http://nocreativity.com

Over the past couple of weeks I came to realize I almost lost something very important in my life. I only realized it in the very end – probably too late. The will to be creative; the will to create stuff just for the heck of it. Only after days weeks of trying to get myself back together, I came to realize that I hadn’t lost the will to create at all. In fact I never wanted it more… However I let go a few of ‘my tools‘ that gave me the ideas and motivation to create stuff.

What follows is a (bit like a) ‘note to self‘ of what I should never ever forget again.

Let your inner child be your guide

If you have kids you’ll most definitely already know this: Kids are insanely mindblowing when they try to explain something they saw. They have the craziest visions of the world. Not because they are smarter than we are but because we are smarter than them. While they are talking about a huge television in a room, we talk about a cinema.

You know what they’re trying to say but they just see the whole world differently. That is a great thing to do/have. Make sure you keep this alive in yourself. Let yourself be amazed by flying birds and soap bubbles. It’s okay to be blown away by cool and simple stuff. It’s okay to actually enjoy life at its fullest.

Make sure you bring back that inner child in yourself. It’s fun! (and cute! Girls love it, believe you me!) It’ll make you think up the craziest stuff in the world. No reason. Just fun. And who doesn’t like fun?
Your inner child knows what you want. You don’t. The only thing you know is you want to pay your bills before it’s too late. The inner child in you wants chocolate. I suggest you give it to him.

Just do it

The worst thing that could happen is: God is having a good day and figures: ‘Oh what the hell, let’s give that kid a great idea!‘. So there you are, in the middle of the day with that great idea that just inexplicable just popped into your head. You think about it all day, you get home, and then… You continue thinking about it…

You think some more… And the next morning you wake up and realize you killed the idea. You killed the spirit and the fun of it. Because what you did was to try to go beyond what the initial idea was and make it better by thinking about it.

Stop doing that to yourself. If all of a sudden you have a great idea, it’s because your gut feeling is on to something. Don’t try to understand it, just go for it. Whatever it is that seems so cool to you: don’t waste time thinking how you could even make it better. Just get started and do it. Once you’re working on it, your subconsciousness will take over and show you where to go from there. It’ll be awesome. You’ll feel great, you’ll be happy, you’ll feel satisfied. In a lot of ways I think that feeling you end up with comes close to what sex is like: Fucking awesome…

Experimentize the shit out of it

A lot of people try to make a living doing serious business. I know a lot of people that just create projects for work. One serious (and sometimes insanely boring) project after the other. Beyond that: Nothing.

That’s bad. You have to experiment. Experimenting keeps your inner child alive. It makes sure your ideas stay fresh. It helps your mind evolve and it helps you develop and discover your own style.
And don’t you dare to say your research is your ‘experimentation‘. Experimenting can be a viable part of research though(but that’s not what I’m trying to point out).
I’m referring to the kind of experiments where you just create something totally senseless, just to see if it is as easy/cool/funny/arousing  as you thought it might be. A simple fun experiment that proves nothing but the fact that you have too much spare time.
Once you’re done you might in fact realize how crazy the whole process was: Don’t worry, that’s completely okay. We all lose our minds at some point in life; it might as well be while you’re doing what you love most!

Iteratation! Iteration! Iteration!

Experimenting is like sex: It doesn’t matter how often you do it, it’s stay fun to do it!
The first time you take a shot at an experiment you’ll just want to focus on making it work. Whatever it is you do. Just make sure you kinda-somehow-maybe-sometimes make it work…
Then start over: Make it better! Make it more fun! Give it more color! Add more actors! Add more interactivity! Iterate!

Iterating is fun! It doesn’t matter how many times you do the same thing: As long as the result amazes over and over again, you’re golden. Take something away, add some new things. It doesn’t matter what you do, or how many times you do it. Just make sure you give it a new twist every once in a while.

If you look back after a few months/years you’ll have a hard time believing the evolution between the first version of an experiment and the latest one. The power to blow your own mind with ease: You got it.

Stop thinking ahead and continue to be an idiot

Don’t try to think about what happens to this if you change that. Don’t try to fix bugs before they have even revealed themselves. For one: Don’t spend time thinking about stuff that might just not matter at all in the end. Yea, sure: You should think about a few things you do, but don’t over-engineer stuff before you actually get to make things… Let’s just get there as fast as humanly possible. If you run into problems along the way you can always fix them then.

