Peter Drucker said he didn't know what creativity meant, just that he kept plodding. Twyla Tharp's The Creative Habit makes the same point: creativity isn't inspiration, it's showing up and doing the work, day after day.
Hi, this is Brian. Welcome back to another Optimize plus one. In our last plus one we talked about Twyla Tharp's great book the Creative Habit. In addition to seeing who she thinks wins the philosophical tug of war on what makes people creative effort for the win. We also talked about establishing our own creative habit of doing some pre input deep work every morning. All of that makes me think of Peter Drucker. As you may know, Drucker is widely considered one of the greatest management thinkers of the 20th century. As Wikipedia says, his writings contributed to the philosophical and practical foundations of the modern business corporation. Many people considered him to be a pretty creative guy, including one of the renowned researchers in the field of creativity and Flo Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi. In fact, when he was writing his seminal book on creativity. Check out those notes. Csikszentmihalyi interviewed over 100 creative luminaries. He sent out invitations to the individuals he hoped to interview, including Peter Drucker. Many declined for various reasons. Drucker was one of those who declined. He did so via this note. He says, I quote, I am greatly honored and flattered by your kind letter of February 14, for I have admired you and your work for many years and I have learned much from it. But my dear Professor Csikszentmihalyi, I am afraid I have to disappoint you. I could not possibly answer your questions. I am told I am creative. I don't know what that means. I just keep on plodding creativity. Drucker didn't even know what that meant. He just kept on plotting. I love that. And that's today's one Creativity. Who knows what that is? Let's just keep on plotting. Plus one plus one plus one.
