There’s no shortage of bestselling self-help books centred around the elusive concept of creativity, but few of the authors will deliver the kind of colourful quotes presented by John Cleese.
The 81-year-old British Monty Python legend was the star speaker at this year’s GITEX Technology Week. While Cleese may be a slightly unconventional choice among C-Suite executives specialised in Edge computing, AI scientists, fintech financiers, blockchain bosses and marketing gurus, he pointed out to the socially distanced audience at Dubai World Trade Centre’s 10X stage that the creativity he was discussing went beyond only the artistic.
“I’m talking about anything to do with coming up with ideas on how to do anything better.”
His talks on creativity, which he’s been delivering since at least 1991, are written to be applied to people working in any industry.
Here are some of the most interesting takeaways from the keynote speech.
Education
“One of the most extraordinary things about creativity is how neglected it is over the course of the education system,” Cleese began.
He went on to rail against aspects of his own education – “I had to learn Latin and trigonometry, which is probably the most useless of all the things I was taught” – and spoke about how he discovered a talent for comedy, and creativity at 21 years old while performing at Cambridge University.
“I discovered for the first time ever that if I wrote something down on a piece of paper that made people laugh, I must have some creative talent, which never occurred to me before.”
Though Cleese took care to say he’s all in favour of kids doing “a bit of rote learning and knowing facts”, he lamented that “the other side is completely neglected”.
An intelligent unconscious
Cleese, who said he’s been studying creativity for six decades, was keen to stress on the power of what he called the “intelligent unconscious”.
“I noticed that if I was trying to write a sketch and couldn’t come up with a good punchline, if I went to bed after struggling with it late into the night, woke up in the morning, made a cup of coffee and sat down at the desk, I’d be able to solve the problem in 90 seconds.”
“My mind must have been working on the problem while I was asleep.”
He cited further evidence with an anecdote about a sketch he’d written, then lost. “It was for Graham Chapman (a fellow Python) and I knew he’d be cross with me, so I wrote it out again. I then found the original and compared the two. I found that the one I’d written out from memory was neater, cleverer and a little more surprising than the original – I was amazed because I wasn’t actually trying to improve it, only to remember.”
Knowing how to play
Play is a state of mind that Cleese is passionate about. “By playing, I mean thinking about something, playing with ideas in a playful manner.” He cited a landmark study by UC Berkeley’s Dr. Donald MacKinnon in the Seventies. MacKinnon studied the day-to-day activities of architects who were considered creative by their peers, and found that what set these architects apart was their habit of setting time aside in their day to play with the problems they were facing. “The most creative architects were the ones most interested in solving a problem,” said Cleese.
“MacKinnon described the playing as childlike because if you think of children playing they’re just doing it. You can’t say, hey you’re doing that wrong or I’m going to show you how to play better. Because when you’re playing you’re just tossing ideas around but you’re actually interested in what you’re doing as opposed to thinking about a problem because you have to solve the bloody thing before you can move on.”
Cleese also references Homo Ludens, by Dutch historian Johan Huizinga, who wrote, “Play only takes place outside ordinary life.” Cleese said, “The reason kids can play is because their parents are minding the shop – children don’t have everyday concerns, worries and duties, but their parents do.”
Thinking, fast and slow
The comedian was keen to discuss one of his favourite – more contemporary – books. “It’s called Hare Brain, Tortoise Mind, and it’s about the fact that there are really two ways of thinking but our educational system really only tells us about one.”
One is the fast, logic-driven manner of thinking. “We use this when, say, solving a maths problem. You’re given all the factors and quantities required to solve the problem – there’s no indefiniteness at all. You don’t need to use the slower, more meditative kind of thinking, the tortoise mind.”
For tortoise mind thinking, he cited the example of trying to have a difficult conversation, or manage a diverse group of people. “You can’t do it through simple logic – you have to feel people out, trying to think about what would happen.
“That slower way of thinking a lot of the time is much more relevant to real life than the hare brain way of thinking.”
Setting up the creative space
Cleese stressed the importance of escaping interruptions when trying to enter a tortoise mind state – “these are incredibly destructive for the creative process”. He recommended a period of no less than 75 minutes as ideal, so long as it is treated as sacred.
While he warned that the early part of this period may see one’s mind inundated with useless thoughts – “I forgot to get my cat a birthday present, why was that man staring at me like that in the elevator this morning?” but “Eventually, as the Buddhists say, the glass of cloudy water will settle and you achieve some clarity.”
For managers looking for creativity in teams, Cleese felt it was vital that noisier members were quietened, and shier people were really listened to. “To get real creativity out of a team, you need diversity of all kinds: personality, background and experience.”
Creative vs critic
Now that you’ve got some ideas coming in, how do you deal with these? “While I did say you’ll have ideas, I didn’t say they’d all be good ideas,” Cleese quipped to the audience. For him, the next stage is about studying your ideas.
“When you’re creative, you mustn’t be too critical. In fact, you should try not to be critical at all as you get new ideas inevitably you don’t really know if they’re good or bad because you have to examine them, but as you do that the ideas become clearer and when they’re clear enough, that’s when you bring in your critical mind – your hare brain – and say, ‘Will this fly?’”
Once you’ve done that, go back into tortoise mode and build on what you’ve shortlisted, he said. “After a time, go back to critical,” he added, describing the process of iteration.
“That way you will come up with good ideas, but it’s very important not to let the critical mind in too soon.”
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