Computer Time vs. Creativity Time

Computer Time vs. Creativity Time

This image was created in 2012 with the Gravitarium+ app

Have you noticed the increase in apps that stimulate, encourage, and support thinking skills? They are advertised on tv and pop up when you’re playing a favorite game on your iPad. There seems to be an endless supply of variations on this theme.

These games are designed to introduce new ways of thinking in a fun format. To be effective, programmers must draw on the way we learn. There is always a short tutorial introducing the basics at the beginning. The first challenges are simple and they lay the foundation for more complex puzzles to come.

You get where I’m going with this… mastering a new computer game is very similar to beginning a new creative endeavor.

On a recent Facetime call I was helping someone who was just learning to knit. Of course it is still easier and more effective to demonstrate in person, but it struck me how much technology has opened up so many possibilities for learning and communicating that were inconceivable to previous generations.  It also gave me pause to think that an individual who had grown up mastering one computer game after another, could be so frustrated with learning this skill.

The key to successfully embarking on a creative outlet is to give ourselves over to absorbing the basics, just as we obediently go through a game’s tutorial. We approach it with an expectation that we can learn how to navigate it. As the challenges gradually get more complex, we trust the groundwork that has been laid from the start.

But you say you don’t go through tutorials? Ok. If you know that about yourself, by now you also know that there may be future frustration and, for a time, you may miss a special function that could improve your success rate and even make the game more satisfying. Perhaps the joy of discovery along the way is energizing and, with this as your learning style, you’ve already proven you can problem solve, push through, and finish the game,… or the project.   

Let’s be as patient with ourselves in picking up the knitting needles, or any other instrument of creativity, as we are with sitting down to start a new computer game. I assure you the benefits are just as rewarding.