Way worse than this: By trying to avoid bugs/unwanted visual results, you choose to not run into ‘chance’. You can be wrong a thousand times, you only gotta be right once. Do take credit for being wrong. Being wrong is fucking great! Because it reveals something you didn’t know or expect. Therefor it gives you new knowledge! New ideas! New experience! For free! I’d take that over The Routine any day.
Hell, the coolest stuff I’ve created so far were results of an idea that came to life due to unwanted behavior and visual disasters.

Don’t plan, it’s bad practice

I once wanted to work together with a friend on a little experiment. It was 8PM at night and we felt like creating a little fun-stuff-toy-thingy. I just started a project in Flash Builder, opened a new PSD, and I was set to just kick off.

He felt otherwise. He wanted to start by drawing an UML scheme that would allow us to exactly plan how we would create this. From the top of my head, this thing could’ve been up and running in 4-5 hours. However 3 hours later, we were still talking about PureMVC, models, facades, all that kind of stuff that just shouldn’t matter in a little project like this.

Here’s one for the hardcore developers out there: Planning is bullshit. It costs time (way too much), it kills motivation, it tries to be perfect (and it just won’t. Ever.) and it doesn’t know what unforeseen problems will pop up anyway (just to make sure you have to start planning more things all over again).

Planning is probably a great tool for big applications and ‘serious projects’. Not for fun stuff like this though. And most definitely: not in the complexity my friend desired.
So what should you do? The same thing you would do if Megan Fox came over to your house, strip down and ask you if you felt like giving her a massage: Get started right away! No thinking through required.

By the way: We never finished the project. And according to me: We never actually started either.

Forget everything you think you know

One of the cool things is: Doing what we do will always teach us something new. I don’t care how old you are and how many years you have been doing this: Your inner child will always take you back to school.

Don’t try to know how an experiment will end. Don’t try to foresee bugs/problems you will come across in your experiment. Don’t try to know what will happen. Just let go!
It becomes even more fun if you don’t have a clue what you’re doing! Act like a total idiot, it’ll make you feel awesome, I guarantee!

Just copy paste some code and change some values. Grab a PSD somewhere and mess around with all kinds of sliders. Download a 3D model and play around with the materials…
Not because you’re lazy and you don’t feel like creating those files yourself, but because the original author tried to put some rational sense into this thing. That means by just messing around with it for a while, you’ll be able to create a million things that are something totally different. And it didn’t even require your higher brain functions.

(Some people told me they were more creative when they were drunk or high… Why would you think that is?) Just leave your educated and experienced brain aside… You’ll discover a whole new world of ideas… Hidden in your own imagination.

Stop caring

This one makes all of the other so much easier. Stop caring what people think or tell you.

“It has been done before!“, “Oh that’s easy!“, “That’s just a ripoff…“, “You won’t ever be able to use this in a real life project“, “It’s not the best way to do this. I’ve seem better implementations of bla bla“, etc.

For the sake of humanity: Don’t bother listening to people that say things like this when you present them your latest experiments. They just don’t get what it is about.
Don’t worry what people may or may not think about what you believe is a good idea. It’s one thing for your friends to tell you what they think you should (not) do. It’s a completely different one for you to let their opinion change your believes.

I’ll just try to be as clear about this as I can: If you have an idea, an ideal, a wish or a dream of something you want to do, then there’s absolutely nobody to stop you from doing exactly that. You should go after your dream, and make sure you don’t let a single chance slip by. This is your life, there’s no real right or wrong. There’s only do and should’ve done.

The worst thing that could happen is that you fail or it doesn’t turn out like you hoped/thought it would. You’ll be disappointed, sure. But at least you tried! At least you gave your dream a run for its money. You should be proud of that.
On the other hand you might not do it for no relevant reason whatsoever and then spend the rest of your life, wondering what might’ve happened if you would’ve given it a chance…

Believe me, it’s easier to acknowledge your own mistake than deal with the fact that you chose not to do something you really wanted because somebody else told you not to do it.

That’s it.
I’m out. Seriously.

At good last

Creativity is a noun: Do stuff. Create stuff. No matter if it is cool or not. You go out there and you create stuff! That’s an order, soldier!

And to those who see creativity as a skill: You’re wrong. Creativity is like a cellphone. It’s cool if you know what it does. But it’s even better when you know how to use all of its cool features! Creativity is the toolbox in your mind that allows you to do anything. All you have to do is devote yourself to whatever it is you love.