How Creativity Rules the World by Maria Brito

There has never been a more crucial time than now to develop your creativity and ability to innovate. This is a subject that I am very passionate about because I thought creativity was something that you were born with, and it's not. So Book Thinkers family, today I want to go through some of my biggest takeaways from a book that I just finished reading. It's hot off the press, How Creativity Rules the World by author Maria Brito. And the subtitle of this book is The Art and Business of Turning Your Ideas into Gold. Right in the introduction, Maria addresses something that I was hoping that she would, which is, is creativity actually a skill set that's in demand? And there are a variety of different studies that would say yes, it is, but there's one in particular that I wanted to highlight. LinkedIn, after gathering research from over 660 million professionals, with the intent of looking for what skills are in demand, came up with one in particular that's most in demand relative to its supply, and that's creativity. 660 million, that's a huge number of data. Creativity is the number one. So that answers that. Creativity is clearly in demand. So I wanted to go on to the next question that I really had, which is, is creativity something that could be taught and learned? And there's a really interesting study in chapter 3 that I wanted to highlight for everybody. 2 researchers, Dr. George Land and his wife, Dr. Beth Jarman, conducted some research studies on 1,600 children to test for creativity after NASA asked them to create this study for adult engineers. And the assessment worked so well with the adults that they went on and tested the children. The test consisted at looking at the problem of coming up with new, different and innovative ideas. And 98% of the 5-year-olds that they tested scored at the highest level of creativity. Land and Jarman retested the children at age 10 and again at age 15. The results were quite different though. Only 30% of the 10-year-olds and merely 12% of the 15-year-olds scored at the highest level of creativity. And when they gave the same test to 280,000 adults, 280,000 adults, Wow. whose average age was 30, only 2% scored at the highest level of creative. The findings of these studies were and continue to be astounding. According to Land, the issue stemmed from educational systems around the world that push children towards what to think rather than how to think. And as I was reading this, my eyes opened wide because this happened to me when I was really young. 5, 10, even 15 years old, maybe more 5 or 10, I was very creative. I was an artist. I would draw pictures and try to sell them to friends and family. I was always outside inventing new games. I was ultra creative back then. And then when I think back on my high school years and even my college years, I was the opposite of creative. In fact, when I started Book Thinkers with a couple of my friends 6 or 7 years ago, I was the least creative person on the team. But then what happened? Through repetition and constantly coming up with new ideas for social media, creating content, creative repetition, I became extremely creative. Now I'm one of the most creative people that I know. I have new and innovative thoughts all the time. So it's a learned skill. It's something that I had to practice. And what's the reason that I lost all of my creativity as a child? I mean, it was the educational system. And so what I want to highlight from this part of the book and what Maria highlights is that creativity is a do. It's a set of habits and actions and mindsets and intentions and attitudes that can be implemented and performed over and over and over again to improve your level of creativity. And right now, like I said, it's more crucial than it ever has been to develop your skill of creativity and ability to innovate. Why? Because entrepreneurship has never been as plentiful as it is today. You can get behind a phone just like me and start a business, and that's amazing. And if you've— if your level of creativity has been suppressed by the education system, then you're not going to believe that you can do it. And so one of Maria's missions with this book, at least how I'm interpreting it, is to show the world that creativity can be learned and creativity can be taught. I think that's incredibly optimistic. So I'm really happy that I read about this study, and I'm really happy that I have some personal life experience to share with everybody. There's another takeaway from a little bit later in the book. Wow, I can't believe we're already 5 minutes in. Time flies when you're so passionate about something like this. There's a chapter later in the book about silence and solitude, A Room of One's Own, and there's a line in here that I'll read. Maria says, solitude makes artists Inventors and entrepreneurs observers of their own thoughts and feelings. And so by nature and Maria's intention, this book is very actionable. At the end of every chapter, there are a number of things that you can actually go ahead and reflect on right in the book or implement, things that you can practice, exercises. And this one right here is really important. Maria talks about the importance of solitude and silence, and how can you actually implement that directly into your life? Well, Maria does it through meditation, but it can happen through a variety of different ways. And for me, most of it happens through meditation as well. Maria says that meditation is like a shower for your mind. It washes your mind, it cleanses it. She tries to get a minimum of 10 minutes, but she tries to get as much as she can, sometimes 30, an hour, whatever the case is. And I do the same thing. I love to, when I'm focusing on a creative problem, meditate. Slow things down, think about myself from a third-party perspective. And that's been extremely useful for me in cultivating more creativity. There are so many amazing examples in this book of creatives, artists, entrepreneurs. And so if you're somebody who's looking to improve your baseline of creative thinking, then I would highly recommend checking out this book. I still have some exercises to go through and some things to implement because there were a lot of them. This book is actionable, and that's what I love about it. But I'll tell you what, it's optimistic for me to read the studies showing that creativity can be learned and improved and taught. It's a beautiful thing. So I'll end today's book review on that note. If you're somebody who resonated with anything that I talked about today, I would highly recommend grabbing a copy of this book. And with that, it's the end of today's book review. Go read something. Bye! Bye!