

Finding Creative People Is Easy (And Here's How) - grellas
http://www.theatlantic.com/life/archive/2011/06/finding-creative-people-is-easy-and-heres-how/240069/

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wccrawford
Oh jeez. At the first sentence I hoped the answer was not going to be
'Everyone is creative', but yup, there it is.

No, they aren't. 'Creative' as a attribute for a person means that they have
creative impulses and aren't afraid to express them. Nobody is arguing that
people are born without brains. They are arguing that people are disinclined
to use their brains in that fashion, or that it's difficult for them.

When it comes to coding, I'm amazingly creative and I have no problem
admitting it.

When it comes to visual, audio, or any other artistic expression, I cannot
claim to be creative at all. I'm simply not that kind of person. I would love
to be! I want to play piano, and draw, and write novels... But I know the
effort involved in doing those things far surpasses the effort needed to be
creative at programming on the same scale.

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RyanMcGreal
> No, they aren't.

You seem to be confusing "creative" with "artistic". Creativity can mean a
customer service employee coming up with an imaginative, memorable and
successful way of satisfying an upset customer. It can mean a driver finding
ways to shave five or ten minutes off a delivery route. It can mean a coffee
shop owner turning a "cash only" sign into a "we accept these currencies" sign
(as per a recent HN post). It can mean reorganizing a paper route to reduce
"dead-walking". It can mean finding a way to cut 50 pounds of onions without
getting teary-eyed. It can mean reorganizing a desk to make it more effective.
It can mean taking the time to codify a word-of-mouth business process in a
clear process document. It can mean a manager setting up a venue for staff
meetings that encourages meaningful participation. It can mean tweaks to an
assembly procedure that reduce errors.

I'm firmly of the opinion that there is no job so menial and mechanical that
it can't benefit from creative input by the people doing it. Companies that
cherish and empower their employees unleash these kinds of creative
improvements and enjoy the productivity gains they produce.

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wccrawford
Since I very clearly wrote that I'm 'creative' when it comes to programmer,
I'm sure I'm not confusing those things.

~~~
RyanMcGreal
Maybe I misunderstood you, but it seemed to me that you were circumscribing
creativity to 'traditionally' creative activities, like music, painting,
programming, and so on. My point is that you can be creative in _any_ field of
human activity, even fields we don't normally associate with creativity.

