Creative activity and creativity

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Designed to understand the essence of creative activity, how and why it is needed to be done, describes the stages of the creative process, creative capabilities, problems and consequences of creativity

For a person to realize his personal destination, it is necessary for him to think of and create something new and unique - a masterpiece, opus. To do this, he must engage himself in cognitive, practical and creative activities.

Cognitive activity - is the activity of the system, during the execution of which it gains knowledge about itself and the environment.

Practical activity - is the activity of the system, during the execution of which it acquires abilities based on existing knowledge and exerts an influence on itself and the environment to change its own state or the state of other systems.

Creative activity - is the activity of the system, during the execution of which it uses personal abilities to create new and useful systems, improve the existing ones or destroy the harmful ones.

The main difference between creative activity and practical activity is the uniqueness of the result. It is difficult to predict the consequences of creative activity and almost impossible to get the same result, even if we repeat the same process with the same initial conditions.

In the process of creative activity, imagination is used to combine existing knowledge and ideas to get a new, unique result.

This obtained result allows one to solve a specific problem and achieve the set goal. Therefore, this result has an additional significance, something that is absent in the results of practical activity, which actually creates copies.

By engaging in creative activity, man changes the environment as well as himself. He gets new opportunities that allow him to exert even more beneficial influence and develop even more.

Creative activity is necessary in any subject area, in any profession. In all areas, there are unresolved problems and a huge potential for development.

In order to maintain the creative process, a person must be in good physical condition. One cannot consume junk food, alcohol, smoking etc. And indulge as much as possible in sports. This provides the intellect with the necessary nutrients and protects it from any harmful influence.

The main tool for performing creative activity is the special creative thinking - creativity.

Creativity - a set of capabilities of the system that allow generating principally new, original, unconventional ideas and use the previously unused tools for solving problems and achieving goals.

It is characterized by elevated intellectual activity for harnessing the capabilities of the consciousness, fore-consciousness and sub-consciousness with the goal of finding more efficient ways to solve the original problem.

In daily life, creativity manifests in the form of a hint – the capability to boldly, non-trivially and wit fully find a way out of a desperate, sometimes critical situation using extremely limited and non-specialized tools and resources.

Creativity allows being more sensitive to the problems, lack of knowledge or contradictory nature of knowledge. This allows one to determine the direction in which it is necessary to develop for gaining the opportunity to resolve known issues and achieve specific goals.

Every person has creativity, just like talent, right from the moment of birth. One should not think that only special people, who work in the largest scientific and inventive, advertising and similar companies, have it. There certainly are such people but they occupy their positions because they consciously, actively and continuously develop their creativity. Everyone is capable to do so, the main thing is - to have the intention of developing creativity.

But in the process of upbringing, getting education and interaction with other people, man begins to think stereotypically, as it usually is in his environment. This is the main reason that a person ceases to engage in creative activity, and begins to only emulate and copy already existing ideas.

Such an activity is useless for the super-system because it does not create any additional worth for it. Such people become useless, they do not get the resources to achieve personal goals and in the end, become neglected history.

To avoid such a situation, a person needs continuous development of creativity and execution of everything possible to realize the destination. It is necessary to force oneself to generate a non-standard, original idea in any suitable situation, and to realize it.

Creativity is very widely used and developed in a variety of intellectual games, when one needs to find an original solution to the given problem. In such games, the intellect begins to "play" the various options based on personal experience.

Because the main component responsible for generating original ideas is the imagination, therefore for the development of creativity, one can use training for the development of imagination.

Creative capabilities

Creativity is a set of capabilities. They allow one to clearly understand how creativity appears and what is necessary for its development.

These capabilities include:

Fluency - the capability to generate a lot of ideas in a set time. It allows one to find out several ways of solving problems and determine the most suitable ones.

Originality - is the capability to generate new, innovative, original ideas, which differ from the known or the obvious ones. The better this capability is developed, the sooner psychological inertia is overcome, which limits the thinking to standard templates and assures of the unreality and futility of original ideas.

Flexibility - the capability to use different ways to generate original ideas and quickly switch between the methods and ideas.

Openness - the capability to perceive new information from outside for a long time while solving a problem, instead of using the available experience and to not adhere to standard stereotypes.

Receptivity - the capability to find contradictions in a usual situation, unusual details, uncertainty. It allows one to find the unusual in the usual, the simple in the complex.

Imagery - the capability to generate ideas in the form of single, solid mental images.

Abstractness - is the capability to generate common, complex ideas based on private, simple elements. It allows one to compile and build a single image of the problem on the basis of simple, unrelated knowledge and ideas.

Detail - is the capability to scrutinize the problem till the moment of complete understanding of each of its element. It allows one to break the problem into parts, analyze it for as long until the basic nature of the problem and its tiniest elements become clear.

Verbal - the process of breaking a single imaginative idea into separate words and the highlighting of significant parts. It helps to clarify the structure of the problem and the relationship between its elements, and share this information with others for collaborative problem-solving.

Stress Tolerance - the capability to act and to generate ideas in a new, unusual, previously unknown environment.

Determining these capabilities within oneself and their conscious development allows to significantly improving the originality and usefulness of the generated ideas. This provides for an increase in success and accelerates the process of realizing the destination.

The creative process and its stages

Creativity has a certain creative process that is repeated each time in getting a unique result.

The essence of creativity is to use personal talent and imagination to solve problems, achieve goals and realize the destination. The result of the creative process is a new and unique element that improves its creator or the environment and provides new opportunities.

