The 6 Mindsets You Need to Become More Creative
da Danny Forest
1. The Linear Mindset
1.1. The creative process is fundamentally non-linear. It involves a lot of iteration, experimentation, a lot of feedback loops.
1.2. Consider what’s on your calendar and how you can hit a big creative goal, like writing a book, over the next few months.
2. The Benchmarking Mindset
2.1. It’s important to keep up with the competition, but benchmarking leads to fixation.
2.2. We fixate on what they’re doing, and we end up copying them rather than learning from our competitors.
2.3. In many cases, we copy badly, because we don’t really, truly understand the roots of their success.
3. The Prediction Mindset
3.1. Addressing results upfront is harmful to innovative thinking.
3.2. We’re putting people in a really tough spot where they’re being forced to predict.
3.2.1. So they either have to under-promise and not get funds or over-promise.
3.2.2. Then they run the risk of under-delivering and putting their career at risk.
4. The Structural Mindset
4.1. When a company grows, people’s roles become more defined.
4.1.1. This growth can hamper creativity because people focus only on their area.
4.2. Sometimes, leaders of larger companies respond by trying to flatten the management structure of their growing company.
4.3. Constraints and structure breed rather than restrict creative thinking.
5. The Focus Mindset
5.1. The productive benefits of multi-tasking are a myth.
5.2. Most successful leaders focus on doing one or two things well before moving onto the next project.
5.3. Focusing on one or two big creative projects doesn’t mean cutting yourself or your teams off from the world.
5.4. Don't build a war room or innovation hub that’s isolated from customer feedback.
5.5. The highest odds of coming up with a creative breakthrough come from intense focus
5.5.1. There should also be a few purposeful attempts to get some distance from the problem, to help really stimulate ideas