Seven Habits of Highly Creative People | Dr. Pavan Soni | TEDxIBSPune

so thank you very much Suzanne absolute privilege to talk about creativity and today's tomorrow is creativity with the advent with which machines are taking over the piece of work that is supposed to do it's important that humans carve out the niche that we have left far behind I strongly propose that humans are the agent of creation there's nothing better than creation that we are supposed to do you're not supposed to be as efficient as machines are and in the fight that we have between humans and machines eventually machines will take over so what I am proposing to all of you today are the habits of highly creative individuals what I use of phrases habits these are habits the way successful people have a few habits even creative people have a set of habits and their way habits can be cultivated my resolution to all of you would be and let us see if you can cultivate some of these habits but even before I delve into that I would like to propose a working definition of what is creativity because as students employees at all we often confuse these two phrases what is creativity and what is innovation let us start with creativity creativity is the ability of an individual or a group of individuals to come up with ideas which are novel and useful there has to be novelty and there has to be utility if an idea is not useful it's like a daydream but if an idea is useful but is not novel it's like a common sense we all have one let's look at innovation innovation is not same as creativity innovation is the ability of a company or a group of individuals to commercialize an idea it doesn't need you to generate an idea but needs you to commercialize an idea so allow me for the next few minutes to take you through some of the most creative people that have dealt amidst us and the practices that they have let's start off with this one of the most famous polymaths that we have ever known da Vinci now what you see on the image here is a vitruvian man this figure is less known that it took about 200 scientific measures for da Vinci to draw this figure one other rather more famous paintings of da Vinci is Mona it might be very surprising to most of you that it took da Vinci good 22 ears to roam on ELISA 22 years if you compare that with the standards of living that we have today that is pretty much 1/3 of a living life you can pretty much declare da Vinci has a very tardy lethargic man who has taken 22 years draw a single painting so much so that he took six long years to draw the lips of Mona Lisa six years draw the lips of Mona Lisa why why did he take such an excruciating amount of time to do something close about 600 years back the answer lies in his ability to connect science with art same applies to Steve Jobs or Elon Musk so another very important characteristics of people who are highly creative is that they don't compartmentalize in their head science and art they pretty seamlessly mix science are not he was an artist a scientist a biologist a physicist in equal measures so much so that six years into drawing Mona Lisa he was on going anywhere he abandoned the project and it took a course in one of the universities in Italy where he was on biology and for all that you know is our dissecting human beings and this very golden ratio that we know of three is to four which is very eloquently depicted in this book called a da Vinci Code wasn't learned by theory he practiced he dissected human bodies of course dead he dissected horses he dissected almost all animals and then he wasn't done yet he joined a null universe in Italy and this time he studied optics in optics he studied that when a light falls on a certain object how does it reflect deflect absorb absorb and he brought the understanding of biology and optics to Mona Lisa now Mona Lisa then is not a painting it's science so my first submission to you is that whether you are a scientist or an artist drone draw the boundaries in your head things have to be far more seamless than what you're supposed to be thinking as second important thing about creative people is what we call as opposable mind you are said to be a great manager or even a great thinker if you can take a decision quickly where there is the funny thing about the creative people creative people don't take decisions quickly on the contrary creative people defer decision-making we have a phrase in creativity which says that if you have to take a choice don't don't take a choice don't even make a choice and that's what we call as opposable mind opposable mind is like your opposable thumb you know we all have these two opposable thumbs you must never had this opposable thumb what happened to us was that through years of evolution this this fifth finger over here started slipping it didn't happen overnight nobody woke up saying that oh I have got something funny here it didn't happen in one generation either nobody said look my kid has a thumb it didn't happen that way it happened through years of evolution when this fingers are slipping from here and the moment this became this opposable thumb a revolution happened for the very first time the primordial scan now hold things like this I can hold things I can make tools with the help of these tools I can go and kill and from a nest whether all of a sudden I become a hunter-gatherer with the hunter-gatherer I need to communicate back to my