Year of Discovery (Week 21: Compounded Growth and Types of Creativity)
This past week was one of awe as I marveled at the wonders of nature and cities built on water. I continued my travels through Italy to the Dolomites and was swept away by the endless layers of mountains, vividly blue lakes and winding trails at every turn. From the mountains, we moved to the ocean, where we learned about the true architectural marvel that Venice was and is. And now I’m nestled in Belgium for the week.
The last few weeks were a wonderful reminder of the importance in the variability of how we spend our days to imitate the ebbs and flows of seasons, waves and the patterns of nature. Traveling, I’ve found myself more drawn to the present moment, the joy of living, and my interest in the smaller things around me. And as I moved back into routine at the start of this week after living more moment to moment, I felt a shift in forward momentum towards a renewed sense of focus towards my prototyping, in a way I haven’t felt since the start of my Year of Discovery. Without stillness and calm there wouldn’t be movement and action. I’m grateful for the time for both.
This week, I’m sharing a reflection on compounded growth and the different types of creativity.
Trusting the Process and Compounded Growth
I’ve been thinking a lot recently about what it means to ‘trust the process’ and how daily incremental progress creates greatness over time.
Trusting the process doesn’t come naturally in a goal and outcomes-oriented society, which promotes an individual’s responsibility and control over what happens. But over time, believing that we have full control over outcomes becomes a fallacy, which we have created to feel safe. In life, there continues to be more mismatches than alignment between expectation and reality, so we may only be creating more suffering within ourselves when we believe we are the absolute masters of our destiny.
Trusting in the process has been a key lesson for me this year. There have been days when anxiety creeps in and I find myself wondering what I’m doing and where I’ll end up. What’s kept me grounded has been my daily journaling and planning, exercise, activities that encourage presence, clear quarterly and weekly goals to represent forward progress in numerous categories, reading that feeds my curiosity and soul, dharma talks, and more. What also keeps me grounded is making progress on my prototyping of different potential ‘lives’ and passion pathways. I’ve learned to trust the process through spending my days doing the things that will 1) help me learn more about myself and what I’m drawn to and 2) align with what I want to manifest, as I have a growing belief that this effort will all compound into something greater than I can imagine today.
It’s also been important for me this year reading about people who have achieved greatness in their lives and learning about the incremental progress they made everyday. Many documentaries and movies I’ve watched about people who made it to the top of their field — singers, actors, business people, artists, investors, etc — show a fast-forwarded depiction of their life to fit in all of the details and facts, but oftentimes leave out one of the biggest takeaways for the viewers: the day-to-day ‘mundaneness’ of the work they put in every day to compound into greatness. It doesn’t mean that they necessarily become obsessed with their work everyday but that they apply a long-game mindset to what they do and know that what they do today will manifest in a greater way in the future.
“Habits are the compound interest of self-improvement. They don’t seem like much on any given day, but over the months and years their effects can accumulate to an incredible degree.” — James Clear
When I think about my daily habits and movements towards progress, I remind myself of this chart. That nothing great has really ever happened overnight and that as long as I’m clear on where and why I’m spending my days in the way that I am, then I can be at peace.
Questions to reflect on:
- In what ways do you feel like you trust the process vs believe you have control over the outcomes? Which one works for you in which situations?
- What other mindsets do/don’t work for you as you live your life everyday?
Types of Creativity
A few weeks ago, I overhead a friend tell another: ‘Wow, I really admire artists and people who are so creative. I don’t feel like I’m creative at all’. It wasn’t the first time I had heard someone who I perceive as creative say that and it seemed to be occuring more often. It made me wonder: how do we define creativity and is it truly declining?
According to Dr. KH Kim, a Professor of Creativity and Innovation at the College of William & Mary, creative thinking requires inbox, outbox, and newbox (ION) thinking skills to achieve innovation:
- Inbox thinking = a narrow and deep process for gaining knowledge and comprehending ideas. Innovators use inbox thinking first to develop expertise, the foundation of creative thinking. Later, inbox thinking is also used for critical thinking. It is persistent, systematic process to analyze and evaluate ideas. The narrow-angle inbox thinking lens narrows down and focuses on specifics, which is used to acquire and apply expertise for at least 10 years. Developing expertise requires the skills of memorization, comprehension, and application, which are lower-order inbox thinking skills.
- Outbox thinking = a flexible and broad process for imagining numerous and diverse possibilities from a different angle. It is a spontaneous, chaotic process used to seek nonconforming ideas. Outbox thinking skills include fluid, flexible (different categories of), and original thinking, which are higher-order thinking skills. This wide-angle outbox thinking lens is broad and allows innovators to imagine an entire universe of possibilities. It proposes as many ideas as it can to develop unique ideas. Yet the successful use of outbox thinking skills depends on the prior acquisition of a sufficient body of expertise in order to generate and consider viable alternatives.
- Newbox thinking = combines inbox and outbox thinking, which includes the skills of synthesis, transformation, and promotion that aim at innovation. They are highest-order thinking skills. After the best ideas are selected and the unique ideas become useful using critical thinking, the main essences of the unique and useful ideas, from inbox and outbox thinking, need to be synthesized and transformed into a creation through elaborating, refining, and symplifying.
In her research, Dr. Kim also found that while IQ scores have increased, creativity in America has decreased since 1990, using the scores from the Torrance Tests of Creative Thinking (TTCT)-Figural. Studying kindergartners to adults, the results of the TTCT test are twofold: it measures the creativity of individuals and how they are creative by identifying strengths and weaknesses in their creative attitudes and creative thinking skills. The results of the creativity crisis study indicate that newbox thinking decreased the most; outbox thinking decreased next; and inbox thinking decreased next.
As I learned about this, it made me think more about the ways in which our values as a society has shifted towards outcomes and efficiency, and how that might actually be hurting people’s natural creativity. Newbox thinking needs both outbox and inbox thinking to happen first. And outbox thinking requires different methods of creativity, like:
- playfulness (to find ideas/solutions that might not have been thought of using pure logic or common sense)
- daydreaming (to sustain unrealistic but goal-oriented thoughts while awake)
- nonconformity (which develops by feeling comfortable being an outsider and helps individuals reach their uniqueness beyond existing norms)
Does our society have spaces that promote such characteristic traits? And are our days set up to create space for playfulness, daydreaming and nonconformity? Can our economies support creative pursuits? What will reverse the trend to allow for a more creative society?
I’m still reading The Ministry for the Future! Please let me know if you are too — would love to trade notes.
