Creative Practice

Creativity isn’t a skill.

A skill is something that you get better at over time. In my experience, you don’t get better at creativity. You get more versed in accessing it, you get better at recognizing better creative impulses, but you don’t get better at being creative. That’s because creativity is innate in all of us.

Instead, think of creativity as a practice. Like the daily rituals in a monastery or the steps you take to prepare your first cup of coffee in the morning, creativity is an act you repeat to add value to your life.

Recognize as a creative person that you won’t get more creative in the future. But if you practice, you can get better at being consistently creative.

Recognize as a teacher of creativity that you can’t teach students to be more creative. You can teach them how to establish a practice, you can teach them to hone their creative ideas into artistic works, but you cannot help them build a skill that isn’t a skill at all.