Darren at Problogger has posted his list of nine attitudes of highly creative people:

1. Curiosity
2. Seeing problems as interesting or acceptable
3. Confronting challenge
4. Constructive discontent
5. Optimism
6. Suspending judgment
7. Seeing hurdles as leading to solutions or improvement
8. Perseverance
9. Flexible imagination

It's a great list. Creativity is a pet subject of mine, and I found the list interesting.

I never think of myself as creative, but I certainly have the top 4 attitudes. I probably need to improve on optimism and perserverence.

I don't think I'm an optimist, but... I think of creativity as the ability to see things not as they are, but the way they could be. And then making it happen, given the available resources.

My estimate of what I have in bold. However, I tend to judge things (and people) pretty quickly. Not necessarily in the sense of bad or good, but judging the qualities of that thing as a whole. I tend to not like too much challenge, but am easily bored with tedium. Hurdles feel tedious to me, so it slows me down. I'm fairly high on the procrastination scale.

I'd guess I'm fairly creative, but I need things with variety. I don't want to be creative at just ONE thing. This is what stops me from doing a lot of extracurricular activities like drawing, painting, playing musical instruments, or starting a business.

JD,

I'm skeptical of this list, because I don't know of objective measurements for any of these. Anybody can believe they are "curious". In fact, we would probably describe most dogs as curious too, but does that help their creativity? Are we talking about an absolute measurement here or a relative measurement?

Secondly, many of these characteristics likely depend on circumstances. Under some circumstances, you may be more optimistic than average. However, in a different situation you may be less optimistic than most.

Sorry, I don't buy this. It's sort of like asking people if they are "above-average drivers". Most people will say "yes" and they would all be right, because they are all using different criteria to evaluate the term "above-average driver".

regards,
squished

I'm skeptical of this list, because I don't know of objective measurements for any of these.

I agree. But then I don't know of any objective measures for creativity, either. I don't look at this list as an authoritative scientific examination of the subject, but as food for thought for those who want to pursue greater creativity in their own lives. For example, I have a tendency to let problems overwhelm me. But if I were to take a different approach to them (per #2), I might actually be able to exercise some creativity in solving them. Also, I've noticed that a couple of my friends who are quick to judge things lack creativity in regards to the things they judge.

I think these elements do contribute to creativity (mine, anyhow), and plan to look at the list every couple weeks to remind me of areas where I'm slacking.

I think the key would be to ask oneself not if you have above-average creativeness, but take each item on the list and think about them individually. I would think that if you're smart enough to determine that the test isn't exactly scientific, you're smart enough to at least estimate your own abilities.

For myself, I would definitely consider myself more curious than the average person. I read.... CONSTANTLY. I'm on wikipedia, googling, reading the news and tech sites, reading tutorials on how to do things (like 3d model, or video edit, etc). I estimate I'm more curious about the world and specifically about my areas of expertise than the people I work and interract with on a regular basis. I just look at reality TV and... well, I guess I know about the rest of the USA too.

Just be technical enough to think about each item, but take everything with a grain of salt.

One theory I've come across is that the most creative people are usually the most prolific people. The idea is that in order to generate lots of original ideas, you need to generate a lot of ideas, period. And when you generate lots of ideas, you'll not only generate more good ideas, but plenty of bad ones too.

There are some examples I can think of that demonstrate that the "greats" not only had quality (they had "masterpieces"), but they also had quantity. Leonardo da Vinci, Frank Lloyd Wright, Wayne Greztky, Michael Jordan, Tiger Woods. Each of these not only has some truly great accomplishments, but their entire body of work is astounding as well. I think that if you look into any field, you'll find examples that support this.

squished

I think there needs to be a 10th attitude or quality.

Sales.

Anyone can have an idea or be creative in one manner or another. It's recognition that determines how far you go. If you can't sell that creativity, it doesn't matter. Since creativeness is subjective, you need to find yourself in a position that others think you have it.

Painting a Campbell's soup can is not in itself creative. Selling the idea that it is, is creative.