Importance Of Creativity: Professional Sustainability

It's Not What You Think

Most people think of drawing and painting whenever creativity is mentioned. However, creativity is also being able to create alternatives and to adapt to inevitable change. This skill can be helpful in academic settings, work situations, relationships, or even areas for self-growth where you might feel stuck.

Two important thoughts about creativity:

1. When you practice self-awareness, you are reviewing your internal experience with your outer experience.
2. When you practice self-regulation, you are more able to stay out of fight, flight, and freeze responses (note the limited and automatic options).

Creativity requires both skills. Additionally, constant input limits your brain’s ability to create alternatives from the inside out. The idea that multitasking allows you to get more done may be alluring, but it often limits your ability to solve crucial problems. Mindfulness and breaks throughout the day are essential to fully take in your experience and, ultimately, to be less reactive.

3-Pronged Development

Through these skills, you can set up an environment for increased creativity and mental flexibility. You need to create this from 3 different angles:

1. Limit what steals it. Reduce the input and multitasking in your life.
2. Increase what encourages it. Spend time with people and activities that make you feel most like yourself.
3. Do novel things. Engage in new, and sometimes exciting, activities as this allows your brain to be more flexible and creative in other areas.

Download and Print the Session Four pages of the Workbook.

Download: Session Four (PDF)

Complete 'Today's Challenge' on pg. 15 of the Workbook.

The Myth of Multitasking

List 3-5 moments throughout the day when you are engaged in more than one task at a time. Examples might be eating while watching TV, working while having a conversation, and a serious culprit, texting while driving.

Next, pick one of these multitasking moments to separate. Use the SMART plan below to help focus your efforts and increase the chances of achieving your goal. A SMART goal is Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Timebound.

Take a Deeper Dive

In Thinking, Fast and Slow, Daniel Kahneman explores how different types of thinking require you to be, wait for it... different. One of his primary premises follows the laws of the nervous system in that we need to bring a variety of energy to accomplish different thinking tasks. But don't just take my word for it; Kahneman also won a Noble Prize for Behavioral Economics.

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