Creativity and Optimization

Creative inspirations are not timely. They always seem to arise for me when I am buried in the busyness of another task.

It is often said to “never stifle a generous inclination.” I decided to apply this same principle to my creative inclinations in my first year of college. When these inspirations arose, I decided that I would not stifle it. Instead I would let myself be open to it, writing down the idea and jumping down that thoughtful rabbit hole.

Creativity does not arise when it is the object of your intention. It can never be forced. Instead, I believe that creativity can only arise as a natural byproduct of your actions. And it is fostered by your openness and lack of judgment on the direction that your mind takes.

It’s a funny paradox. When I focus my mind to try and think of new and exhilarating ideas, it tends to feel pretty blank. How do you force yourself to think of new ideas? Do you think about what others may perceive as creative? How are you optimizing and assessing the most creative thoughts?

I tighten up in these moments. That’s because optimization and creativity are antagonistic to one another. They are enveloped in a permanent war and seem to be unable to coexist in the same space. Yet, a story only exists with a beautiful conflict between the protagonist and antagonist. And I have been trying to figure out how to foster this conflict in my mind.

Writing and coding are two such stories in my life where I witness the conflict a lot. In writing, I must start with creativity as the protagonist. I do not write for an optimizing output. With writing, an optimizing output could be how effective you are in conveying a message to the reader. In my own writing, I tend to write for personal expression rather than this output.

When I am starting off with my creative writing, I am letting my mind be as open and wandering as it wants. I am not thinking about communication, and I am not directing it along a specific neural pathway.

As a result, I believe that my writing often has a “fraying” tendency in its first drafts. The subject starts in one place and does not remain focused at all. It dives into different wells of thought. I often never “end” a first draft — I often just write and write and write until I am tired. It is a journey with no output, end, or conclusion. It doesn’t contain a central thesis. The starting point frays out to many different dendritic roots.

At this moment in the writing process, I switch my mind’s protagonist. I look at my mind’s frayed out creativity journey, and I start to think about optimization. What is my central thesis with all of this? How can I most effectively communicate this thesis to the reader? What would the reader think about this? Can I use better words or grammar in this paragraph?

With coding, it is a similar journey in the opposite direction. I often start with optimization as the protagonist. I am trying to figure out how to optimize for a solution. Because of this, I can often use an “optimizing” agent like AI to help establish an outline for this solution.

But as I go about implementing this optimized solution, I often find myself having new ideas about how to approach the problem. Creativity takes the reins, and I find myself experimenting with many different types of solutions or approaches. Or, as has often happened, I get a new idea for writing and I switch tasks entirely.

Of course, this openness to new ideas contributes to its own set of issues and inefficiencies. I believe that this has contributed to my lack of attention span and my mind constantly flicking between thoughts. I feel new ideas arise a lot, and it is impossible to deeply dive down all of these different wells simultaneously.

But part of me is fearful of losing the character of creativity. Optimization can arise through my own will — I can dictate that character change. However, creativity always has to arise naturally. It often shows up when you least expect it. It’s untimely. And if you don’t make it feel welcome, it starts showing up less and less.