How to Master Creativity

Creativity — the desire, propensity, and guts to create, innovate, experiment, and try new things. To attempt new uncharted paths, territories, and to use all the creative tools in your creative toolkit to make in a fun and “iterative” manner:

1. Simplify

“Simple can be harder than complex: You have to work hard to get your thinking clean to make it simple. But it’s worth it in the end because once you get there, you can move mountains.” – Steve Jobs

The desire and will to simplify. The creative act of subtracting the superfluous. To prune excess, subtract the noise, and let in the signal.

2. The desire to be reckless

Stay hungry, stay foolish. (Steve Jobs quoting the last edition of the “Whole Earth Catalogue”)

Children live “dangerously”. Parents are always yelling at kids for jumping on things, climbing trees, etc. Ironically enough when we become adults we gotta figure out ways to “justify” our new behaviors (rock climbing which is essentially climbing trees for adults) in the name of “health”, “productivity”, “mental well being”, so forth. A child doesn’t need to justify anything — a child simply plays!

3. Boundaries are for suckers.

To not allow yourself to fall into a “Procrustean bed” of creativity. Embracing *all* domains of art — not just one reductive category! For example, the art of cross-pollination: calligraphy as a great new source of inspiration for my visual arts.