Remove the Logic Clamp
Creativity requires looser and looser logic
It doesn’t mean to, but our rational mind blocks creativity. It’s always correcting grammar, keeping us on task, trying to intimidate our rivals, and to impress mating prospects.
By the time you’re an adult, the rational brain has a firm grip on everything you do. Some people’s personalities are so consumed by this mode of thought that they have forgotten how to think any other way. These tend to be joyless people, devoid of humor, utterly predictable know-it-alls who lack a capacity for originality. You are probably thinking of an actual person in your life that fits that description. But most of us still possess the playful part of our brain, our thoughts bounce between unavoidable adulting and childlike musings (even if we keep our playful parts private). My theory is that this is the place where creativity originates from. I’d go as far as to say that creativity and play are so intertwined that the words are nearly synonyms.
It’s easy to let your rational brain take the lead. Logic is easy, it’s the other side that needs a boost. We can always turn the logic knob back up, but when we are trying to stay in creativity mode, we have to find a way to keep our rational thoughts quiet.
How do you avoid the clamp of rationality from squeezing out the space where creative ideas spring? Strange as it sounds, we need to practice turning down the rationality knob and allowing looser and looser logic. Or to put another way, we need to allow ourselves to play.
You’d think play comes easily. It doesn’t. At least not after puberty, after the fear of embarrassment cripples our willingness to experiment. It’s like physical fitness, if we don’t exercise our “play muscles” atrophy and our minds get brittle as we lose creative fitness.
“But Ade, I can’t play all day, I have a serious job that would fire me for goofing off.” True, play is frowned upon in work environments. Turning down the logic knob of your brain sounds like suicide to non-creatives. It’s sad because the only thing that can unblock the sludge of most jobs is an environment where creative ideas are welcome and novelty is rewarded. But it’s not impossible and I’ve written about it in a few places that I will point you to:
It sounds like bad advice, but be illogical. Because the first act of creativity is an unjustifiable decision to entertain the irrational. To validate the absurd. To willingly fail. To walk directly into the discomfort, directly violating your logical mind’s warnings and participate in absurdity. The first leap is excruciating, but once you’ve transitioned to play mode, the binds of logic fall away. To your surprise, you will find hidden delight that defies reason.
You can’t stay there forever, but when you return to reality you will carry the gifts of novelty, energy, and originality that would be impossible to attain by normal rational thought. And armed with new ideas you can let your logical mind do what it does best: put the finishing touches on things and organize the logistics for getting your crazy idea in front of people.
Stay creative. Your friend,
Ade