Linda Thompson's Key Ideas from Creativity
by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

Creative people have complex personalities. They have the ability to move from one extreme to the other as needed.

Creative individuals have a great deal of physical energy, but they are also often quiet and at rest.

Creative individuals tend to be smart, yet also naive at the same time.

They are both playful and disciplined; responsible and irresponsible.

Creative individuals alternate between imagination and fantasy at one end, and a rooted sense of reality at the other.

Creative people seem to be both introverted and extroverted.

• Preparation: Immersing oneself in the problem and sparking curiosity
• Incubation: Time to allow the ideas to church around in the subconscious where unusual connections can be made
• Insight: The “Aha!” moment
• Evaluation: Deciding whether the insight is valuable and worth pursuing
• Elaboration: The hard work of implementing and realizing the solution

• Creative people all love what they do. It is not the hope of achieving fame or making money that drives them; rather, it is the opportunity to do the work that they enjoy doing.
• Most people enjoy “designing or discovering something new.”
• We are also motivated by the force of entropy. It gives us pleasure when we are comfortable, when we relax, or when we can get away with feeling good without expending energy.
• Even the most creative person must overcome the barrier of entropy. It is impossible to accomplish something that is truly new and worthwhile without struggling with it.

• There are clear goals every step of the way.
• There is immediate feedback to one’s actions.
• There is a balance between challenges and skills.
• Actions and awareness are merged.
• Distractions are excluded from consciousness.
• There is no worry of failure.
• Self-consciousness disappears.
• The sense of time becomes distorted.
• The activity becomes autotelic. You do it just for the sake of the activity itself.

One must be in a position to access the domain in which one plans to work. Information is not distributed evenly in space but is clumped in different geographical nodes.

Novel stimulation is not evenly distributed. Some environments have a greater density of interaction and provide more excitement and a greater effervescence of ideas.

Access to the field is not evenly distributed in space. The centres that facilitate the realization of novel ideas are not necessarily the ones where the information is stored or where the stimulation is greatest.

• The evidence suggests that unusual and beautiful surroundings may in face help us see situations more holistically and from novel viewpoints.
• How one spends time in a beautiful natural setting seems to matter as well. Just sitting and watching is fine, but taking a leisurely walk seems to be even better.
• Devoting full attention to a problem is not the best recipe for having creative thoughts.
• Homes rich in meaningful symbols make it easier for their owners to know who they are and therefore what they should do.

• Creative people are curious
• Parental support is instrumental in helping children succeed amidst a poor or socially marginal background.
• Creative people seem to come from exceptionally supportive childhoods or very deprived and challenging ones. Very few come from middle-class comfort.
• One cannot be exceptional and normal at the same time.
• Focus, or drive, is the second quality behind curiosity that sets creative individuals apart from their peers.
• Creative individuals don’t have a career. They create their career.

• When we live creativity, we banish boredom.
• Stop wasting energy on selfish goals. Explore the world around you for its own sake. Be curious.
• Try to be surprised by something every day.
• Try to surprise at least one person every day.
• Keep a journal and write these things down.
• Wake up with a specific goal to look forward to.
• Review your day the night before and choose a particular task that is relatively interesting and exciting.
• Things become more fun the better we get at them.
• Have clear goals and expectations, focus on the consequences of your actions, concentrate without distractions.

Intentionally develop your weaker character traits.

Practice shifting from operating with an open mind and receptive to new ideas, to closed focus and concentration.

Aim for a complex personality. Allow yourself to become more and experience more.

Find problems that move you emotionally.

Look at problems from as many viewpoints as possible. Do not rush to define a cause.

Experiment with many alternate solutions. Keep your options open.

Produce many different, unlikely and divergent ideas.

Too many people assume that most of the world is off-limits to them.

• We are exhausted by too many demands.
• We are easily distracted.
• We are lazy and lack discipline for controlling the flow of energy.
• We do not know what to do with the energy we do have.