nest I can't communicate back to my nests in syllables like birds or chirping like birds I need a strong vocal cord for a strong vocal cord I need an erect backbone for erect backbone I need to be able to have a vocabulary storing mechanism and that's what is called as neocortex so if you look back at the evolution of human beings it all happened with this very lucky accident called the opposable thumb so the creative people have something called the possible mind which means that they can hold two very contrasting ideas in their mind simultaneously and choose none it's not about choice making it's about deferring the judgment Steve Jobs the poster boy the late Steve Jobs the poster boy of innovation he wanted a cell phone that works like any other cell phone without a button and for the first six months the entire battery of brilliant engineers fought with him that sir at least give us two buttons so he said no no button and now he must be turning his grave with iPhone X coming without a single button now and that's what we call is a possible mind don't take a decision unless and until it is required stay with the problem when I'm what I mean by staying with the problem I also mean sleeping with the problem and for those of you are married you would understand what I mean sleeping with the problem so a possible mind is very critical when it comes to creativity another important thing is this now have you ever imagined Albert Einstein playing violin for God's sake the only images that might conjure up in your mind about this man is either is stung stretching out or some very unimaginable unconceivable mathematical equation on the blackboard behind him playing a violin doesn't occur to us isn't it but less known phenomena is that he was an extremely good violin player so much so that the recent studies of Albert Einstein's brain and I'm sure you must be knowing that Albert Einstein's brain was smuggled when it's autopsy was done so the guy who was doing his autopsy smuggled his brain without any permission of the family and when the family did the you know the rituals they realize that the most important organ is missing so he dissected the brain into small pieces shipped it to various people across US and Canada with the advancement in the CT scans they rebuilt his entire brain and realized something very interesting with Albert Einstein's brain what they realized is that one of the sections of the brain of Albert Einstein was quite similar in its structure to the section of extremely good musicians and then they started talking to musicians extremely good musicians like hands em er of the fame of Dark Knight and when they realize that how musicians become great they don't start reading the notes they just don't refer to the notes at all beyond a point so when musicians become great they develop what we call a spatial thinking spatial thinking means thinking in the space and the less known fact then remains that is ability to think in space which came out of his able to play violin is exactly what helped him conjure up the theory of relativity so if I were to propose to all of you that E is equal to MC square came out of violin you wouldn't believe me but that's not too far-fetched and imagination either which means that we all need to take our hobbies seriously let's go back to our childhood days when did we develop hobbies as a child hobbies were developed by all of us - pretty much occupy the time when a good eight hours ten hours between sleeping and perhaps going to that kindergarten and between that time we're to fill that time somehow those were the days when we didn't have these electronic gadgets so picked up hobbies then we had schools and more recently we have jobs what a job does is a job eats away into our hobbies the fundamental difference here between a job and a hobby is this a job is something that you do and you continue to do with a very clear external motivation such as a salary a promotion incentives or whatever else you have whereas a hobby is something that you do and you continue to do with a very intrinsic motivation what I'm proposing to all of you is that creative people protect their hobbies very ferociously they protect their hobbies from their jobs they protect their hobbies from the people who evaluate their hobbies and these hobbies will be very useful when all of us will be retiring by the time most of the students sitting before me will retire the life expectancy in this country would be about eighty-five years so you are actually twenty five boring years in your life between 60 and eighty-five boring years when you would not have huge physical strength when you can't go out and that's where the hobbies will be very crucial to you hobbies do three things to you first thing is that hobby gives you self-confidence because here is a point in time when you are not getting judged in comparison with somebody else the second thing that hobby gives you is a new perspective when you're gardening when you're cooking when you're painting singing dancing for your own benefit by the way you shift your mindset you shift your mindset from the problem zone to the solution zone and still keeping in your mind the problem which you want to solve and the third thing is that allows you to have new connections when you're part of a bike club blood donation camp gardening camp Bharatnatyam club etc etc you end up engaging with people who are outside your