5 Creativity Myths and How to Recover From Them: Myth No. 3

Jan 20
4 min read

El número tres, coming in hot.

To quickly recap, we’ve been reframing a lot of beliefs around creativity.

Week 1: Creativity isn't magic. It's a muscle.

Week 2: Creativity belongs in strategic jobs––not just artsy ones.

And now we get our next myth…a personal favorite, if I may say so. This one really hits home for me.

Myth No. 3: Developing creativity is indulgent, not practical.

While my immediate family encouraged my creative work, the messaging I got from the outside world—especially from the “realistic” types of folks I bumped into—was that pursuing creativity was indulgent. Impractical. Irresponsible. A pastime for hippies and people with low GPAs.

Mind you, I come from a STEM-dominant family, and I spent far more time around the athletic world growing up. The art world was peripheral. And it wasn’t applauded unless the person operating within it was exceptional.

At the time, I was also thinking of creativity as an exclusively artsy skill set. I had yet to conquer that second myth we talked about last week:

Creativity belongs in artsy jobs, not strategic ones.

What a myth. A tempting one, nonetheless. I imagine many of us have fallen for it.

And that’s why this idea—seeing creativity as indulgent—is a Week 3 challenge. We had to knock out the myth that creativity belonged only in the arts for this one to make sense.

But First, a Critical Distinction

Before move on, I want to pause for an important distinction between:

A) Professional artists

B) Creativity within your profession (whether it falls within the arts or not)

You see? It's close, but it ain't identical.

When we believe investing in creativity is indulgent, it’s often because we’ve conflated A and B. We don’t see a difference.

Now that we’ve got two categories, let’s address the myth that investing in creativity is indulgent.

Astronaut driving a lunar rover on the moon's surface. Orange accents on the rover. Dark sky and lunar hills in the background.

Investing in the Arts, Professionally

When people are trying to measure the practicality of the arts, what makes it so darn messy, almost immediately, is it's an argument about perceived value. Which...you know...involves people's perceptions. And those differ. Often drastically, if we were to poll all of humanity.

Some people perceive the arts as indulgent. They might say it has “no purpose,” or at least “no meaningful purpose.” They would label it an "add-on," if life circumstances can afford it.

But as soon as anything hits the fan, art goes out the window.

This perspective tends to send the art community screaming right back: “Art is what provides meaning, flavor, and feeling to life itself.”

And back and forth they go. Round after round. Century after century. Like a never-ending tennis match.

And it’s absolutely exhausting to listen to.

To quickly offer some perspective: the war between aesthetics and utility is old when it comes to the arts. For the highly philosophical crew, I recommend Beauty by Natalie Carnes. It’s about as heady as the topic gets.

I’m not going to get into it more here. But the basic conclusion I’ve arrived at is this: the arts do matter. They’re far weightier—and harder to quantify—than we imagine. And it’s that lack of quantification we don’t like.

Without absolute proof of value, we label the arts “impractical.”

Which is…an interesting conclusion to arrive at, given that value itself is rooted in perception.

But anyway.

Investing in Your Creativity, Regardless of Your Profession

Now we’re onto something a bit more interesting. Usually, we get so stuck in the weeds on that first conversation that we never make it over here.

As my understanding of creativity has expanded, I’ve begun seeing investing in it as anything but impractical.

Creativity leads to:

Innovation
Dynamic Problem-Solving
Renovation
Storytelling
Communication
Character Development
& Resilience (Future post incoming on that, but it's fascinating)

These are all things we’d consider highly valuable—highly practical, even—and yet we’ve left the intentional development of our creative muscles off our calendars.

While still demanding they work, daily.

That's a real Catch-22.

What Changes When You Perceive Creativity as Highly Practical

It’s hard to develop something you don’t believe matters.

No rocket science there.

But let me get more specific, and then we’ll close this out with a challenge.

01/ You're More Intentional With Your Attention

Most of us are running on autopilot. But creativity is heavily strengthened—or neglected—by where we allow our attention to go. Are we filling our heads with wormhole conspiracy theories and short dopamine-hit videos, or are we pushing ourselves to attune to more dynamic information?

02/ You Prioritize the Habits that Strengthen Your Creative Output

Again, not rocket science. But unless you see creativity as important—not indulgent—you’ll have a hard time prioritizing your schedule and rhythms to cultivate it. It stays on the back burner until you intentionally move it forward.

03/ Your Perceived Value of What You Bring to the Table Changes

When you believe what you have to offer matters, you’re more likely to stand for it. You take risks. You face challenges. You make hard decisions. On the other hand, it’s easy to silence yourself, minimize yourself, or neglect yourself when you think you’re just showing up—and nothing more.

Closing Challenge: Taking a Step Toward Health

Usually I plug in reflection questions here, but we’re going to mix it up and boil this down to one step.

Think of something creative you've wanted to try, or wanted to refine, that you've put on the back burner. Now make one move to make it happen.

That move could be a Google search for an informational video, a class, or a resource. Or, if you’re stuck in analysis mode, move past it and do something. Literally. Do y’all remember that gif? I actually mean it.