Creativity is rather awesome, I'm certain we can all agree to that. Creativity drives the world forward, it opens our eyes to new scientific discoveries that sometimes help improve our lives, but mostly just make it more difficult for the average joe to understand. Hell, creativity even opens our eyes to new artistic discoveries, even though I don't think much progress has been made on that front in the past century, regression even, but we're picking up from even that in this new millenia that's slowly getting old so much we might even stop calling it new.
But creativity has a dark side, a very brooding, very dark, very difficult side, a side that is almost unbearable, a side that gives _"come to the dark side we have cookies" _a whole new meaning, a side that ... oh shut the fuck up, you get the picture right? It's a very dark side.
Everybody creative, for the sake of argument I include myself in this crowd, will probably agree with me when I say that the biggest problem with creativity is the creativity itself. Anythign and everything constantly makes a creative's mind give birth to new wonderful ideas,w hich all seem spectacular and awesome at the time. But when push comes to shove, you suddenly realise you're already working on so many ideas you couldn't possibly start working on another one. So you shelve it.
Once you have time for this wonderful idea, which might be ten minutes later or ten years later, you suddenly realise it's turned cold and damp, very boring, moronic and even, dare I say, mediocre. In short, most of the ideas we come up with never get realised, never come to life and, quite simply, if someone less creative came upon one of them they would cherish and nurture the poor thing until it became ... something.
So if you think you're creative, slow the fuck down, write down everything you come up with no matter how small, and as soon as you find somebody uncreative give them some of your shelved ideas you'll never have time to get to. Perhaps we can make the world a better place one uncreative person at a time.
Continue reading about Why being creative sucks
Semantically similar articles hand-picked by GPT-4
- Are introverts more creative?
- The entrepreneur's curse
- Ideas
- Eccentric does not mean genius
- Execution shapes ideas
Learned something new?
Read more Software Engineering Lessons from Production
I write articles with real insight into the career and skills of a modern software engineer. "Raw and honest from the heart!" as one reader described them. Fueled by lessons learned over 20 years of building production code for side-projects, small businesses, and hyper growth startups. Both successful and not.
Subscribe below 👇
Software Engineering Lessons from Production
Join Swizec's Newsletter and get insightful emails 💌 on mindsets, tactics, and technical skills for your career. Real lessons from building production software. No bullshit.
"Man, love your simple writing! Yours is the only newsletter I open and only blog that I give a fuck to read & scroll till the end. And wow always take away lessons with me. Inspiring! And very relatable. 👌"
Have a burning question that you think I can answer? Hit me up on twitter and I'll do my best.
Who am I and who do I help? I'm Swizec Teller and I turn coders into engineers with "Raw and honest from the heart!" writing. No bullshit. Real insights into the career and skills of a modern software engineer.
Want to become a true senior engineer? Take ownership, have autonomy, and be a force multiplier on your team. The Senior Engineer Mindset ebook can help 👉 swizec.com/senior-mindset. These are the shifts in mindset that unlocked my career.
Curious about Serverless and the modern backend? Check out Serverless Handbook, for frontend engineers 👉 ServerlessHandbook.dev
Want to Stop copy pasting D3 examples and create data visualizations of your own? Learn how to build scalable dataviz React components your whole team can understand with React for Data Visualization
Want to get my best emails on JavaScript, React, Serverless, Fullstack Web, or Indie Hacking? Check out swizec.com/collections
Did someone amazing share this letter with you? Wonderful! You can sign up for my weekly letters for software engineers on their path to greatness, here: swizec.com/blog
Want to brush up on your modern JavaScript syntax? Check out my interactive cheatsheet: es6cheatsheet.com
By the way, just in case no one has told you it yet today: I love and appreciate you for who you are ❤️