Creativity is a talent with which all people are born and that some of us have something rusty. To activate it, in addition to using creative techniques, we can play games, modify our environment and drink beer in a very specific way.

Apart from the creative materials, I have been able to experiment with activities and board games that serve to develop empathy, collaborations, storytelling, visual language and creativity (divergent thinking in particular). These skills are the necessary pillars to work optimally in innovation processes such as design thinking , and it is necessary to activate them systematically.The key in all these initiatives is to look for the loopholes through which we can operate, instead of looking at what other people are doing and lamenting that we can’t. If we can’t have a creative room, let’s have a creative box with the same philosophy and bring it to the meeting rooms. And now that we can’t have face-to-face meetings, let’s take them to virtual spaces such as collaborative whiteboards (Mural or Miro type).

With these playful activities we not only increase the possibilities of innovating, but those who participate know each other better, feel better and are activated, so they are also more productive and productive; and if you find yourself obliged to work remotely, then you need to find the corresponding alternatives, even if they are not identical. The approach is “How could I…?” applied to the creative process.

How beer can make you more creative

Creative techniques are not enough. Creative processes are not enough. I have been able to see it live and direct countless times. If you put any ten people in a room and brainstorm ideas, I could predict how original they would be, based on their profiles. If they all look alike, have the same seniority, training and tasks…, it is likely that their proposals are limited to a similar scope, and this does not change in the duration of a one-hour session, or a design thinking process .

The brain generates new ideas by combining elements. If the pieces you have are similar, you will be able to find fewer combinations than if they are numerous and varied. In other words, the more experiences, data, knowledge and insights you have, the more combinations are possible and therefore the more original your ideas can be.

For example, so as not to have to go very far, and within your usual routine –so that it doesn’t take you time–, the next time you go out for a beer, have a drink or have a family reunion, try something different. Whether the first beer is of another brand than usual, or the wine, the water, the starters, the main course or the dessert, it doesn’t matter. “Feed” your curiosity. It can work with new readings, music and walk routes.

If you get in the habit of trying new things every day or every week, you will be giving your neurons new information to process and a new pattern to match. As a personal recommendation, make sure that these new things are legal and do not endanger your personal integrity or that of others!

Resilience needs creativity

For years I have been clear that the world needs a lot of creativity to solve global problems. Now, in addition, we are in a difficult moment for many people and it is time to reinvent themselves at full speed, as individuals and as companies.

In the latest Linkedin Learning 2021 report, resilience takes first place for the most important skill to develop this year. In the text they quote Gemma Leigh Roberts, who explains it this way: “Improving resilience is about creating your advantage at work. […] It’s not just about learning how to cope exceptionally well with challenges, but also learning how to thrive and reach your full potential.”

In other words, resilience is our ability to withstand the storm and reinvent ourselves. Creativity is the basic skill to be able to do it and, play, the safest context to develop it.

Reference

Article first published here:

PINO, Begoña. «Creatividad: es momento de la ludorrevolución (#playfulrevolution)». COMeIN [en línea], junio 2021, no. 112. ISSN: 1696-3296. DOI: https://doi.org/10.7238/c.n112.2145

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I met Stephen years ago, at the Edinburgh University Shukokai Karate Club, and his personality and mine clicked almost instantly. We have kept in touch over the years and now we both live in Madrid, and are crative buddies.

He is a creative person, and a master of Silat, a not very well known martial art, and who better than him to open this section of Creators in the blog by Creative Sensei.

I have broken down the interview in three sections, and will complete it with some summaries soon.

Part 1

• Childhood
• Creativity
• Practice
• Work (vs. discipline)

Part 2

• photography
• martial arts
• painting
• pottery

Part 3

• acting
• chocolate (dopamine, and creativity)
• future, being present, flow, challenge

Be present

Find Stephen

• the photographer: https://www.stephenrasmussen.com/
• the martial artist: @artofsilat (instagram)
• the actor: @salvadoragency

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Distributed collaboration has existed for ever, but right now, due to global Covid-19 pandemic, many people have been thrown at the challenge to collaborate remotely in a visual manner. Here are some quick tips from CreativeSensei.com on how to go about running a productive brainstorming session with a distributed team. I will share them in a relevance order (my own criteria), to offer a range of solutions to different challenges and possibilities.

