Chapter 30 Imagination and Creativity.
Let me tell you a true story from Mr John Grahams book, Letters From A SelfMade Merchant To His Son. It is about Lazy Jim, who pestered Mr Graham for a job, and was eventually given one. His first duty was a tiring one, rolling heavy barrels from the warehouse to the railway. Soon he had nothing to do, and was recommended for a promotion! In his hardship, he had invented a belt that conveyed the barrels to the trains! Then he was made one of the better-paid timekeepers. Two months later, he was redundant again. He found a time-card punching machine to take over a few workers job! Next, the task of copying out circular letters was assigned to him, but soon he spotted the newly-invented typewriter and persuaded Mr Graham to get one. This time, the boss had to raise his salary and send him out to get orders for their beef extract product. Later, tired after several fruitless trips, Jim suggested that they should make customers come in, instead of chasing around for them. He sent beef extract to people leaving on explorations and expeditions, and advertised on its food values and compatibility with various occasions. This scheme soon incurred losses. Eventually, Lazy Jim was about to lose his job, when orders started to pour in for their products! Then the sales multiplied, and he had to be given a highly-paid permanent job!
See? If you are creative and imaginative, you can be a little lazy and yet welloff! Norman V. Peale said, „Imagination is the magic carpet. You only need to watch MacGyver on TV to realise the fun and importance of creativity; sometimes, it can save lives. If there were more of him around, we would have more inventions. I am sure you have seen James Bond or a hero, resourcefully throw a live wire into the water to electrocute the thug. There was an incident in the U.S., where a burglary gang stole racks of clothing from stores in one quick sweep, before police could respond to alarm. A resourceful detective had the stores hook their cloth-hangers in irregular positions. This time the thieves got stuck and the police nabbed them! Long ago, in a fairy tale, a dying king was leaving all his possessions to his favourite person, Yusof the slave. His 3 sons were allowed to take one big item each. The first son chose the royal palace, the second clung to a chest of precious gems. The third son had more imagination, he picked Yusof!
Everywhere, creativity can solve problems and boost achievements. Has it ever occurred to you, that you can loosen many things by heating them? Or stiffen things by freezing them? Or improve others by moving, reshuffling, or increasing this or that? To give you some examples: A rocket would weigh 1 million tons to have enough fuel to reach the moon, so they made rockets in stages and jettisoned pieces along the way to ease the burden. A chemist's imagination and secret recipe created the worlds most popular drink, the Coca Cola! Nowadays, vacuum cleaners outmatch the broom, solar power replaces batteries, washing machines relieve back-breaking housewives, remote microphones and guitars allow pop singers to dash across the stage without tripping over wires, and hairpins are made wave-like to cling better to your hair! Endless examples of creativity.
Einstein declared, „Imagination is better than knowledge. And Edison remarked: „There is always a better way. The power of imagination and creativity is the birthplace of human inventions and progress. It allows us to pursue untried methods, and better things. There are champions whose wealth mushroomed quickly from just a single brilliant idea. Remember Rubiks Cube? And recently a little table-top garden on a saw-dust face? Others needed time to gain acceptance; Whittle and von Ohain for example, invented the jet engine for aeroplanes but were ignored for years. Some movie-makers, song-writers and inventors had a tough time selling their ideas, yet they ended up with stunning success. Some top-selling songs were almost thrown into the rubbish initially! So the lesson is: Be patient, and keep at it.
Thousands of reports have surfaced from research on human faculties, and generally they concurred that creativity emerged in these avenues: 1. The creativity of necessity and frustration, where people pursued a better way, or a way out of their problems. 2. The creativity of childlike innocence and curiosity, like a child building on her Lego set! Besides, innocence is unrestrained by exact sciences and rigid knowledge. 3. The creativity of questioning and construction, where we ask questions, put ideas together, or improve on them. This is often termed: Synthetic Creativity. The following are tips on improving your imagination and creativity:
1. Take time off or Sleep on it. Great composers and songwriters have maintained that the best pieces were written in the most unlikely places.
2. Take a fresh look, associate freely. Connect ideas together and to things and seetings outside the context; rest to sharpen your saw.
3. Practice and develop thinking, plus fantasy, and passion for things.
4. Keep Questioning. This is the cradle of improvements and inventions. Ask limitless questions like: Can improvements come from discarding, lowering, heightening, reducing, increasing or mixing something? What about variations in materials, colours, weight, textures, hardness, duration, speed, timing, simplicity, intensity, complexity, quality? Can better image, designs, methods or machinery be used? Can comfort, convenience, relaxation, fun, mystery ingredients and psychological values be improved? What about morale, goodwill, productivity, time and cost saving, new technology, changing tastes and needs, and the future?
In concluding, my advice is: Don't think and act like sheep. Dont always accept the conventional way of doing things, find the best way. Your time is limited; your imagination is not. Enjoy the occasional flight of fancy. Your creativity will build a better future.
"I believe in imagination, what I cannot see is infinitely more important than what I can see." - Duane Michals.
"Many great ideas have been lost because the people who had them couldn't stand being laughed at." - Anonymous.
"If I had to define life in a word, it would be: Life is creation." - Claude Bernard.
"I have found that ideas come when you have a great desire to find them; the mind becomes a kind of watchtower...for any incident that might excite the imagination; music, a sunset, etc, can geminate an idea." - Charlie Chaplin.
"The majority... are incapable of having an original idea because they cannot free themselves from the restraints of logic." - Ogilvy.