On Creativity

I used to write more I was young. I remember my family always said I was as talented writer as a kid (wonder what happened huh). Every year, I remember painstakingly drafting my submission to the palo alto online writing contest and scholastic art and writing awards, much at the urging of my mother. Maybe it’s because my parents were never the greatest English speakers (though better than most immigrants who immigrated at the age they did, to be fair), but I think they significantly overhyped my writing abilities to young me. What did stick with me though was the love of creative pursuits. Drawing, doodling, later video editing, all stuck with me a to a far greater extent than writing did. I think most people underestimate the value of creativity and especially how creative they themselves are / can be. With the rise of agrarian societies, we saw specialization of labor and emergence of art. Why? Because when we as a species solved the immediate problem of putting food on the table each day, we could afford to spend time specializing and dilly-dallying. With that down time, we turned to art — cave paintings, pottery, sculpture. These were the ones that lasted at least, think about how much art produced was probably on volatile materials that lasted only ephemerally. So what does this mean? I think it means that some of the highest forms of self-actualization, aka the highest level of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, involves creative work, for a vast majority of humans. Maslow’s hierarchy is a psychological concept, often represented as a pyramid, where each ascending layer represents a human need that can only be fulfilled when the layers below it are satisfied. In order it goes: (1) Physiological needs, (2) safety needs, (3) love and belonging, (4) esteem, (5) self-actualization. Anecdotally this rings extremely true. I’m lucky enough to have never seriously had to worry about (1) and (2), but at times where I’ve felt lonely, notably the first year of college, I became extremely consumed with seeking out relationships. We see this behavior heavily in children: middle and high schoolers forming cliques, vying for friendship and belonging. When I felt more or less secure in my friendships and family 99% of the time, my attention would then drift to (4), taking the form of getting a job, getting good grades, getting prestigious admissions to programs/schools, etc. More recently, I landed Google and SIG internships, and transferred to Columbia. I could talk nobly about how I became disillusioned with the process, rejected prestige and rebuked the rat race, but that would be a lie. I just got lucky with a little bit of hard work. I think I’m now at a place, where I haven’t been in a while, where I feel satisfied about the level of “prestige” I have “achieved.” I put quotes here because these all feel like arbitrary goalposts decided by a collective group of people, and the big achievement was simply getting passage through the gates. Alls to say as of late I feel extremely satisfied with (1) - (4). I feel like my life is in a great place. I have my self criticisms as I always do, my constant striving to improve, but all in all I’m peaking. And it’s at this new peak that I’m finally becoming engulfed with (5). I spend all day thinking about what videos I want to make, how I can get this camera shot that I want, how many reels I can pump out as a result. I daydream about color grades and video concepts, and I genuinely feel the urge to create artistically moving content. There’s a longer list of factors at play that make video creating so appealing to me, see this inspiring blog post for what I think they are. Now back to my main point — people are far more creative than they think they are, and corporate jobs are sucking the creativity out of people. I generally think there are two ways of approaching work. You can either work to live or live to work. The first views work as a means of earning a foundation, usually fiscally, that can support life outside of work, whether that takes the form of hobbies, family, etc. The second is when work itself is the hobby/passion that you would otherwise seek to support. The vast majority of the working world falls into category 1. Work is work and life is life. Work earns wages, those wages go on to support a lifestyle outside of work. High pay and work life balance are the most sought values. I’m going to spend the rest of this blog analyzing category 1, both because the majority of work falls into this category, and because most people probably engage in tasks that would fall into category 1 work. Generalizing, category 1 work is fundamentally extrinsically motivated—whether by deadlines, financial or social pressures, or other external pressures. We don’t generally enjoy this type of work. Why? Partly because it sucks the creativity out of things, and people love creativity. They love creativity because it gives them autonomy. Autonomy enables self expression and freedom, and can lead to a host of other factors that fuels work we love: social excitement (showcasing your work to others), novelty, learning, tangible results. Neel Nanda talks about motivations for work in his blog which I really recommend. Ideally, we incorporate some sort of creativity back into our work. Here are some tips that I do: • Change the environment - music, new scenery, new desk arrangement — makes me feel like i’m a character in a different world, helps me embody my work. • Explicate the constraints - I once learned that creativity functions on constraints. Constraints let us know what we can be creative about and what we can’t. If my English teacher has strict rules on grammar for an essay on American Culture, I probably can’t write in any which way I want, but I can be very creative on which topic in American Culture I write on (I think I chose second generation asian american experience). • Give time - stress and deadlines bring external factors that force work into category one. • Try your best to satisfy Maslow’s hierarchy (1) - (4). Easier said than done I know, but having food, shelter (obviously), and a strong support network of friends/family/loved ones frees us up to focus on self actualization ↔ autonomy ↔ creativity