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5 Boring Ways to Become More Creative

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5 Boring Ways to Become More Creative

Creative people are anything but boring, but the creative process itself involves a lot of mundane work and boring consistency.

Mark Manson,

5 min read
6 take-aways
Audio & text

What's inside?

Learn down-to-earth ways to make creativity your own – no divine inspiration required.

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Editorial Rating

9

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  • Eye Opening
  • Engaging

Recommendation

If creativity really depended on inexplicable inspiration or wild bouts of divine genius, it would hardly ever happen. In reality, creative work has much more mundane explanations. In a helpful, down-to-earth article, Mark Manson explodes the myths about creativity and offers actionable, research-based recommendations for making creativity your own. 

Summary

Creative people don’t usually invent new, unique ideas – they renew the old.

Creative people often live interesting lives, and creative work can be surprising or exciting – but the creative process itself? Boring. Most creation turns out to be fairly pedestrian: The creator dusts off existing material or ideas and blends them with a new element or gives them a twist – such as when the writers of a timeworn story about drug dealing thought of making the main character a middle-aged white man, and voilà, Breaking Bad.

An essential skill for people who want to develop their creativity, this process – termed “divergent thinking” – accounts for almost all creative work. The creative process consists mainly of work, study and production – not inspiration or even, usually, inventing new things. And that means anyone can learn creativity and become good at it.

Create by adding value to existing ideas or elements, or to undervalued material.

To produce creative work, you’ll have to do more than just refresh familiar ideas or resuscitate old material – you need to ensure you’re adding...

About the Author

Mark Manson is a best-selling author and a popular blogger and speaker on mental health and happiness. His books include The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck.

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    M. B. 3 years ago
    It challenges your understanding of the word creativity and makes you realise you don't always have to use accepted channels or formats.