end) in which to deal with emails. Use apps like Freedom and Self Control which allow you to block your own access to websites, apps or the entire internet to stop wasting time online. Use time before bed to read, rather than being on your phone – stretch your empathy muscles.
Creativity also requires chutzpah. Chutzpah is a Yiddish word that refers to self-confidence or bravery. Clashing disciplines, making the connections, bisociation: none of this can be done by someone suffering from self-doubt. You needed swagger to say the Earth was round when everyone thought it was flat. You need guts to walk away from accepted wisdom. ‘The difficulty lies not so much in developing new ideas,’ said John Maynard Keynes, ‘as in escaping from old ones.’
CHANNEL YOUR CHUTZPAH
Escaping the ‘old ones’ can be hard because they’ve been handed down to us as gospel. Our parents might have even embedded these ideas in our bedtime stories. And moving away from them makes a statement that you do not need their (or society’s) approval any more.
We can all do this, but what gets in the way is the belief that creativity only lies in the hands of very few select people. The notion that true creatives are artists, misfits at the edges of society or geniuses who are ‘ahead of their time’ is a barrier to creativity. It lets you say: ‘Creativity lives in others, but not in me.’ It stops you being brave and robs you of your chutzpah.
One of the most generous and powerful speeches on this comes from the Australian comedian Hannah Gadsby. In her game-changing performance ‘Nanette’, she takes a swipe at the ‘great men of art’ school of thought, which characterizes people like Van Gogh and Picasso as lone, eccentric geniuses.
Gadsby says: ‘People believe that Van Gogh was just this misunderstood genius, born ahead of his time. What a load of shit. Nobody is born ahead of their time! It’s impossible . . . Artists don’t invent zeitgeists, they respond to them . . . [Van Gogh] was not ahead of his time. He was a post-Impressionist painter painting at the peak of post-Impressionism.’
We’re all products of our time. We all swim in the cultural soup. Our creativity comes from how we respond to it. Bravery, daring, escaping the old ideas – we can have them all. We just need the chutzpah to do so.
‘We all swim in the cultural soup. Our creativity comes from how we respond to it.’
HOW TO CHANNEL YOUR CHUTZPAH
1. Notice the moments when you have been brave in the past. When you owned up to a mistake. Or you called out an injustice. Why did you do it? How did you feel? If you recognize and cherish those moments, you can summon them again when you are in need of chutzpah.
2. Don’t feel self-conscious and let it inhibit your ideas. No one is thinking about you. That sounds a bit sad, but it’s actually liberating. No one is thinking of you! They are too busy thinking about themselves. Remember Coco Chanel’s words: ‘I don’t care what you think about me. I don’t think about you at all.’
3. Work out who diminishes your bravery. Who is your Achilles heel? Who do you always feel sheepish or inhibited around? These people are drains. Instead, try to hang around people who boost your mojo.
4. Done is better than perfect. Obsessing about perfection is navel-gazing and paralyzing. Get it done, get it out, get on with life.
5. If all else fails channel Dolly Parton. She said: ‘Find out who you are. And do it on purpose.’
Then dare, shed the old assumptions – and create.
SUMMARY
Modern life is conspiring to make us into cultural zombies. Creativity is scarcer and more urgent than ever. In order to flex we need to interrogate what we really want, and what we need to change to get it – and to do this we must have the space to think creatively. Creativity is a muscle that needs exercising – think of it as cognitive yoga – in order to dodge the algorithmic monoculture that wants to swallow us up.
So when an idea hits you, let it run. Comedian Dave Chappelle says that for him, creativity involves letting go. ‘If I have an idea, it’s the driver. The idea says, “Get in the car,” and I’m like, “Where am I going?” The idea says, “I don’t know. Don’t worry about it. I’m driving.” Sometimes I’m shotgun, sometimes I’m in the fucking trunk. The idea takes you where it wants to go.’ 9
Let your ideas take you where they want to go. Swim in the cultural soup, read books, react to what’s out there. Listen to people, meet them face to face, empathize with them, look them in the eye and connect with them. Don’t try and be ahead of your time; be of your time and say something different about it.
But, most importantly, trust in yourself, be brave and nourish your own chutzpah. Creativity doesn’t live in the hands of lone geniuses. It lives in us all.
‘Working nine to five, what a way to make a living. Barely getting by, it’s all taking and no giving.
They just use your mind, and they never give you credit. It’s enough to drive you crazy if you let it.’
DOLLY PARTON
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