I do not know how to link Nicks blog into here, by writing just his name as he had done, so here is the whole link. You will not understand the majority of this without reading his, but it is interesting. This entry is based entirely off of the thought process acquired from reading his post.
http://twocycle.wordpress.com/2012/10/09/my-lack-of-progress-leads-to-questions/
Sometimes the 45 seconds it takes to wash a lid may be a more productive use of your time in the long run. Which trains my thought to the idea that sometimes, the sole basis of our creativity can come from being a little lazy, no offense. This may not make sense, let me elaborate, as I have been a little jumpy in my thought processes today. You had the problem of your lid being dirty. You proposed the solution that instead of taking a very quick moment to wash it, you came up with a new way to solve the problem. But the reason you decided to be creative was because you did not want to wash the lid. So, in coming up with another way and being creative, you ended up being wrong in a sense, because you made a mess, thus your idea essentially failed. This goes back to Ken Robinson, and one of my favorite quotes by Joseph Chilton Pearce, “To live a creative life, we must lose our fear of being wrong.” I was not quite sure where I was getting at with this until now, but, your laziness correlates to the lack of fear you have for being wrong. You obviously had no “fear” that you were going to be “wrong”, so you were lazy and did not wash the lid. I use wrong in the sense of, your idea not working and causing more of a hassle in the long run. This idea is seen a lot in kids now a days and even adults in your case. We live in a time where we are trying to rapidly get things done. It is all about completing a task and moving to the next one, taking no time to solve such a quick and simple problem, such as washing a lid, but rather finding something that can make the process move along more quickly. In a way, the society we live in today is completely conducive to creativity. We look for new ways to quickly complete a task when what we normally need to complete it is not available. Although this is a little example of living a creative life, it is a good one.
This reminded me of a time when I went downstairs to do laundry. The picture is what I found. It is just what it seems, two bottles of laundry detergent taped together and then taped to a freezer for support. This would be the creative works of my father. He is a contractor, so he is obviously a highly creative thinker, as it is imperative for him to be. But this example goes back to that of using a makeshift lid that Nick mentioned. What need for this was there? The sole purpose for this was being lazy. Wanting to transfer all the soap to one container,but not wanting to hold it and wait for it. Being too lazy to wait the five minutes for the soap to transfer. Essentially, there was no time saved at all, just like with the lid. With the lid, less time would have been spent washing the lid then the time you spent cleaning up the mess. Here, less time would have been spent holding the container then the time spent finding the tape, taping it together, and figuring out a support system for it, in this case the freezer.
We do creative things because we are lazy. We come up with these new ideas to solve our problem, because we think it will take less time. Not to say all new creative ideas are a fail and end up taking more time, but a lot of them, yes. So, what truly conduces creativity? Is it our desire to challenge ourselves, or rather the laziness society has imposed on us and our desire to “save time”?
melissaaajo 