The creative process:

1. Discover – Read a lot. Observe the world. Notice.
2. Collect – Immediately record anything that strikes you.
3. Generate – Build on your notes to brainstorm lots of ideas.
4. Combine – Connect previously unconnected ideas.
5. Refine – Edit, edit, edit. Select the best.

Whatever creativity is, it is in part a solution to a problem.

Common elements of creativity are originality and imagination. Creativity is intertwined with the freedom to design, to invent and to dream. In engineering and science a creative idea is useful only if it meets three conditions: the constraint of the natural laws, the constraint of cost, and the constraint of technical feasibility.

A long gestation period of intense thinking about the problem may result in a solution, or else the temporary abandonment of the problem. This temporary abandonment is a common feature of many great creative acts. The monomaniacal pursuit often does not work; the temporary dropping of the idea sometimes seems to be essential to let the subconscious find a new approach. Then comes the moment of “insight,” creativity, or whatever you want to call it — you see the solution. Of course, it often happens that you are wrong; a closer examination of the problem shows the solution is faulty, but might be saved by some suitable revision. But maybe the problem needs to be altered to fit the solution! That has happened! More usually it is back to the drawing board, as they say, more mulling things over. The false starts and false solutions often sharpen the next approach you try. You now know how not to do it! You have a smaller number of approaches left to explore. You have a better idea of what will not work and possibly why it will not work.

The creative process is a cocktail of instinct, skill, culture and a highly creative feverishness. It is not like a drug; it is a particular state when everything happens very quickly, a mixture of consciousness and unconsciousness, of fear and pleasure, it's a little like making love, the physical act of love.

The idea of creativity is for me the problem of the future. Since the creative power is not a simple thing. It has a rich structure. It is divided into a lot of different principles and represented by figures, and these figures you can also write down in a kind of symbolic mantra. It is important to work on every point of creativity and see how the human being stands in the energy that comes out from the surrounding world.

Creativity is a constant process of call and response taking place inside our heads. If all is going well, the question–answer routine is like the two sides of our brain working together as if in an inner-cranial pas de deux.

I like to remind people that creativity also isn't a spark; it's a slog. Every artist, inventor, designer, writer, or other creative in the world will talk about his work being an iterative experience. He'll start with one idea, shape it, move it, combine it, break it, begin anew, discover something within himself, see a new vision, go at it again, test it, share it, fix it, break it, hone it, hone it, hone it, hone it. This might sound like common sense, but it's not common practice, and that's why so many people are terribly uncreative - they're not willing to do the work required to create something that's beautiful, useful, desirable, celebrated. No masterpiece was shaped or written in a day. It's a long slog to get something right. This knowledge and willingness to iterate is what makes the world's most creative people so creative (and successful).

If at first you don’t succeed, don’t try exactly the same thing again. You won’t succeed, again. Instead, have a think, evaluate, correct, modify and then try again. Creativity is an iterative process.

Inspiration comes on the twenty-fifth attempt, not the first. If you want to make something excellent, don't wait for a brilliant idea to strike. Create twenty-five of what you need and one will be great. Inspiration reveals itself after you get the average ideas out of the way, not before you take the first step.

The best habit I’ve found for creativity:

1. Before bed, write down 1 big question or problem I'm trying to solve

2. Wake up and journal on it first thing for 30 minutes

This lets my subconscious work on solving the problem overnight.

And I always wake up with *elite* clarity.

The essence of real creativity is a certain playfulness, a flitting from idea to idea without getting bogged down by fixated demands. Of course, you don’t always get what you thought you were asking for. From this era on, I think invention will be the parent of necessity—and not the other way around.

Creativity is just connecting things. When you ask creative people how they did something, they feel a little guilty because they didn't really do it, they just saw something. It seemed obvious to them after a while. That's because they were able to connect experiences they've had and synthesize new things. And the reason they were able to do that was that they've had more experiences or they have thought more about their experiences than other people. Unfortunately, that's too rare a commodity. A lot of people in our industry haven't had very diverse experiences. So they don't have enough dots to connect, and they end up with very linear solutions without a broad perspective on the problem. The broader one's understanding of the human experience, the better design we have.

Creativity is just connecting things. When you ask creative people how they did something, they feel a little guilty because they didn't really do it, they just saw something. It seemed obvious to them after a while. That's because they were able to connect experiences they've had and synthesize new things. And the reason they were able to do that was that they've had more experiences or they have thought more about their experiences than other people... Unfortunately, that's too rare a commodity. A lot of people in our industry haven't had very diverse experiences. So they don't have enough dots to connect, and they end up with very linear solutions without a broad perspective on the problem. The broader one's understanding of the human experience, the better design we will have.