The Best Creativity Advice From Steve Jobs

“Creativity is just connecting things. When you ask creative people how they did something, they feel a little guilty because they didn't really do it, they just saw something. It seemed obvious to them after a while. That's because they were able to connect experiences they've had and synthesize new things.” –Steve Jobs

As defined by Steve Jobs, one of the most creative activities we can do is to look for connections—not between similar concepts (leaf, stem, petals = parts of a flower), but between items that, on the surface, seem to have little or no connection whatsoever. Linking things together is a most creative venture. It creates connections in our brain; but, equally important, it trains us to look for similarities that are not always apparent or obvious.

Source: Kalhh / Pixabay

As thinkers, we frequently get locked into old habits. As a result, it becomes more difficult to discover creative possibilities because our mind is trapped in familiar ways of thinking (often, the result of how we were educated). Here’s one way to break free: Ask a friend or colleague to give you a completely random set of eight words—words that come from diverse fields and have no apparent connection. Or, go through a newspaper or magazine and randomly point to eight separate words. Then, divide the words into as many different categories or classifications as you can (each category must have a minimum of two items) within a two-minute time frame.

For example, I recently asked my wife to give me eight random words. Here’s what she shared: valance, trip, book, snow, sheets, rug, tired, painting. Here are just a few categories I came up with:

• things in the living room (valance, book, rug, painting)
• things with the letter e (valance, sheets, tired)
• white things (snow, sheets, painting)
• things humans do (trip, tired)
• things viewed vertically (valance, book, painting)
• things viewed horizontally (valance, sheets, rug)
• things manufactured in a foreign country (sheets, rug)
• things that go in a washing machine (sheets, rug)

Exercise 1: Randomly select any three words from the list below. Write them on a sheet of paper and then create a list of as many different categories (for those words) as you can. At first, you may want to set a goal of three separate categories for your three chosen words. As you become more proficient, increase that goal to four categories, five categories, or more.

pin, milk, tendency, floor, cook, selection, show, value, table, temper, creator, company, squirrel, leather, achiever, jam, sofa, throat, sisters, chess, mass, stretch, pipe, nation, balance, jeans, hall, crayon, quarter, steel, spiders, yard, stick, nerve, plane, peace, leg, bed, walk, dog, creature, coal, maid, country, alarm, invention, spade, store, zipper, surprise, cabbage, nose, library, angle, fowl, school, motion, mint, power, cover, flavor, lunch, back, reading, jar, face, blade, road, ladybug, stitch, cloth, fear, giants, touch, needle, fire, need, room, tree, pan, drawer, ship, dust, quill, fairy, structure, songs, kettle, apparel, rice, thumb, advice, plate, tub, cream, hole, pancake, wound, gold, sea, safe, itchy, humor, connect, ruddy, appear, theory, scarce, thumb, mailbox, enter, base, fruit, many, recondite, abrasive, tough, stain, cook, good, savor, search, metal.

Exercise 2: Select four random words from the list above and see how many categories you can generate in just two minutes. Then, move up to six words, then seven words.

Exercise 3: Take this idea one step further and select eight random words from a project, document, or challenge you are currently working on. See what kinds of different groupings you can put them in. You will discover, as I do, that you will be able to see that project with an entirely new set of eyes. You’ll ask questions and see connections that were previously invisible. Best of all, you’ll create novel arrangements that may offer some truly unique solutions.

• What kinds of connections can you come up with for these three words?: miss, cute, tank
• Or these four words?: attempt, spade, mint, judge,
• Or these six words?: exist, cautious, gaze, cure, absurd, offend
• Or these eight words?: scarce, ladybug, energy, surprise, heal, plate, dreary, mailbox

Conclusion

Training your brain, on a regular (daily) basis, to look for commonalities between uncommon items or ideas is one of the most powerful ways we can improve our creative potential. We begin to see the world in fresh, new ways. Most important, that training prepares us for all sorts of creative challenges—at both work and home.

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“If you're gonna make connections which are innovative... you have to not have the same bag of experiences as everyone else does.” –Steve Jobs