John Cleese on Creativity
Actor, author, comedian, film producer and behavioral scientist John Cleese offers his insights on how to foster creativity. Anyone who creates anything should see this talk.
Some of his tips include:
- Sleep on a problem
- Interruptions are dangerous
- Ideas come from our unconscious minds
- Get in the right “mood” to be creative
On how to get in the right “mood” to be creative:
- Create an “oasis” in which to be creative
- Create boundaries of space in which to work
- Create boundaries of time in which to “play”
One of Cleese’s gems:
“To know how good you are at something requires the same skills as it does to be good at that thing. Which means that if you are absolutely hopeless at something, you lack exactly the skills that you need to know that you’re absolutely hopeless at it. … It explains a great deal of life.”
See below or at YouTube.
Cleese, John, “The Importance of Creativity,” Creativity World Forum, 2008 (PDF).
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