If you want to unleash your creative potential, spend less time in the office and more time pursuing your passion even if your interest has nothing to do with your job. That’s the conclusion reached by neuroscientists, champions, and successful entrepreneurs.
Although academics spend years researching the science of creativity and companies spend thousands on creativity consultants, two very tall guys worth hundreds of millions can teach you all you need to know about coming up with innovative and ingenious ideas. Kobe Bryant is the 6-foot-6 Los Angeles Lakers shooting guard who, in addition to his five NBA championship rings, won a gold medal as a member of the U.S 2012 Olympic men’s basketball team. Kevin Systrom is the 6-foot-5 co-founder and CEO of Instagram, the photo-sharing app acquired by Facebook for $1 billion.
Kobe Bryant’s open mind. Much of the research on the science of creativity concludes that the one trait separating creative innovators from non-creative people is the ability to ‘associate’, or connect, ideas from different fields. Now listen to what Kobe Bryant posted on his Facebook page as detailed in this Los Angeles Times story. “Phil Jackson once told me that he always looked for players who played a myriad of sports because they learn a multitude of skills that are necessary to understand the game of basketball at a higher level…so I encourage everyone not to be narrow minded but to instead look at other sports thru the lens of your own and you will learn from others how to better yourself.”
According to the story, Bryant spent his off-time at the London Olympics watching other sports to keep his mind and spirit “fresh.” He did so partly to support his country but also “to seek further knowledge on what makes other American elite athletes so great.”
When I wrote The Innovation Secrets of Steve Jobs, I spent months researching creativity—from reading obscure academic dissertations to interviewing top neuroscientists in the field. Everything I learned kept bringing me back to a quote from Steve Jobs: “Creativity is just connecting things.” Jobs connected his best ideas by embracing a wide range of experiences, many of which were completely unrelated to computers and technology. If it hadn’t been for Jobs pursuing his passion for calligraphy in college, the Mac might not have revolutionized the computer industry. “It was the first computer with beautiful typography,” Steve Jobs said. “If I had never dropped in on that single course in college, the Mac would have never had multiple typefaces or proportionally spaced fonts…personal computers might not have the wonderful typography that they do.”
Systrom’s $1 billion brainstorm. In a recent Forbes cover story, we learned that Instagram’s Kevin Systrom had a similar Steve Jobs “aha” moment while pursuing his passion for photography as a Stanford student. According to the article, “During junior year Systrom traveled abroad to study photography in Florence, Italy. He arrived in Italy with a high-powered SLR camera only to see his photo teacher swap it for a Holga camera.” The retro look that the camera produced sparked Systrom’s interest in vintage photography. Systrom channeled his passion for photography and technology into building a mobile app, but it wasn’t until another trip to Baja, California, that he had the brainstorm of applying filters so camera-phone photographs could easily replicate the retro look. Instagram now has 85 million members and has made Systrom worth $400 million (the Facebook deal is still pending FTC approval at the time of this writing).
Do it all. There’s a reason why Kobe Bryant, Steve Jobs, and Kevin Systrom discovered their best ideas ‘out of the office.’ Gregory Berns offers the best explanation in his book, Iconoclast. “Sometimes a simple change of environment is enough to jog the perceptual system out of familiar categories…when confronted with places never seen before, the brain must create new categories. It is in this process that the brain jumbles around old ideas with new images to create new syntheses.”
When I interviewed economics professor Larry Smith for this Forbes article on Why You Will Fail to Have a Great Career, Smith offered this advice for people who want to find their passion: “Get outdoors. Do it all. Talk to as many different people as you can. Read as much different stuff as you can. Go out and see things—industrial tours, museums, walk on the street and look at what you see. Plug yourself into the whole array of human experiences. Don’t do one of them. Do all of them.”
You can’t train to be creative. You can’t be coached. You must allow—allow your brain to make new connections by getting out of the office, attending conferences, traveling to new places, having lunch at a different restaurant, or taking a class in a topic unrelated to your job. By doing so your passions will be stirred, your brain’s neurons will fire, and your creativity will soar.