The Creative In All Of Us

Many of us have suppressed our innate ability to create. Simple because of the belief that creativity is only for those of artistic pursuit.

I live in an apartment that's about 75 square meters with one bedroom and living room together with my wife. It has all the space that's needed for two people.

What has changed is that we are expecting a little girl very soon. And since we were going to buy baby stuff, it's only natural that it would take more space... so we thought finding a bigger apartment would solve our problem.

Bigger space. Problem solved.

But one day we thought to ourselves, do we need to move to a bigger apartment. Because we have the space for a child for at least 2 years.

We were reactionary to the situation and not proactive. So we threw the idea of moving to a bigger apartment for now. And thought to ourselves what can we do now, with our current home.

At the time I was reading Creative Confidence by David and Tom Kelley, and I was inspired to take action.

We tried to adopt the principles of design thinking as a tool for solving our problem.

“The first step toward a great answer is to reframe the question.”, says Tom Kelley. And that's exactly what we started with. And I can tell you it's powerful when you frame the problem, you're trying to solve.

Using the HOW MIGHT WE method, our framed question was: how might we create space for our newborn child without complexity.

My wife is a medical laboratory scientist by profession. But having tools that encourage creativity, we would sit down and brainstorm ideas, sketching to make our ideas visual and prototype.

Next time, you are facing a problem try framing the problem, and see what happens.

When you commit to framing the problem, and writing it down, you can use it as a reference when you start to derail from the problem.

Even to this day, when we want to buy something new for our home, we still think if this is going to increase the complexity.

As I said in the beginning, many of us are used to suppressing our creativity. But with encouragement, the right mindset, and tools, you can overcome that barrier. “Like a muscle, your creative abilities will grow and strengthen with practice.”, says Tom Kelley.