WANT TO BE MORE CREATIVE? Start here.

Hint: EXIT THE FAST LANE.

Mixed media collage.

A painted sketch with some experiments using different brushstroke and gestural line combinations. Successful? Probably not. But the time spent on this piece did open up some exciting new possibilities for future works.

In an age obsessed with data analysis and efficiency, the importance of creativity is all too often overlooked. True innovation sprouts from the hours spent experimenting and testing something new, made in a new way, in the background and outside of our field of vision. It grows underground, in the fertile soil of a creative mindset. And while creativity is a labor of love, the fact is it requires sacrifice.

Creativity is synonymous with progress. It comes from the heart and cannot be stopped because it is a fundamental part of who we are. As an artist and art educator for most of my life, I witnessed (and experienced) firsthand the empowering gift that making something new brings to a life.

In a product-oriented culture, creative processes are frequently overlooked for their importance as incubators of innovation and progress. In the world of creativity, process is everything. Experimenting with new techniques that may or may not result in better products or services necessitates reflection and an examination of the process. It is a time consuming commitment to be creative. To see a project through to completion, it takes imagination, a strong work ethic, courage, and resilience. It is critical to the success of a flourishing individual, business, and society.

As a 25-year high school art teacher, I witnessed firsthand the trepidation and fear that comes with creating something new and then presenting it to the world. Being creative necessitates taking a leap of faith into the unknown. It is a risky 'best guess' venture where failure is always lurking in the background. The ego's fear of failure steers us away from creative risk and toward the comforting certainty of the familiar. We are socialized to try to appear as successful as possible to those around us. However, this is a results-oriented mindset that prevents people from taking risks in the creative space. In my experience, the true value of creativity lies in focusing on process rather than product.

It's difficult to justify what we consider a waste of time, especially in today's "Get it done and get it done yesterday" mentality toward almost everything we do. Linear thinking requires that creative acts be more efficient. But new processes cannot and should not exist in their most authentic form on a straight line path. Moving through a creative space requires trial and error by definition. We are all taught to be as efficient as possible. We associate efficiency with success and worship those who achieve the most success with the least amount of effort; the path of least resistance.

Slow down…..

In all, the preying mantis painting required around 20 hours to complete. It required focused study of the subject; an immersion into the process demanded of all artists.

I was guilty of being a part of an educational system that promotes straight-line efficiency and successful outcomes. Consider the mass testing paradigm in education, which is, in fact, the most efficient method of measuring knowledge. The question is whether it is the "best" method of measuring knowledge. How much personal investment in one's own learning does testing encourage? I'd say not much. Learn mostly irrelevant information for the test, then forget most of it once it's over. The hard drive data purge.

To some extent, results-oriented standardized testing makes sense as an efficient means of quantifying a person's intelligence in an academic discipline. My art department colleagues and I struggled with this issue as we attempted to assign a numerical value to our students' creative efforts. That is the most difficult obstacle for creatives to overcome in their quest for credibility in a world that measures success using hard data. How do we measure creativity? We love the linear efficiency of measurement by numbers, whether it's student performance, stock portfolios, or a company's profit margin. By definition, creative acts defy these ground rules.

I contend that if creativity were measured on a numerical scale, it would die because divergent outcomes would no longer be valued. There would be only one "best way" to complete tasks, and we would all be traveling in the same straight line toward task completion. The value of creating new things lies in the process rather than the product.

What role does creativity play in the'real' world of business? Are employees free to experiment with new methods of production, thereby taking pride in their work? Is it possible to accurately quantify and value creativity in the workplace? The willingness of an individual to dig deep and find better solutions to problems has been identified as the single most valuable asset an employee can bring to the job. Finding solutions to problems is the space that creativity inhabits. Tenacity is required as an individual investigates a plethora of possible solutions to a problem or objective. Trial and error educates creativity. It necessitates the sacrifice of something that many of us lack: time.

Whether we want to believe it or not, we are all creative. However, only those who are willing to spend time working through a problem will reap the benefits of a creative mindset. So the question is, do you dare to disrupt the status quo at the risk of losing time while solving a problem in a new way?

The prevalent belief that we have somewhere else to be is probably the most significant internal mindset challenge confronting creative thinking. In his book "BE; The Backroad Guide To Personal Awakening," Greg Petri discusses this topic. His book's overarching theme is that we have everything we need right now. There is no need to continue looking for that elusive time or place that is out of reach. You've already arrived at the present moment, so be fully present in it. If you want to get away from the 'now,' the straight line escape to somewhere else is appealing. But when a human mind is lost in a singularly focused task of creative thought flow, creative processes direct the mind to achieve truly momentous and unexpected outcomes.

Trading consumption for creation pushes us beyond our comfort zones. It energizes the brain by firing different synapses. Creativity allows us to engage in personal reflection and awareness in order to better understand our place in the world.