Creativity and the people involved in creative professions are often misunderstood. In-fact: if you aren’t working in a creative industry, you probably have some delusions about creativity and don’t even know it.
The problem with believing in myths about creativity is that anyone who believes in the myths are hindering their own creativity! If you believe in a creativity myth, you are possibly restricting your own creativity.
So when I found an article over at LiveDev.net about 15 Widespread Creativity Myths I knew I had to share it with you.
These 15 myths about creativity are widespread and very false, they include: Creative people are weird, putting a bunch of people together in a large room will produce creative ideas, only creative people have creative ideas, deadlines spark creativity, competition is better than collaboration, creatives are Messy, structure is bad for creative thinking, an idea WILL come in one sitting, creativity requires high-level thinking, the only motivator for creative thinking is money and fear, ridiculous ideas are worthless, only certain jobs use creativity, you’ll never forget your ideas, and better technology will yield more and better idea.
It’s amazing how people still believe in these creative myths today. Here we are in 2008 and creativity is still not taught in schools, leading people to grow up and believe in these types of myths about creativity.
Read through the list and see if there are any creativity myths that you have been believing in, then don’t forget to read through the comments to see what other readers have to say about the 15 myths (and read even more myths that commentators have added themselves).
What myths about creativity have you been believing in? Are there any myths about creativity that really bother you?
Original photo by Chunyang LIN.