Creativity is More Important than Hard Work

Hmmm. All mixed up I think. You can be totally, totally creative but if you don't put in the hard work to make the creativity happen, it doesn't mean anything.

I agree that creative inspiration gives you the fuel to work hard, though.

I think that both is needed. You can be very creative, but if you don't put that creativity to good use through hard work, you will get nowhere.

On the other hand, if you are hard working, but not creative, all the hard work in the world will not raise your level of artistic expression.

Actually thinking about it now, I'm going to contridict myself... Take the Pyrimiads for example, yes I acknowlage that someone must of had a creative mind to think of the idea but yet somehow if it wasn't for all the hard work of slave labour etc. Would they have been built today?

Creativity is useless if you don't apply it. So I'm checking in favor of hard work. Althugh, moderate work with creativity might equal hard work, depends on the situation.

I think this is kind of like the rabbit / turtle parable.

What rabbit/turtle parade?

Let's get this very creative person and team him/her up with someone's uncreative hard work and let's see what happens.

I doubt they'd be built today but that isn't really relevant. They wouldn't be built becuase they'd be a waste of money. We don't hold that sort of reverence for our leaders today.

But think about your question here. If we did chose to build something on a comparable scale would we do it by pushing rocks over sticks? Or would we be a little more creative and use cranes to lift the blocks?

A little creativity can save a lot of hard manual work.

Not parade, parable.

You know, the rabbit and the turtle have a race, and the rabbit knows he's faster so he slacks off a lot so while he naps the turtle wins because of his persistance. "Slow and steady wins the race."

Similarly, if you have gobs of creativity you can certainly solve a problem faster, but if you spend all of your time staring at the sky you can bet that someone else who is less creative, through sheer trial and error and persistance, will solve the problem while you are daydreaming.

I think creativity IS hard work.

Thinking up a new way to say or show something isn't easy and getting it down on paper, or getting it built, or getting it to fly, isn't easy at all.

Creativity without hard work is merely a daydream.

I think they are equally important.

How could a person without hardworking make good use on a wonderful idea (Basically this sort of person can never realize the idea which is supposed to be great by others is great)?

And how do you believe the one who do not have great ideas to be Picasso?

Creativity can be a means of sidestepping a lot of unnecessary hard work.

I am reminded of the story of a heavily laden truck which was a little too high to get through a covered bridge. All sorts of suggestions were made to the driver as to how he could accomplish the task...removing part of the load, driving to the other side, off-loading part of the load ,
driving back and reloading etc.

A small boy listening to all the suggestions of the adults said, "Why don't you just let some air out of the tires and drive the truck across?"

Problem solved.

I am not sure if the story I related is about
creativity or intelligence.

I was thinking that it was about inspiration, shepaints.

yes boomerang, sort of like a flash of creative
insight?

Exactly like that!

I think that "flash" can lead to a creative solution but it doesn't take the same hard work to accomplish that the creative impulse does.

I'm not a painter so I can only suppose but I would imagine that you sometimes have an inspriration that suggests a new way for you to deal with a particular problem - but the creation of resolving the problem still requires hard work, either mentally or physically.

For me, boomerang, the difficulty is more in deciding what to paint (concept) rather than how to paint (technique).

This is a perfect observation. It is people's innovative solutions to problem solving in painting (ex: how to represent a couch, lace, a lock of hair, a concept, a texture, a pattern) that makes the painting interesting.

However, it is not an easy or fun path for the creative painter. You are constently having to invent, balance, resolve, decide. For less creative painters they already know the way - they have a fixed routine.

If one is lucky enough to be creative, but then doesn't put it to use via hard work, both a gift and time are being seriously wasted. I also wonder if, in time, the unused creativity would atrophy. Perhaps, one needs to be fairly constantly engaged to remain creative.

Shepaints, I believe the boy's solution of flattening the tires is creative--unless he has seen this trick done before. If he's witnessed it another time, he need not be either creative or intelligent.

Is creativity a species or subset of intelligence? When I was teaching, I'd occasionally see a student who was highly creative--in the sense of having a quick imagination and the ability to make unusual insights--but not particularly intelligent in the ways schools so often measure. My feeling is that such creative students ARE intelligent--but simply in a more interesting way than many of their classmates!

As a photographer, the concept - what to shoot - is usually presented to me, so that problem takes care of itself.

And the techinque itself is often more science than art.

My creative process really comes into play in deciding what techniques to use on which subjects -- how to best express their ideas, using the tools at my disposal.

I do believe that creativity can atrophy. I've had it happen to me many times. Recently I moved my studio to a new location which expanded the kind of things I can do and I've had a real burst of creativity -- beyond what the move has allowed. It has really been fun bouncing ideas around.

I had the good luck to watch someone else's creative process today. I hired an artist to come in and paint my studio name in graffiti style to use as a backdrop. I gave him the studio name to use as a formal element of the piece and a 10x10 foot section of wall; I suggested that the main area of interest be between 4 and 6 feet high.

Then I sat back in awe as he created this really incredible piece for me using nothing but spray cans of paint.

His confidence......

..... I mean holyshit....

.... I would kill for that confindence.

It is a different kind of intelligence. To me it is a much more beautiful kind of intelligence: an instinct.

Envy could have easily worn my soul away today.

The abstract expressionists and especially the minimalists belie the idea the hard work of, say, a detailed Ingris, is not altogether necessary to produce an image. However, I do agree with boomerang that creativity itself can be hard work. There used to be a joking statement that managers should recognize that when engineers seem to be sluffing off by staring into space (even out of a window), they are more likely creating something in their mind. There is an intuitive quality especially in the work of the abstract expressionist in the action paintings but there's been a lot of hard work in the hard thought put into their concepts before they step before a canvas. It's like suggesting a great jazz musician is improvising out of his ass.

On the other hand, a lot of hard work is put into knitting the latest Kinkade but there's little creativity in doing endless copies of "The Cottage Door." The hard work comes in the marketing and sometimes that isn't all that much hard work. Put mediocrity in front of the American public and it will likely sell. After all, isn't that how we get the politicians we elect?