you think of anyone who has all or most of these traits? John Lennon comes to my mind.
He was unorthodox in his behavior, especially after meeting Yoko Ono, with whom he staged a “Bed-in-for Peace” during his honeymoon in Amsterdam and Montreal. The two of them sat in bed while journalists interviewed them about peace and Hare Krishnas chanted in the background. A still-famous song came out of this happening: “Give Peace a Chance.” Lennon was also highly intellectual and integrative in his ideas. His dialogues, as recorded, roam from profanity to Eastern philosophy to cynical observation to bizarre symbolism to music history, and more. He drew highly original cartoons, wrote cryptic symbolism, and played the guitar and piano. He changed directions, after founding the Beatles as a pop band, when he grew bored with perpetuating the same moptop show; he wanted to explore new styles and grow as an artist. After he began living with Yoko in New York, he took so many stands for his radical ideas that the FBI was tailing him and efforts were made to eject him from the country. He was goal-oriented, especially in the beginning. He was often quoted as saying something like, “I always knew I was going to be famous someday but wasn’t sure how. Maybe music, maybe crime.” While the Beatles were still learning their craft and playing in dives, he would ask them, “Where are we going, boys?” And they would have to answer, “To the toppermost of the poppermost, Johnny!”
Francis Ford Coppola is the poster child for Drive, Resilience, Independent Judgment, Self-Confidence, and Perspicacity. His wife’s documentary Hearts of Darkness (1991) shows the obstacles he overcame in making Apocalypse Now (1979): a typhoon, creative blocks, cast problems, equipment problems, and even struggles with his own mental well-being. Yet he said, “It’s not in the cards that we’re not going to make this film.” When he finally finished, over budget and over schedule, he wanted to show it at Cannes. He was told that he had to enter it, even though he protested that it was unedited. He entered it—and won the Palm D’or.
He also works by intuition. Hearts of Darkness (1991) captured his creative process: his openness to using whatever happened, including Marty Sheen’s drunken rage and a typhoon in the Philippines; his improvisational method of working with the actors’ inspiration and giving them cards that said, just before shooting, “Dialogue to be determined.” He had decisional skill. When he saw the rushes the first day, he was flexible enough to replace his leading man. When he didn’t like a “plantation” subplot on which he had spent much time and money, he cut the whole sequence.
Additional Characteristics of Creativity
David Campbell lists additional characteristics. Here are some of the most notable of them.43 (The concepts are his, and the bold type and explanations are mine.)
1.“Convergent thinking”—“the ability to scan many relevant facts, then zero in on those facts most likely to result in the correct solution to a particular problem.”
For instance, cross out six letters below to leave a common English word.
BSAINXLEATNTEARS
(The answer is at the end of this chapter.)
I personally loathe this sort of test, but early studies of creativity in the 1950s and 1960s used it. The idea is that most people get stuck in one mode of thought and creative people consider unusual and original alternatives. I prefer the more recent studies of creativity that do experiments or case studies of people actually creating in their fields.
Amabile, one of the most respected psychologists in the field today, might say that problems like the above are not true creativity: they are “algorithmic,” dependent on coming up with the one correct formula, rather than “heuristic,” defining original procedures. She adds that many views of creativity mention defining the problem as an important part of the process.44 This would certainly be true in math, science, and engineering. (See Chapter 10.)
2.“Divergent thinking”—“the ability to fan out in all directions from an idea.”
John Guildford and other earlier theorists about creativity liked to use this method.
An example was, “List the uses of a brick.” The idea was that the creative person could concoct a longer list with more unusual examples.
3.“Independent Judgment”—the ability to have faith in one’s ideas, no matter what others say.
A classic example is Emily Dickinson, who wrote quixotic poetry. She used startling word choices, capitalized all important words, and punctuated with dashes. She sought advice from an editor, Thomas Higginson, who warned her that she would have to regularize her verse in order to be published. So instead she put her verse in a drawer. Now her original choices are praised as highly creative, and the first editions of her poetry, which regularized punctuation and diction, are considered inferior.
4.“Intellectual curiosity”—the penchant to wonder “What?” Why?” and “How?”
The supreme example is Leonardo da Vinci, who wondered about almost everything he saw. He filled his notebooks with drawings of possible inventions and anatomical observations. (See Chapter 10 for examples.) Gelb, who calls “Curiositá” one of the main principles to follow in order to think like Leonardo da Vinci,45 quotes this example from Leonardo’s notebooks:
I roamed the countryside searching for things I did not understand. Why shells existed on the tops of mountains along with the imprints of coral and plants and sea weed usually found in the sea. Why the thunder lasts a longer time than that which causes it, and why immediately on its creation the lightning becomes visible to the eye while thunder requires time to travel. How the various circles of water form around the spot which has been struck by a stone, and why a bird sustains itself in the air. These questions and other strange phenomena engage my thought throughout my life.46
5.Playfulness—the possession of “a strong sense of humor and rich fantasy life.”
Richard Feynman, who shared the Nobel Prize for physics in 1965, characterizes himself as “a bit of a clown.”47 While he was working on the Manhattan Project to build the atomic bomb, he amused himself by figuring out ways to crack the locks on safes and filing cabinets in offices at the Los Alamos compound. He narrates his adventures in a delightfully humorous tone: “I had just opened two safes cold. I was getting good. Now I was professional.” After he’d cracked a drawer or safe, he often left a note like: “‘This one was no harder to open than the other one—Wise Guy.’” His colleagues were alarmed, suspecting an outside job, until they realized it was just Feynman goofing around again. The goofing could be productive, though. Once as he watched someone in the Cornell cafeteria throwing a plate into the air, he began to calculate the parameters of motion involved. Eventually he derived a complicated equation. He showed it to a colleague, who proclaimed it “‘interesting’” but asked, “‘What’s the importance of it? Why are you doing it?’” “‘Ha!’” said Feynman. “‘There’s no importance whatsoever; I’m just doing it for the fun of it.’” The calculations were to win him the Nobel Prize.48
6.Avoidance of “early self-criticism of their ideas”—the ability to play with an idea instead of rejecting it outright as flawed.
The example of Edison and the light bulb is listed above. He is said to have remarked that all his earlier trials were