Published on | Prototyping: From UX to Front End — Medium Linus Lee

In a few easy steps, I think

Let’s draw something. Drawing can be creative, right?

First, we’ll start with a line. Just any random one will do.

A line’s simple enough. But kind of boring. Let’s make another one.

Hmm… still, something’s not quite working. Let’s just add a few more lines to this. Maybe we’ll see something after a bit…

See anything? A few lines crossing. Maybe… maybe the thing at the top left over there… could be….

… a turtle? I guess. But I’m not sure where this is going. Now we’ve just got a turtle and meaningless random lines. Maybe I’ve got this all wrong. Erase…. erase…

Blank slate! Creative people love starting from scratch, to get a fresh take. Let’s try this again.

Last time, we tried some lines. We know where that went, though, so… instead of lines… maybe circles? Circles are fun.

We’ve got three here. See anything now? … maybe… If you can kind of tilt your head….

a big-eared something or other. If I add some color, though…..

That’s more like it! This guy looks like of friendly, too. But … it’s still not really going anywhere. It’s just a random drawing of a character.

Erase… erase….

Let’s start over. Blank slate. Fresh ideas. Breathe… and …

What if… hm… so, top left corner, if you squint….

Okay, a bunny! That doesn’t look bad. Let me add some shading…

Cool. He kind of looks dead, though… But you know what can make this better, color.

Better.

See? That was easy. Now we’ve got a bunny in a field, and it looks alright.

Hm…

Something’s still off, though.

We managed to get some drawings, and they look fine, but… they’re just drawings. Anyone can draw circles and connect some lines, and that’s all we’ve done.

And worse, I’m trying to tell you how to be more creative. And all we have so far are a bunch of random doodles and me being unsure.

So let me take this again. Deep breath, fresh take…

See, the thing about creativity…

… is that it’s not about what you create…

… or even about what you take away. It’s not really about what you make at all.

It’s about how you see things….

… and about how you see things with your eyes.

Anyone can draw turtles or rabbits or weird men in suits that resemble a certain Disney character with enough practice.

And drawing is a skill. So are painting and writing and even programming and public speaking. Anything “creative” is really a skill.

And they can be learned.

What can’t be practiced is the way you think, and the way you connect your ideas and what you see in ways that are different from other people.

The experiences you have, and the way you approach mundane, ordinary things that might be slightly off from other people — these are unique. They lead you to connect your experiences to what you see in ways that are just different from other people.

And your job isn’t to see what other people are seeing.

But to look harder where you see something different.

Because anyone can draw circles and connect some lines, and that’s all we’ve done.

But the magic isn’t what we do, it’s what we saw.

It’s what you see differently than what I see, and it’s what you do differently as a result.

The pillars of science and math — relativity, calculus, the internal combustion engine — these things are unavoidable discoveries and inventions.

When Einstein was working on his theory of Relativity, a dozen other mathematicians were also attacking the same problems, getting at the same solutions. His equations don’t just bear his name, but also the names Poincare, Hilbert, Lorentz, and Riemann, because these mathematicians saw the same things, because science is just the way things are.

But creativity — the arts, the spoken word — these aren’t the way things are. These are they way you see things.

And because nobody else has lived the same life you have, nobody else will ever come close to seeing things the way you see them.

That means that nobody else — ever, in the history of humanity — will have the chance that you have — the chance to put down what you see.

The chance to talk about what you see wrong, and what you see right. The chance to share what you love and build what you want to see.

It doesn’t have to be groundbreaking or insightful. It can be simple and ordinary, but it’s going to be something your own.

And that’s how you find your creativity.

Not by looking at what you’re building

but by building what you see.

How to find creativity was originally published in prototypr on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

How to find creativity

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