work domain and that is why you realize that maybe the problems that you are so grappling with have been solved already by somebody else in some other domain so why not just learn from them and that's why some of the most creative people are absolutely polymaths they don't define their life by their titles or by their roles they define their lives quite broadly the canvases are drawn quite neat and quite broad so have a hobby and more importantly protect your hobbies hobbies are very important in life go back to your childhood and you realize why another important thing about about the creative class is what I call as latent inhibition what you see on the screen over here is a very interesting gentleman by the name John Nash the very fascinating movie made on him by the name Beautiful Mind which got our man Russell Crowe win the Oscar and John Nash won the Nobel Prize in Economics for his work on game theory I don't know how many have seen the movie but the movie is an amazing movie I strongly suggest you watch that movie what happens in the movie is a depiction of this man's thinking he is known to be suffering from mental disorder called six affray Nia what happens if Sue frania is that it manifests itself into two dimensions one dimension is called paranoia paranoia means that somebody is conspiring against me a bunch of people are going to kill me if I cross in my 18 minutes that's called paranoia the second thing is called hallucination hallucination moon shot imagining for example what I am doing right now is again a bunch of people listening to me intently that's called hallucination if you combine hallucination with paranoia that becomes six affray Nia now the interesting thing is this for many years scientists had this very fascinating finding the finding was the brain mapping of people who are sick so phrenic it's quite similar to the brain mapping of people who are highly creative now how is that possible does it mean then that the people who are sick so phrenic are bound to be more creative or worse still does it mean that the people who are highly creative abound to be six or phrenic which is very disturbing thought isn't it there is a correlation but there is no causality one doesn't lead to another both of them perhaps work together recently there was this very interesting research paper that came out in one of the magazines and this figure popped out in the research paper what you see on the screen allow me a minute to explain this figure do and this will be quite a I open er to all of you it was to me actually what is she on the screen are two categories of people one with a moderate IQ and one with a very high IQ let's look at IQ what is IQ IQ is your mental age divided by your chronological age multiplied by 100 that's your IQ score mental divided by chronological in 200 is IQ score generally IQ score ranges from about 100 to about 160 anybody about 160 is called a genius anybody below hundred is called mentally most of us have a IQ of about 110 at home and one fife at office depends on a designation however and 110 at home also depends upon if you are married or not having said that pay attention to this particular image on the y-axis you have something called creative achievement score which also suggests that yes creativity can be measured like intelligence can be measured with IQ score even creativity can be measured and how the creativity part can be measured that's for some other time and some other day but remember this one important thing so to set of people moderate IQ about say 110 and high IQ about 150 and then you're trying to measure their creative scores you have two cohorts one with a high latent inhibition and second with a low latent inhibition let me explain this to you what is latent inhibition put constraints on to our cells which does not allow us to be free and express ourselves what this image shows is very interesting that the people who have a low IQ play pay close attention to all and especially in the the parents or maybe tomorrow's parents today's tomorrow the people with a with a low IQ score are far more creative than the people with the higher Q score provided their inhibitions are low which means what which means that between intelligence and attitude its attitude that matters and not intelligence if I tell this to my dad he wouldn't agree because all his life and all my life the only thing he focused on was how good am I squaring in-school intelligence now when my teacher walked into my classrooms this is what she asked me that hey Pavan what is 5 into 2 and the answer was 10 had my teacher acid slightly different question this time not what is 5 introduced she would have asked me power and tell me what are the various ways I can come up to the number 10 the answer could have been and all of us would have started yelling out actually the answer would have been 5 plus 5 5 into 2 2 into 5 10 into 1 11 minus 1/9 plus 1/8 plus 2 30 minus 3 you see the moment that changed the question from one answer which is 10 I have so many answers so what is more important is not the answer what is more important is the question and more so in the Google economy in the Google economy I don't need to know the answer actually I just need to know the question what's my search phrase that's more important because there are zillions of results that Google is throwing at me in milliseconds and I'm not even willing to go below beyond