Defining Creative People

(One way or another, everything on this blog ties back to creative people and their contribution to society. This is a topic that I care about, and even wrote a book about. The material below was first published in The Creative Professional. You'll find a link to that book in the "Books" section of this blog. Okay, I'm new at this... here's my first posting on my first blog...)

Who are creative professionals? Artists, writers, musicians, producers, directors, performers, designers, and others with similar job descriptions are among the most obvious answers. In fact, the list is longer, as creative professions embrace not only those who develop ideas and products, but also those who market, analyze, and improve upon them.

Dictionary definitions provide little more than synonyms, suggesting that creative people “produce something through imaginative skill.” Psychologist Teresa Amabile judges a work to be creative if it is both novel and an appropriate, useful, correct or valuable response to a task that requires a degree of discovery or learning.” That definition roughly parallels Laurie Anderson’s brilliant summation, “Writing about music is like dancing about architecture.”

A closer look at the habits, styles and attributes typically associated with creative professionals at work may mirror your own way of working.

1. Intense Focus
The best creative work demands an extreme amount of attention paid without regard to time, relationships or other real-life priorities. Quoting Edison: “Godlike genius! Godlike nothing! Sticking to it is the genius!”

2. Self-Motivation
Creative professionals make a project their own. Money is rarely the primary driver. More often, the primary drivers are personal adventure or challenge, the opportunity to collaborate, the opportunity for reinvention or rejuvenation, and/or satisfaction.

3. A Sense of Humor
Most creative work is fun, or ought to be. Humor may be lighthearted, but it is often dark, cynical or razor-sharp. If a creative workplace lacks laughter, something is fundamentally wrong.

4. Taking Breaks
In one office, this materialized as a daily nap break for the writing staff. Breaks relieve the pressure and allow ideas to simmer on a back burner.

5. A Need for Feedback
Creative work benefits from early input from others, and from peer review. Feedback late in the process is not as productive or useful.

6. Passionate Self-Confidence
Most creative professionals are driven by a clear understanding of their own capabilities and value. Nevertheless, we all dip into the stereotype from time to time, becoming fearful, insecure, and overwhelmed. Once the curtain goes up, stage fright vanishes—or we don’t remain creative professionals for long.

7. A Highly Personal Sense of Time
Creative people may perceive time differently. When a project is in active production, hours pass quickly; days and nights may blend, and sleep may be scarce. Work may be done at odd hours; tasks planned for hours may require days. Ideas may require decades to move from concept to completion.

8. Individuality
Among the endless manifestations: odd choice of clothes, hair styles, hair colors, word choices, perceptions of the world, places to go on vacation, ways of decorating a work space. We may be colorful just for fun, or monochromatic for the same reason. Or, we may have reasons that you really don’t want to know….

9. A View of Society Based on Merit and Quality of Contribution, not Power or Authority
From a creative perspective, the ones who do good work are the ones who deserve praise and recognition. Those who ascend without superior talent or better-than-average output are regarded with suspicion. Creative people think about power as the ability to garner resources to do good work; they tend not to relate to power over people for its own sake. Similarly, those in authority over creative professionals should approach governance with enlightened outlook, or serve a rabbinical role as guide or teacher. Authority figures who serve in power positions without these attributes are often vilified or ignored by creative people. Richard Florida wrote, “Casual dress gradually crept in partly for the simple reason that it’s more comfortable, but also because creative work came to be more highly valued in our economy. No longer did status accrue from being an officer, or at lower ranks, a good soldier. It is accrued from being a member of the creative elite—and creative people don’t wear uniforms….They dress as they please.”

10. “Networks of Enterprise”
Biologist Karl Pfenninger noted that creative people tend to build and nurture their own communities. Members may provide resources, business contacts or advice, feedback, suggestions for improving work, recommended reading, or perhaps most commonly, cool ideas that might be pursued by the community itself, by members, or by individuals.

Physicist Freeman Dyson confirms, “Science is a very gregarious business. It is essentially the difference between having this door open and having it shut. When I am doing science, I have the door open… You want to be, all the time, talking with people. It is essentially a communal exercise….”

Intelligence expert Howard Gardner studied several of the world’s best-known creative professionals, and recalled, “Picasso particularly appreciated the companionship of poets and writers, whose interests and skills complemented his own. They helped him articulate what he was trying to accomplish, gave him suggestions about where to direct his considerable energies, informed him of the world of ideas, and promoted his work to the rest of the world….”