CREATIVITY

CREATIVITY - Flow and the psychology of discovery and invention by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

This fascinating book by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi brings out the importance of creativity, outlines its building blocks and explains how we can all become more creative.

Without creativity, it would be difficult to distinguish humans from other animals. Creativity leads to a fuller, more satisfying life. Without creativity, mankind would not progress.

Csikszentmihalyi points out that creativity cannot be understood by looking only at the people who appear to make it happen. Creative ideas need a receptive audience to record and implement them. And without the assessment of competent outsiders, we cannot decide whether the claims of a self-styled creative person are valid.

Creativity results from the interaction of a system consisting of three elements: a culture that contains symbolic rules, a person who brings novelty into the symbolic domain, and a field of experts who recognize and validate the innovation.

Creativity is the process by which a symbolic domain in the culture is changed. So we must learn the domain well. To master a domain, we must pay attention to the information to be assimilated. Bulk of our attention is committed to the tasks of surviving from one day to the next. And we do not do much with the small amount of attention left over because of the lack of focus. Diffused thinking leads to lack of concentration. Creativity is possible only when we are able to focus attention on the problem at hand.



Creativity, as mentioned before, consists of three main parts. The first of these is the domain, which consists of a set of symbolic rules and procedures.

The second component of creativity is the field, which includes all the individuals who act as gatekeepers to the domain. They decide whether a new idea or product can be accepted. For example, in the visual arts, the field consists of art teachers, curators of museums, collectors of art, critics, and administrators of foundations and government agencies that deal with culture. These people decide what new works of art must be recognised, preserved, and remembered.

The third component is the individual, who using symbols of a given domain, comes up with a new idea or sees a new pattern. His or her thoughts or actions change a domain, or establish a new domain.

Read this book to get a deeper understanding of creativity and how creative people go about doing their work and leading their lives.