The Creativity Crisis

Did you know that we lose our capacity to be creative as we age?

This is not new news. In 1968, George Land conducted a research study to test the creativity of 1,600 children ranging in age from three to five years old. This was an adaption geared to children of a test he had developed for NASA to help select innovative engineers and scientists.

His study was longitudinal, meaning that he retested the same children over time. His test measured which of the participants scored exceptionally high, therefore having the “creative genius”.

Here are the results shown by which percent of each population scored in the category of “creative genius”:

😧 What happened?

Land concluded that as we got older, we learned and practiced “uncreative behavior”.

🎬 Check out George Land's TED Talk to learn more.

😁 But, it’s not too late.

How can we take back our creativity and become child-like again?

girl pretending to be a rocket

🧠 We can embrace and build these 4 mindsets.

  1. 🧐 Curiosity: allowing our child-like awe of the world
  2. 💡 Divergent Thinking: multiple ideas before choosing a solution
  3. ✨ Tolerance of Ambiguity: doing things that don't have an instruction manual
  4. 💪 Risk, Failure, & Resilience: allowing ourselves to take risks even if we might fail sometimes and need to adapt and try again

    5. This page was built by Carli Williams