Creativity: Types, Qualities, and Practical Steps on How to Be Creative

The word ‘creativity’ comes from the Latin term crea ‘to create or to do’. It is the act of using your own imagination to generate new ideas, events or objects. It refers to the creation of new things. Creativity can also be defined as the process of producing something that is original and valuable. It also involves improving existing ideas or rearranging old things and ideas in new ways. These definitions help us understand that creativity is contrary or contrary to copying.

Creative people try to develop and invent new things to solve problems wherever they are. Creativity is experienced in all fields of human endeavor, such as art, engineering, science, medicine, police, law, commerce, civil service, the military, politics, teaching, etc.

A creative person is someone who can use their own imagination or ideas to come up with new things that are very useful in our activities of daily living. There are two kinds of creative people, namely, the high / genius creative person and the less / ordinary creative person. This classification of creative people depends on three important factors. These are:

• Fluency: the total number of interpretable, meaningful and relevant ideas generated in response to the stimulus.

• Originality: the statistical rarity of responses among test subjects.

• Elaboration: the amount of detail in the answers

Tall / cool creative person

This creative person has more general intellectual habits, such as openness, levels of ideation, autonomy, experience, exploratory skills, etc. He is able to create elements with ease; It comes naturally as if you don’t have to strain. Creative people tend to be more open to new experiences, more self-confident, more ambitious, self-accepting, impulsive, motivated, domineering, and hostile compared to people with less creativity. The lives of the creative geniuses of history were marked by extreme dedication and a cycle of hard work and breakthroughs as a result of their determination.

Less / ordinary creative person

This group of creative people can create, but generally needs direction or guidance. They are limited in their abilities and ideas. They usually struggle before they can create items. Most of them usually need a boost to activate their creative abilities.

There are several traits of a creative person. Some of these are explained below.

(i) He is very curious and eager to learn or discover things about his environment. A creative person always wants to know why things happen the way they do. He asks a lot of questions about things in his environment and is always ready to learn from people how some things were made.

(ii) He is ready to explore or try new things and ideas: a creative person is always thinking about new things, about how to approach a particular topic in a different and more efficient way. You try to explore with various materials, tools, and techniques with the sole aim of addressing relevant issues in your community.

(iii) You work hard and don’t give up easily in times of difficulty. A creative person is not lazy, but he takes what he does seriously. In the course of attention to his work, when faced with a difficulty, a creative person does not give up on work. On the contrary, it quickly generates many ideas on how to deal with the difficulty. Keep trying until you overcome the difficulty you encountered while taking care of your work.

(iv) It is very imaginative, practical and experimental. You are always thinking about how to solve problems by producing or creating functional elements. He is a scientist testing a variety of methods and ideas to come up with a viable tool that is an absolute answer to a problem facing communities and the nation.

(v) Accepts challenges and tasks and completes them: A creative person has a lot of confidence and a great determination to succeed in whatever task is assigned. He is not a coward, but a positive-minded person who is poised to be victorious. He leaves no stone unturned in his work.

(vi) He is always hopeful and self-disciplined. He has high hopes that his work will pay off. It does not lead to disappointment and claims that it cannot be done. He works to meet all deadlines and is loyal to his clients.

(vii) It is original: it does not steal ideas or copy existing ideas, products or articles. On the other hand, it brings new and first-hand ideas. A creative person can also improve the efficiency or viability of an existing item or product. However, it does not copy it, but rather tries to address the shortcomings of the existing product, all in the pursuit of producing a product that better solves the problem at hand.

(viii) He has a great interest and love for what he does. A creative person is very proud of what he does and takes great pleasure in it. This is very evident in the passionate way in which he attends to what he does. The derogatory comment about your work is like a drop of water to put out an uncontrolled fire, it does not affect your disposition and attitude towards your job or profession.

(ix) He is able to adapt to a new situation: he finds his way easily, even in a new environment or situation. Their presence is soon noticed and alarmed. He learns quickly and is able to adapt to his new environment, be it a new duty, workplace, school, etc.

(x) Is able to produce many ideas quickly. He is capable of presenting a wide variety of fresh and well-intentioned ideas. It is a good contributor of knowledge and skills. He is a thinker and a storehouse of ideas.

There are four stages or periods of vibration in the creative process. Each of them is time consuming. The stages are Preparation Period, Incubation Period, Perception or Inspiration Period, and Verification, Elaboration, Perception, and Evaluation Period.

1. Preparation period

This is the first stage of the creative process where the creative person prepares to handle the problem at stake. Gather a lot of information about what you are about to do and explore the dimensions of the problem. It also explores various learning techniques to help you accumulate in-depth knowledge about the work you are about to do.

2. Incubation period

This is the stage of the creative process where you face difficulties while tending to work and then take a temporary break from work. He commits himself to another job in the hope of finding a remedy for the problem he has encountered.

Incubation helps creative problem solving by allowing you to “forget” misleading clues. The absence of incubation can lead the problem solver to obsess over inappropriate strategies to solve the problem. Creative solutions to problems mysteriously emerge from the unconscious mind while the conscious mind is busy with other tasks. So you keep working on other things until you finally find a solution to the problem.

3. Period of insight or inspiration

This is the period during which the creative person finds a solution to the problem he encountered while doing the work. Drop everything and get on with work quickly. This can take days, weeks, months, or even years. It is also known as the period of intimacy and enlightenment.

4. Period of verification, preparation, perception and evaluation

At this stage, the creative person works very hard with great joy with the goal of completing the work. Show your work to friends, family and experts for their appreciation and criticism.