• Remote distributed brainstorming – for team visual ideation (alternative to sticky notes), with ad hoc teams, non-designers
• Remote design team of 6 – a permanent team of designers or creative types, who need to collaborate over time (offline) and in real time
• Distributed asyncronous collaboration of 20 people around the globe – when you have a distributed team in different time frame, and have to collaborate but there is no need for it to be simultaneously (can be “asyncronous”)
• Hybrid Brainstorming sessions with remote participants – when you have a physical meeting and only one or two members are in a remote location, but you want to work analogically (hands on) in real time

Remote distributed brainstorming

For the past month I have been exploring the possibilities of online collaborative visual tools for different purposes (design, ideation, agile projects, communication). There are several tools out there and the two main ones I have found out are Mural and Miro, both great, according to reviews.

Here is a report on the Total Economic Impact of using Mural.

I had an earlier experience as a participant with Miro, and saw its potential. Since I wanted to evaluate it, I created a free account to test it (maximum 3 board, 8 users). I believe Mural probably offers similar features, so do check them both out to see which one suits you.

I have run 2 sessions with 3-4 participants, 2 demo sessions and 1 session with two teams of 6 people working in parallel in two separate boards, while in a whole teams videoconference. It is not extensive but enough to gather some insights:

• Start small, gain experience, then grow team size, session duration or complexity of the tasks.

Here is a quick tutorial of Remote Brainstorming I put together to setup a basic brainstorming session in Miro

• Prepare carefully.
  • Allocate time for participants to become familiar with the platform (think 20-30′ for first timers)
  • Setup creative warmups (10-20′ for people not used to creative assignments, maybe more if the group is big and/or people don´t know each other)
  • Create collaboration areas for different tasks during the sessions and include summary of instructions
  • Time tasks as usual… but then be prepared to give extra time, both for more explanations and for each brainstorming rounds (or whatever the task)
• set clear rules and expectations:
  • everybody needs to be extra patient, there will be more time needed for everything
  • for more than 4 participants, establish a way to be mostly quiet, while giving people opportunity to share questions. After you explain a task, ask if anyone has a question (do this all the time)
• recommended: have a helper to respond to technical issues over the chat (or the phone), so the facilitator focuses on running the session.
• very nice to have: independent audio channels for small team collaboration. There should be a general workshop channel (ie. teams videoconference), and a separate channel for each team, via a specific tool, over the phone… whatever.

Remote design team of 6

In 2014 I met my new team members from another location through skype, and it was a while until we actually met in person. Since we have been designing user experiences for web and mobile since, we needed to communicate visually quite a lot. Over the years we have been using several tools, at different times, for different reasons:

• Communication: video conference (google hangout, gotomeeting, skype, teams), email and phone (team calls), whatsapp
• Project coordination: trello, analog kanban, jira
• File sharing: network space, google drive, sharepoint, onedrive
• Prototypes: Axure, marvel app, pop
• Visual communication of ideas:
  • Paper and photo: rough sketch on paper, take a photo, send photo in real time while in call (if showing sketch to camera was not good enough)
  • Online whiteboard: tested some free web based whiteboard, but not very formal (google “online free whiteboard” to find out current applications)
  • Microsoft Teams Whiteboard: recently discovered Teams whiteboard (it is an option while in a call meeting, tricky to find), which for a quick explanation may be enough for many users. It has 5 colours and the precision of the drawing pencil is a little rough, but sufficient to sketch a diagram for clarification.
  • Miro for design, ideation and drawing: Currently exploring Miro’s visual collaboration possibilities, with drawing capabilities and UX templates (user persona, empathy map, product roadmap, wireframes…). As for drawing, it provides a variety of colours, thickness and, while using the ipad app, with a stylus, it can be quite precise. It also offers smart drawing, a beta function that creates perfect form out of hand drawing.

Distributed asyncronous collaboration of 20 people around the globe

In 2012 I signed up for “A Crash Course on Creativity“, an experimental MOOC created by Stanford University professor Tina Seelig, and run over a collaborative learning platform called Venture Lab (now Novoed).

