Being creative isn’t always about what’s right in front of you. Often, being creative means learning to subdue your common sense while harnessing your subconscious thinking to work more effectively in creating ideas and solutions.
Part 1 (below) focuses on common sense: Being Creative vs Common Sense.
Or, jump to Part 2: Stimulating your subconscious for creativity.
How Common Sense Gets in The Way
Many years ago, I attended a creative workshop called “Beyond Common Sense” run by Geoff Nightingale who worked extensively with Burson-Marsteller in the 1980s.
In his training presentation to our group of creative directors, he firmly believed that creativity is rarely about what you already know.
“Your known knowns,” he said. “Often we think of this type of knowledge as our ‘common sense,’ or information that we firmly believe is truthful because so many other people believe it with us.”
Just in case, here’s a more precise definition of common sense:
One’s sound understanding and judgment, but not based on specialised education; this truth is shared by (or ‘common to’) nearly all people.
He was just getting revved up.
“More often than not, it’s what you don’t know that influences and stimulates creativity,” I wrote in my notes. “Or, maybe your best creativity comes from what you don’t know you don’t know.”
In my aging notes, I drew the scribbles that Geoff drew on the flipchart in the training room. (My modern version is below.)
Confused yet?
A. What You Know You Know
In creative thinking, we often start with this intelligence: information we know we know.
Common sense takes this intelligence one step further. We are convinced what we know is right because so many other people believe it too, therefore it must be right.
The problem is we often rely too much on our common sense when we’re trying to be creative.
Yes, common sense tells us how to use the intelligence we have, to apply it to problems or oportunities, or to put it into immediate practice through ideas and implementation.
But, being too knowledgable also prevents us from taking in or considering the vast scope of information that we don’t know.
As Geoff explained, if an idea generated doesn’t fit the immediate truth of common sense, our thinking diminishes – if not kills outright – our ability to be creative.
B. What You Know You Don’t Know
Long before Adam Grant proclaimed Think Again: The Power of Knowing What You Don’t Know, the Greek philosopher Socrates had already noted: I know one thing: that I know nothing.
In the same train of thought, Socrates also said: The only true wisdom is in knowing you know nothing.
While there are many other quotes in this same vein, they all come to a similar point. There is incredible value in knowing what you don’t know.
It even becomes a strength, particularly in creative thinking, when you do something about it.
The simplest thing any of us can do is to ask questions about what you don’t know. Let your curiosity takeover.
Learn, and keep learning. (As Grant says in his book: The purpose of learning isn’t to affirm our beliefs, it’s to evolve our beliefs.)
Practice, study, apprentice.
The more difficult tasks are more rewarding, but take courage. Accept the fact we don’t know everything, we can’t ever know everything, and that we’re rarely the expert. Worst of all, we might be stupid!
Challenge yourself. Check your assumptions. Challenge the opinions around you. Don’t accept the easiest ideas.
All of this reminds me of how well do you understand the problem in front of you as a strategic and creative thinking tool.
While we’re in this area, let’s not forget an equally infamous quote, courtesy of Donald Rumsfeld and his infamous press briefing in 2002:
“There are known knowns. These are things we know that we know. There are known unknowns. That is to say, there are things that we know we don’t know. But there are also unknown unknowns. There are things we don’t know we don’t know.”
Perhaps most damning is the Dunning-Kruger Effect which occurs when a person’s lack of knowledge and skills in a certain area causes them to over-estimate their own competence. Or, my favourite line: The first rule of the Dunning-Kruger Club is that you don’t know you’re a member of the Dunning-Kruger Club.
C. What You Don’t Know You Don’t Know
To paraphrase Rumsfeld, this is the unknown unknowns.
If you’re familiar with the Johari Window, this would be area of Unknown (What I don’t know about myself, and What others don’t know about me).
This third and final area is what Geoff called the most important area for creative thinking. In fact, he believed fully that the Big Ideas we’re all searching for are only found in this area.
It’s an area that’s a new world to us. It’s a new area of information that’s unavailable from our present point of view. Because we don’t even realise it exists, we can’t even (yet) understand its full potential and power.
This area is only available to us when we open our mind. We explore: relentlessly, aggressively, happily.
At the same time, we shouldn’t underestimate we might already know things, but we’ve chosen not to remember, for a variety of reasons.
Welcome to the Subconscious Mind
The subconscious mind has been described as a massive memory bank of everything, literally everything, that has ever happened to us. Its capacity is unlimited.
More so, our subconscious mind is the gatekeeper of our comfort zone. We all know great creative ideas do not come from inside our comfort zone, but outside of it. That’s why finding ways to tap into, stimulate and prod the subconscious mind can ultimately be the greatest resource for creative thinking.
Two points, to close.
First and easiest, here’s a great recap by Brian Miller on Medium of Grant’s book: Sometimes in Life You Just Don’t Now What You Don’t Know.
Second, here are my final notes from Geoff’s training: Subconscious? Yes but how? How? Meditation? Psychotherapy? Hallucinogenic drugs? Hypnosis?
He never mentioned what to do, and it bugged me for quite a while.
Ok, fine. I was obsessed. It’s relevant here, but it’s also it’s own article. If you’re interested, here’s part two: How to Harness Your Subconscious.
How have you deal with keeping your common sense when being creative? Please add your thoughts and comments below.
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