Does Chaos Inspire Creativity?

A Treatise Against Pretending Messiness is an Ingredient of the Creativity Equation

A Treatise Against Pretending Messiness is an Ingredient of the Creativity Equation

My son took the PSAT this year. He read a passage arguing that messy spaces are good for creativity. He thought it was interesting but wondered if it was true. I am writing this article at his request.

Creativity is complicated. There are fewer magic formulas than we want. We attempt to boil it down into something that can be calculated and measured. But it can’t, and it is not because we don’t understand it. It is against the nature of creativity to be calculated and measured.

But there is a recipe, or rather, indispensable ingredients that are needed in order to create.

Craft (skill)+Knowledge + Space = Creativity

Yes, I did just make that all up on the spot and I am not an expert of any kind so I am writing from a place of no authority. Other than that I create. I sit at the keyboard with and idea and my fingers can hardly keep up. I do this a lot and there is no end to the amount of ideas I have to share. I pause only when my writing demands research. Or someone is bleeding. I create many hours a week. It is what I do with the bulk of my free time. I create with a certain amount of effortless glee. Creating gives me a nice healthy dopamine hit. I can get a high from writing a review post about markers. So that is the only badge I have for you. I am a happy and productive creator.

If you are still with me and willing to listen to someone with no college degree , let’s unpack the formula.

Craft

The craft encompasses all the various skills you need to be competent in a field. This is where apprenticeships came from, why they exist and why the best way to learn is by studying and copying the experts. (I am not suggesting plagiarism.) The skills are different depending on your field, but without skill all you are going to be able to do is make a mess. Just think about a two-year-old. They don’t have many skills, what happens when we give them paint? A mess. Something to write with? A mess. A book? There is a reason for board books, without that tough laminated cardboard books and babies = mess. Of course, letting them make messes is the only way they will develop the skills they need and it is the same for us grown-ups. Creatives need to make a lot of messes while they are working on their skills. Messes are also often a step in the creative process. But we don’t actually have to surround ourselves with a chaotic mess to be able to create.

Knowledge

Creativity does not come about inside of a vacuum. It requires stuff. Stuff you know how to use, and stuff you know. Without knowledge we can’t make new ideas. New ideas are about connections. Putting things together differently. We can’t put things or ideas together in new ways if we have no things or ideas.

Space

What does a writer start with? A blank screen or an empty lined piece of paper. A painter? A blank canvas. An animator? An empty file. In addition to the blank physical space needed, an artist needs the empty space of time. A chunk, no matter how small, where they can enter the creative zone and immerse themselves in the spell of playing with connections, aided by their craft and knowledge. Some would also point out that brain space is needed. Creativity is often crushed by the relentless daily urgent demands of life, unless we figure out how to push all that aside and clear the space in our brain needed to throw ourselves into the work.

This is why messisness is not helpful. Mess is full of chaos. Mess is not an empty space. Mess is a distraction. (We need to clean instead of write.) Or worse, mess is a way of losing our ideas, we can’t find our last brilliant idea in the polk-a-dot binder because we lost the binder. Because there is stuff everywhere, our polk-a-dot binder is drowned.

When my kids were little we had a playroom and would all go clean it together. When it was done, guess what? My kids always, without fail, wanted to play in there. When it was a mess they wanted to bring their toys to a different room. A clean room. A room with lots of empty space.

They would also play with toys they had been ignoring. The spark was lit, because they had that blank canvas of a floor to pour their ideas out onto.

Yes, they made mess. Sometimes creativity makes a mess. But it never needs a mess beforehand. You need to start with a blank canvas. It will get messy as you work, and hopefully you will be able to bring enough order to that mess to create something beautiful or useful.

I know some creative people have organizational systems that seem messy to the untrained eye. Maybe they keep all their papers in a pile on the floor, instead of filed in a cabinet. If they really know where every paper is, the percieved mess is just how they order things and will not hinder them.

But sometimes creatives just use the messy creative stereotype as an excuse. They don’t really know where anything is. They waste countless hours looking for that sticky note. If it hinders your creativity it is not a messy looking organizational system. It is just a mess. A mess that will either distract you from create, of bury your creation. It is easier to lose an idea, than sit down and bring it to life. Messes are a creative way of pretending we are waiting for inspiration, when really, we are just using it to hide from our own ideas.

Clean spaces and creativity go hand-in-hand. Let’s stop pretending that messy houses or even messy brains and emotions are needed for creativity. Clean it up. I assure you, you will still have plenty of ideas. Even if you life is not a disaster.

They will flow all the more quickly out of you, because you have an empty, neat space, just waiting to be filled up.