Creativity: Innate or a Learned Skill?

What is Creativity?

Creativity is often defined as an ability to use and generate original and innovative ideas. Ideas that are expected to hold a purpose and be useful to society, as creative people are presumed to be able to efficiently solve all types of problems, and what is a creative idea when you are not able to make it come to life?

First of all, an ability is a specific action that you are able to perform either because you learned to do it throughout your life. You simply acquired that skill or because you were born with it. Some people refer to creativity specifically as a skill. In contrast, some people refer to it as a talent, but in reality, is creativity actually a skill or a talent? Or, to put it simply, is creativity something learned or innate?

Creative people

Creative people are prone to be described as artistic. Though there exists a correlation, it is essential to state that these two terms are completely separate. In the view of the fact that some people might see something as creative or artistic meanwhile some people won’t.

Meanwhile, most people would agree on the possibility of someone being more creative than others. At the same time most people would say art is not a competence and there is no such thing as someone or something being more artistic than others.

This difference being enough to mark them as independent of each other. Furthermore, not everyone who is creative is artistic and not everyone who is artistic is creative. This due to the subjectivity surrounding these two terms.

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Creative people: Fears

Yet there is a phenomenon in common between these two qualities, and it is that there appears to exist a fear and suffering behind the people who are highly creative and artistic. And it is the fear of performing this action. Fear of their own work, given that they are both meant to be innovative and original. It is only human for people to be scared of new things.

As well as scared of people’s reaction, and insecure of their own work, this goes to show the crude reality behind them so looked upon concept of creativity, and that is not all pink color. When addressing and discussing creative people it is essential to understand it as a whole, including what’s hidden in the dark.

But not everything is black either, not only is creativity related to happiness. It is also shown that creative people have higher chances of succeeding in life. And it is all thanks to their creative process that they are able to come up with innovative ideas that are perceived by people as life changing. And such operation is usually tangled with one of two similar techniques with the same outcome.

Behind a creative project

In the process of being creative, and living a creative life, most people don’t know what’s behind a creative project and the life of a creative person. How these ideas come to life? and sometimes how many drugs you need to take to come up with such unthinkable things?

But you don’t need drugs to come up with something original, or perhaps you do. But the drugs you need to take might not be the drugs you are currently thinking of, instead, you need to be addicted to creative work habits.

The key for coming up with a creative idea is shifting your focus to something else that’s unrelated to what you need to do, but there are two ways you can do this. One of them might be a faster and a more productive way to use your time than the other, but in the end, it will depend on the individual using this technique.

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Behind a creative project: Procrastinating

The least productive way is probably procrastinating, though this can be debatable, procrastinating is usually seen as something negative we need to get rid of. But you might not have anticipated that most creative ideas come from people who procrastinated a lot in their daily lives, given that it is a nice way to get your mind away for a period of time.

Eventually, allowing your mind to rest and change scenarios will help you later to see your main work with a more open and different perspective. When you refresh your mind, thoughts that you might not have thought of on the first time you took a look at your work will pop up much more naturally and easily in your brain. 

Behind a creative project: Multitasking

The second way is constantly shifting your attention by practicing multitasking. This method can also be frowned upon. Especially by people who work in fields related to health and science, arguing that it is not possible for the human brain to give proper attention to multiple tasks at the same time. That it is not recommendable since it will lower the quality of the final product.

However, there’s a type of multitasking, called slow motion multitasking. Which consists on having multiple ongoing projects at the same time and constantly moving from one to another as one feels or as how one’s priorities are set.

It helps the brain to be more creative by thinking outside the box without lowering the quality of the final product and rather enhancing it by helping you come up with a more creative outcome. It is clear that most creative people don’t directly dive on one single thing.

Anyone can be creative.

On the contrary, they are focus shifters and are constantly seeking activities and surroundings that will refresh their view on things. This would be implying that creativity is a learned skill given that we are talking about techniques that can be tried by anyone.

Hence anyone can be creative, but this would only be half true, since it is possible to learn to be creative. But this doesn’t mean that people can’t be born with creative skills.

Though creativity is not heritable, despite it being culturally normal for people to wonder for antecedents with creative skill when a child is born with creative talent. Creativity is not heritable and has no unique basis, as studies suggest that only about 22% of creative performance is related to genetics. Being it nurture in its greater majority, the truth is that creativity is a natural human skill that we are all born with and that we all use in our daily lives.

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Creativity: A human skill?

I should also reiterate that creativity is a subjective concept than can be interpreted in many ways, meaning everyone can indeed be creative. Some people are more creative than others, but everyone can increase their creativity, some will find it more difficult. And while they will definitely increase their creativity. They might never be as creative as people born with it as a “talent” and specially if they have also been constantly increasing their creativity since the very beginning of their creative life.

Which is most likely the case, on account of the fact that you can’t force someone to live a life driven mainly from a creative point of view. Where their approach to life must be purely focused on a creative outlook.

After all we could say that creativity is part of the human personality, and personality can by no healthy means be changed.

Surely, the reason why everyone can be creative is that creativity not only is a human skill everyone already has and can develop, it is also subjective. So everything can be creative, creativity is also not biased or related to only a specific group of jobs.

On the contrary, it is a tool that can help you succeed in any job. Anyone can be creative, including scientists and other people who work on jobs that people wouldn’t normally consider as jobs. Where creativity is needed, creativity is needed in everyday life which is why everyone is born with it as a natural skill.

Creative Person Example: Albert Einstein

A good example is Albert Einstein, who not only was a theoretical physicist. He was also a highly creative person whose creativity helped him succeed in life and become one of the greatest. And most influential physicists of history, he was also a great procrastinator.

In fact, it was thanks to his procrastination that he was able to come up with his revolutionary theory of relativity, but he was not the only genius who procrastination leaded him to success. There exists plenty of more examples of highly influential and important people who made a great contribution to society. Thanks both to procrastination habits and their creativity.

In the end, creativity is a great ability that can be used by anyone. While not everyone is born equally creative, everyone uses creativity in their daily lives. Everyone can practice increasing their creativity and healthily train themselves to be more familiar and less intimidated with the art of being creative. But you don’t need to live a creative life to be successful.

To conclude, you might already be more creative than you think. But if you feel like you are not as creative as other people it just means you see life from a more realistic point of view. You are likely more prone to either enjoy living at the moment or have a tendency to be attached to the way you are used to living life. Which is both useful and essential to reach balance, and it’s equally valid and needed in society.

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