The challenge was to generate at least 100 solutions for sleep problems, in 4 weeks, and the original team was composed by 20 people distributed across the globe in all sort of time frames. We run some meetings in real time, over Facebook, but most of the work I did was offline. We were testing tools and delivery methods Some of the tools we used back then:

• Coordination/documenting: google docs, google calendar, google spreadsheets, timezone tool, facebook group
• Voting ideas: google forms, facebook poll
• Visual tools: google image search, wordle (for word clouds), mindmaps (Mindmeister, slatebox), google presentation

Hybrid Brainstorming sessions with remote participants

In 2016 I run a few brainstorming sessions in our office with a couple of participants located in another office. We ensured they have access to the same analogic materials (pens, sticky notes and plasticine, mostly) and we run the usual brainwriting rounds (brainstorming where you write one idea in one sticky note, rather than voicing ideas).

We used videoconferencing to run the session, but the main canvas was in our office, where we hosted 6 other participants. We took note in a sticky note of the ideas of the distributed members (they told us over the phone) and place them in the panels, and we took pictures of the panels to send them the section they had to work on. It was a little work intensive and it took some extra time, but it was a way to include remote participation of a few people.

Around two years ago, we run a bigger creativity workshop with 20+ people in one office and 8 in another, where there was another facilitator. We tried to run the workshop together for the most part, but due to communication difficulties, it was mainly two parallel sessions, although the results would add up.

April 2020 @ CreativeSensei.com

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The term builds on the concept of Minimum Effective Dose made popular by Tim Ferriss when addressing whatever treatment or procedure: it refers to the least amount of effort, amount, including length of time, necessary to achieve a desired goal. It can be applied to a health treatment, a fitness goal and the like.

Before Tim Ferriss, I had been familiar with Pareto’s Principle, which more or less states that 20% of your efforts will yield 80% of the results. I applied it to everything from weight training to specific technical training when I was doing competitive sports. Even to work related projects… trying to provide value early on the process and maybe move onto another project when that 80% result was reached.

Regarding creativity, when I had my son, for the first few years I had little free time between full time job, commuting and family. Although I love photography and video, I didn´t have time for video, nor for too much photography. I managed to run a personal project #lunchbreak which was a series of individual portrait sessions of nine of my work colleagues, over lunch time, in a spot near the office. It spanned over 18 months since it was hard to get organised, with availability and the like. In total, less than 20 hours of work (more or less). The point is that I found the cracks in my busy schedule to find time for a creative endeavour.

Some time later, I was still yearning for something else… and I got it thanks to a mobile phone and instagram. I started an ongoing minimal project #onmywaytowork where the cracks on my schedule was my commuting to and from work. I would shoot a picture to something that grab my attention during my trip, edit very quickly and upload it to instagram, sometimes in less than a minute. I had found my photographic minimum creative output.

Similarly I have found different minimum creative outputs in other domains:

• Drawing: icons, drawing patterns in a small sticky note
• Video: a 15’’ tiktok clip
• Writing: free haiku, a tweet
• Music: a musical phrase on a keyboard or a diy fretless one string guitar (didley bow)

The whole point is that they take a minute or less, very little gear and minimal skill. At this level, we are not aiming at quality, but getting started, gaining creative confidence, expanding our comfort zone, feeding our brain by learning skills from zero, acquiring the habit to be creative… Of course, if you already have some skill, maybe the benefit is in creating a body of work to show for all your creative thinking.

Some times I think that creativity is the tangible of our imagination, what I called creative thinking. Never mind the terms, just go and make something for the fun of it. And keep doing it.

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I have set up the #1minutecreativechallenge to take you from zero to 1 in your creativity quotient, be that first level based on developing creative confidence or creative habit.

Why?

Creative confidence is a necessary ingredient to use the creative superpowers we are all born with. Children have both, the superpower and the conviction they have it (or, more like, a complete disregard about such a thing), they just create all the time. Adults have a life long history of a) not using their creativity and b) believing they don´t have it.

So, instead of showing you research that proves you wrong, I just want you to get to it, one minute at a time, because it is all it takes to create the Minimum Creative Output. If you are ready to commit a total of 21 minutes of your time, (in small 1 minute units), you will have a body of work of 21 small pieces to prove it to yourself. Your first creative portfolio.

Ok, I’m not talking about quality or super-original work, just a first small stretch of your creative mind. Just a proof and the first building block of your creative confidence. After that, there will be bigger challenges to take you further in your creative path if you choose to do so.

