How To Be Creative
By Dr. Marciene Mattleman
PHILADELPHIA (CBS) - Mention creative people: response Steve Jobs. But a lead weekend article in The Wall Street Journal assures us that creativity is a skill that anyone can learn, not an inherited trait.
Take Arthur Fry, an engineer who sings in a church choir, using little pieces of paper to mark his parts in his hymnal. Encouraged by a presentation at work where glue did not stick, he used the weak glue idea to create a reusable bookmark, hence the Post-it Note!
Recently, researchers have studied how innovations appear to spring from nowhere and through developing puzzles; scientists have identified ten conditions under which insight is fostered: being surrounded by the color blue, grogginess in early morning, daydreaming more, moving from a small city to a larger one, living abroad among others.
Long before Jobs said, '"creativity is just connecting things," Guttenberg transformed a wine press to a printing machine. Read Jonah Lehrer's fascinating article "How to be Creative" and give it a shot.