The creative process consists of the following stages:

1. Training

One formulates the problem and the intention to solve it appears. Consciousness is filled with knowledge from all the available sources (memory, books, magazines, Internet ...). Hypothesis and assumptions are put forward. In a short period of time one tries to solve the problem based on the existing ability of consciousness.

2. Processing

If the opportunity proves to be not enough, then the temporary diversion to another problem or affair is performed. At this time, problem-solving moves for processing from the consciousness to the sub-consciousness. The subconscious processes commence, invisible to the man, and perform the automatic generation of new ideas to obtain an acceptable solution.

3. Inspiration

After generating the ideas that may allow one to solve the problem, it is transferred from the sub-consciousness to consciousness – inspiration appears. This usually happens suddenly for the consciousness and in totally random situations.

4. Evaluation

After getting the idea, the consciousness evaluates it for its possible use in problem-solving. To do this, it performs the analysis and comparison of the ideas to its own experiences, and determines whether it can be realized in the current environmental conditions.

5. Implementation

If contradictions are not found, then the decision to realize the idea is made. A plan for its realization is made and the actual actions are performed. The result is a tool, method or technology that addresses the real problem.

6. Check

After the realization of ideas and application of the results, it is verified whether the problem is resolved or not. The proof or disproof of the hypotheses and assumptions are performed. If the problem persists, then the process starts again. If the problem is resolved, then one proceeds to the solution of the next problem.

Subconscious stage of the creative process

A special place in the creative process is occupied by the stage of processing the problem. Its uniqueness lies in the fact that problem-solving is performed unnoticed by the special ability of man -the sub-consciousness.

As described in the method Generation of useful ideas, the sub-consciousness receives information simultaneously about all the objects of the environment. Processing of this information takes place in parallel and seamlessly.

The sub-conscious process can be compared to a chemical reaction:
- The molecules are in some space
- Their arbitrary displacement and collisions take place
- As a result of collisions, the colliding molecules can combine and new molecules can be made
- Or the molecules can, on the contrary, break into separate parts, if the internal bonds were weak

Here, the original molecules - are the knowledge that man possesses. The space in which the molecules are moving - is sub-consciousness. The compounding of molecules - is the combination and synthesis of knowledge by the sub-consciousness. The output of the compounding - is new ideas, which are also used during synthesis.

When the consciousness tries to solve the problem, it restores the existing knowledge from the memory and this knowledge can help solve this problem. If this knowledge is not enough, knowledge is transferred to fore-consciousness, where they are combined. But in the fore-consciousness, only the knowledge that has been transferred from the consciousness can be used. If the combining of all this knowledge does not give ideas to solve problems, they are passed on to the sub-consciousness.

The sub-consciousness connects to the consciousness of the super-system – super-consciousness, which has a lot of additional knowledge and ideas, unknown to the system. Then, in the sub-consciousness, knowledge and ideas transferred from the fore-consciousness and the super-consciousness are combined and synthesized.

The generated ideas are not transmitted directly to the consciousness; their “power” is checked. This means that when they are combined with other knowledge and ideas, a check for contradictions is performed and the stability of relationships between knowledge is verified. If the contradictions are not found and the internal connections are stable, such an idea is identified as a useful combination of consciousness and passed for evaluation, realization and verification.

If the consciousness assesses the idea as unnecessary or useless for solving the problem in the current environment with the available capabilities, it is returned to the sub-consciousness in order to be re-combined.

And if the evaluation of the idea was positive, the decision to realize it is taken. Then the subconscious process to address the problem stops.

At some point a person can feel a subconscious process. He "sees" how the mixing of knowledge and ideas takes place and new ideas are created. This occurs when a person is in a relaxed atmosphere that is free of active consciousness, for example, before or after a nap.

It is in such conditions that combination takes place at maximum rate and the idea is quickly transferred to the consciousness. When consciousness, on the contrary, lies in increased activity and performs work unrelated to creative thinking, then ideas are generated very slowly.

Therefore, people in a state of creative thinking are called "thoughtful." They seem to be disconnected from the real world and go into the private world of ideas. If a person performs any parallel activities, such as walking down the street or collecting things, he can seem to act like a clumsy and absent-minded man.

Implications of the implementation of creative activity

The use of creativity in practice can increase the risk of causing harm. This is because of the lack of experience in using new, untested ideas and tools to solve a specific problem or achieve a goal. However, with experience and development of creativity, one comes to understand which original ideas are useful and which are harmful.

Some people who have developed creativity unconsciously feel insecure, uncomfortable due to their non-standard creative thinking. It is important to explain to such people that they are very useful, and send them in the right direction. Besides the development of creativity, they should also develop self-confidence.

With the development of creativity, there is a belief that any, even the most absurd and unrealistic idea, will help to achieve a specific goal. This belief is one of the motives, which drive the realization of revolutionary ideas and creation of new, huge systems that solve global problems. As Henry Ford said, "You can believe that you can. You can believe that you cannot. In both cases, you're right."

Many successful people say that 30-50% of the success of their projects and companies is brought by creative, original ideas generated by them, or by specially employed professionals with a well-developed creativity. Similarly, they note a vicious circle - creativity brings new successes, and they, in turn, are a source of creativity and inspiration. This suggests that man and creativity are a single entity that cannot exist without each other.

Therefore, constantly spend your personal time in developing creative activity and creative capabilities. This will always have a beneficial effect on the success. Do not stop engaging in creative activities, because it is - the main tool in the realization of destination.

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