Your Creativity Is At Risk
Spoiler alert: We get less creative as we get older. The good news is we can change.
In 1968, Dr. George Land and Beth Jarman were hired by NASA to help them understand how to measure creative potential. They developed a test to measure divergent thinking, which is how new ideas are created. They decided to apply this test to a group of 1,600 students over the course of a few years. How did this group perform?
5 Year Olds - 98% fell in the genius category for divergent thinking, which means they were able to come up with many different solutions to a problem.
Five years later, only 30% of the same students fell in the genius category.
At fifteen years old, only 12% of the students fell in the genius category.
Sadly, only 2% of adults maintain their creative superpower.
Don’t worry. This is fixable.
Just like jumping rope and back squats can improve your athletic performance, there are things you can do to improve your creative performance. Ever heard of the paper clip test? I tried it while stuck in traffic with one of my kids. We found an object and tried to come up with as many uses as possible. It was a plastic piece to a child car seat. One of the 80+ uses was a key to a wormhole. It was really fun but it’s not as easy as it sounds. We all have an ingrained tendency to judge things, especially ourselves. It’s called convergent-thinking. It helps us get things done, but it also limits our ability to be creative.
Just like back squats, we have to start with the basics.
Here are some rules I follow for The Paper Clip Test:
There are no wrong answers.
Have fun and be really silly.
Defy the laws of physics.
Push the boundaries of what you know about the world.
Make things up.
👉Okay, this is the audience participation part of the show. Pick an object and write down as many uses of that object as you can. Don’t stop until you’ve hit at least thirty.
Seriously, do it right now. Take three minutes and have some fun. You deserve it.
⏰(start 3:00 timer)
How did it make you feel?
