Changing habits

Sir Ken Robinson in this podcast – that ranges from the role of education and creativity, weddings in Las Vegas and creativity with the Singapore Government to what it’s like to be knighted – says that ‘habit is the enemy of creativity’.Here’s the relevant quote from the podcast:

Okay, well if you want to boil it down in two minutes, it’s about two things; it’s about habits and habitats. I mean by habit, the routines that we follow during the course of our daily life, the more we do the same thing everyday, the more we think the same way. So, one of the ways of unleashing your creative capacity is to do different things, stimulate your imagination, do things you wouldn’t normally do. If you never go to an Opera, go to one. If there are some books you have never read, go and read them. If there are people in your building you have never spoken to, go and speak to them. If you go the same way to work everyday, go some other way.

Open your mind to new possibilities and new experiences and do things you haven’t done before, because often, being creative is finding a new medium of expression for yourselves, and the people who achieve most I think have found their medium, they are in their element, and they love the thing they do. So, open yourself out to new experiences and question the things you take for granted, so change habits.

Secondly, it’s habitats. Really the environment we live in, the environments we work in, the way we configure the desks, the buildings, who we relate to, has a huge effect on how we think and how well we think. Redesigning your office space, redesigning the physical relationships between you and other people can have a huge liberating effect on your whole creative capacity. 

I’ve changed my habitat – now to work on those habits.