On the Conditions for Creativity and the Open Mode

I happen to think the main evolutionary significance of humor is that it gets us from the closed mode to the open mode quicker than anything else.

Cleese describes some conditions for creativity that will probably sound familiar to both comedians and designers. It’s a nice summary that I appreciate hearing from someone outside of the design field.

Citing Johan Huizinga, author of Homo Ludens, the first condition is an explicit demarcation of time and space for thinking (echoing Huizinga’s conditions for play).

It's only by having a specific moment when your space starts and an equally specific moment when your space stops that you can seal yourself off from the every day closed mode in which we all habitually operate.

Second, is a tolerance for the discomfort that comes with an unsolved problem.

If we have a problem and we need to solve it, until we do, we feel inside us a kind of internal agitation, a tension, or an uncertainty that makes us just plain uncomfortable. And we want to get rid of that discomfort. So, in order to do so, we take a decision. Not because we're sure it's the best decision, but because taking it will make us feel better.

Well, the most creative people have learned to tolerate that discomfort for much longer. And so, just because they put in more pondering time, their solutions are more creative.

I feel like this is a quality not well recognized, but critical for a design. Ambiguity and unknowns are typical starting conditions for designers. This can be uncomfortable, but also powerful since it means that people are open to possibilities.

And finally, the open mode requires a willingness to put things out there.

To play is experiment: "What happens if I do this? What would happen if we did that? What if…?" The very essence of playfulness is an openness to anything that may happen... You've got to risk saying things that are silly and illogical and wrong, and the best way to get the confidence to do that is to know that while you're being creative, nothing is wrong. There's no such thing as a mistake, and any drivel may lead to the break-through.

This comes up in design ideation, where the natural instinct is to judge new design ideas immediately. Cleese suggests that it’s an openness to bad ideas that can lead to the best end products.