the page number one and that's what questions are very important and having low inhibitions are very very important don't be so critical about what others are saying it's perfectly ok it's absolutely ok because I know for a fact then if you give too much heat to people around you possibly you're not paying attention to yourself and somebody's very very rightly that the recipe of sucks is not known but the recipe of failure is your intent or your desire to please everybody around yourself so have inhibitions low it's ok if you are going to a room going to a conference where people are completely straight it's okay if you're talking about something where you are not sounding very intelligent it's okay it's absolutely okay to have the mind of a child in the body of an adult and believe me you this will do a lot of good to all of us so have inhibitions in control don't have a very high level of alertness your alertness has to be low you should be open to small small stimulus around yourself small things start enjoying small things and start drawing connection on small things and that's very critical in my opinion another important thing is taking half chances he is my role model ms dhoni and I really wish one day he watches this video me praising him if you look at the story of ms dhoni nothing went along the plan his entire life is dotted by taking half chances look at this one over here when he started stomping off these batsmen eight out of ten times the guy was in the crease the batsman was in the crease but what it did in this entire process of taking of the bales is develop almost a muscle memory it took so many half chances that over a period of time his reaction time became 0.1 seconds the best in the field taking half chances what happens to all of us and more so with the higher education levels that we achieve is we start waiting for the right opportunity in the right frame to be coming all the way to us but what I'm suggesting is that creative people always look at the crack in the door and they sniff through it they never wait for the opportunities to be coming to them decorated the Creator fortunate is and there are fewer examples in my mind from this country then this gentleman over here very created opportunities all along this way so take half chances you will fail and if you fail what you need to understand is the importance of experiments now this is one of my most favorite experiments from the space of neurology what you see on the screen is a man with a missing limb we call this is a phantom limb now this is very funny thing that happens suppose a man's limb or a a person's limb gets computed the interesting thing is that this person whose limbs because of an accident or disease or a war when the limb is cut often people feel a sense of itchiness in the limb now how do you H a limb that doesn't exist now there is a very interesting professor a famous professor in the US by the name V s Ramachandran who studies this phenomenon he called this is phantom limbs phantom limbs means that of limbs that do not exist but troubles you now how do we scratch a limb that does not exist now for long the solution that these elegant neurologists had was to do a mental surgery now brain being such a complex organ there are more chances of you creating more problems and solving one if you ever venture in so he came with this very simple elegant experiment that works called the mirror in the box what happens in this experiment is that a person who has a amputated limb goes to the box with a mirror stretches the actual limb on one side of the mirror and he sees the reflection of the actual limb stretching the phantom limb on the other side and he this reflection fools him to think that perhaps his limb has got resurrected and believe me you this experiment has shown to cure his problem almost permanently now compare the cost of this experiment with a neuro surgery or the cost comparable not at all and that's what I mean by doing cheap easy dirty experiments life has to be full of experiments and only then you will realize what your calling in life is and most importantly taking it easy v in our country have this very fundamental problem that we confused between seriousness and sincerity isn't it true we assume that for a person to be sincere he or she has to be serious and that's why my role model the joker comes to play here what happens is that because life is so random as a speaker before me narrated life is so random there is absolutely no reason to either draw a lot of pride from your success a lot of guilt from your failure when you move along the way keep doing experiments have latent inhibitions take half Chancellor's have multiple affiliations is when you start realizing and start enjoying the randomness that life has to offer to you so my submission to all of you is that creativity can be cultivated like stamina can be cultivated and for you to cultivate creativity there are some habits that you can I request to all of you right here is that if you can't pick up one habit let me call this is one hobby or one practice from this list over here that will make my narrative who was talking about so thank you so very much and have a good day ahead [Applause]

Channel: TEDx Talks

Views: 47,159

Rating: 4.8757548 out of 5

Keywords: TEDxTalks, English, Business, Creativity, Innovation

Id: LmXGvsuNDv8

Length: 22min 56sec (1376 seconds)

Published: Tue Jan 16 2018