Then, there is a creative habit you need to incorporate to your day if you want to become more creative. The challenge is setup for 21 days because according to experts, this is the minimum amount of days it may take to acquire a new habit. And it is enough to test it, and to start transforming your mindset. In sports, they normally talk about 6 weeks to see fitness changes, and I would advise you to keep going for 6 weeks if we take creativity as a muscle that needs training. However, the purpose of the challenge is to take you from zero to 1 in a 0-10 creativity scale, and 21 days is a smaller and more achievable commitment.

The #1minutecreativechallenge

1. Choose one creative domain: writing, drawing, photography, cooking, dancing (or any other)
2. Choose one specific output for your chosen domain. Here are some ideas (but you can define your own):
   • Writing:
     • Write an original thought about a topic you are passionate about (tweet size)
     • Write a haiku – a japanese poetry form composed of three lines of 5, 7 and 5 syllabae respectivelly (research for more details)
   • Drawing:
     • Draw small icons of concepts you talk about all the time. You can google the word + icon and then do a freehand version of it, but the list has to be relevant to your work or interests
     • Listen to some music and doodle around it, for 1 minute. You can video record it, or take a snapshot after you have done it.
   • Photography: 
     • choose a theme of your interest and take a picture a day. No need to edit it.
     • Take a picture of whatever grabs your attention during your way to work, school or other daily journey. (see my instagram account @creativesenseiway #onmywaytowork for inspiration)
   • Cooking: 
     • Cook dinner (or lunch, or whatever) with up to 5 ingredients you already have and take a picture.
   • Dancing:
     • Play some music and start dancing. You may play the same music every time, but need to move differently. don´t worry about cool movements, choreagraphy or the like… funny movements will cover the goal, as long as they are different than previous ones. Video record (this is good for tiktok, but take a snapshot if you are shy)
3. Register your output:
   • Take a snapshot, video, or the like, so you have a permanent record of you output. Decide on one formula and stick with it
4. Share it daily in social media (at least in one of these: Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, TikTok) with the hashtags #1minutecreativechallenge and #21dayscreativehabitchallenge. 
5. After you 21 days (you may skip a day or two every now and again, but make sure you create 21 items),
   • you will have completed the challenge, and I’m sure you will feel a little more creative -even if just a tiny bit.
   • This is the time to look at your body of work, put it together in one screencapture or gallery of some sort and share it with the above hastags plus #6Bcreatives.
   • You are now part of a quest to increase the global creative quotient.
6. What now? 
   • Seek out new challenges to keep developing your creative superpowers
   • Share the challenge with others you think may benefit from it, and encourage them to give it a chance. Become a Creative ‘Senpai’ (the senior student who teaches others)

Now go and use your creative superpowers!

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I will be sharing everything I know and learn on the way to help anyone interested to increase their creativity. That involves acquiring creative confident, creative mindset, creative habit, and creative pursuits. Together with related information I will be setting up challenges to get people from zero to 1, and then move forward on their Creative Sensei Way.  A Sensei is a master, and I am convinced we are born with the necessary abilities to become a creative master.

So, how will I know I have succeeded? Well, according to current population, I have set an arbitrary number of 6 Billion (6.000.000.000) people in order to consider my quest a success. By measuring up the number of people who use this hashtag #6Bcreative, which is to be used only once by an individual, when they complete at least one of the creative challenges I am going to put out.

Yes I know it is very ambitious and not very realistic. My first goal is roughly… get the first 6 :) I’m aware I will not be able to achieve this on my own, so I ask everyone with a circle of influence on and offline, to join me on this quest, and make yourselves known to me either by following me on social media or adding #6Bcreativesenpai to your posts… Although I would rather know who you are by messaging :)

1. The very first challenge is about gaining creative confidence, by taking one minute a day for 21 days to create something minimal and sharing it with the hashtag #1minutecreativechallenge.

Credits (and sources of inspiration):

• I was inspire to go on a long term quest by an interview of Marie Forleo with Chris Guillebeau titled “The secret to more meaning and adventure”
• I decided to make the goal uber-unrealistc after listening to Vishen Lakhiani’s Mindvalley podcast titled “Winners are not realistic”

Now go and use your creative superpowers!!

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