Dr. Zorana Ivcevic Pringle shares the tools and strategies for seeing the creative process through from start to finish.
You’ll Learn
- How to feel more confident taking risks
- How to make creative blocks work in your favor
- How to get the most out of AI for work
About Zorana
With more than 25 years as a scientist studying creativity, Zorana brings insights into the nature of the creative process, from the first decision to engage with new ideas to its culmination in creative performances and products. She is a scientist at Yale University, author, and speaker. Zorana’s work has been featured in the Harvard Business Review, ArtNet, US News, Education Week, Science Daily, El Pais, and others, and she is a regular contributor to Psychology Today and Creativity Post.
- Book: The Creativity Choice: The Science of Making Decisions to Turn Ideas into Action
- Website: Zorana-Ivcevic-Pringle.com
Resources Mentioned
- Study: “Discovery-oriented behavior and the originality of creative products: A study with artists.” by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi and Jacob Getzels
- Study: “When do startups scale? Large-scale evidence from job postings” by Saerom (Ronnie) Lee and J. Daniel Kim
- Study: “The power of the ‘be creative’ instruction: A meta-analytical evaluation” by Xing Wei, Wangbing Shen, Haiying Long, Fang Lu
- Book: The Courage to Create by Rollo May
Thank you, Sponsors!
- Strawberry.me. Claim your $50 credit and build momentum in your career with Strawberry.me/Awesome
Zorana Ivcevic Pringle Interview Transcript
Pete Mockaitis
Zorana, welcome!
Zorana Ivcevic Pringle
Thank you for having me.
Pete Mockaitis
Well, I’m so excited to dig into your wisdom and talk creativity. And I think it’s important that we address, right at the beginning, if professionals listening, say, “You know, I’m not really in one of those really creative roles,” what do you say to that? How does learning about creativity help every professional become more awesome at their jobs?
Zorana Ivcevic Pringle
It helps a lot because creativity is not just for creative industries. It’s not just for R&D. It’s not just for artists. Creativity is really for everybody. And one of the favorite examples of creativity that I encountered in my consulting work was actually a supervisor in the food services unit of a large hospital. Now do you expect it there?
Pete Mockaitis
Well, no, that doesn’t sound like we’re creating TV or plays or anything in such a role.
Zorana Ivcevic Pringle
No, but he was really influential because he has created a completely new workflow for his workers, and that really improved their health outcomes. They were not as stressed and frustrated in their work. It was easier.
They did not have aches and pains from reaching for things, but also it made it safer for the patients they are serving because it was easier for the workers to do the job and food is part of treatment. Everybody was winning in the process of something that this particular supervisor created.
Pete Mockaitis
That’s nifty. So, the creation was kind of rearranging where the stuff was in the process flow by which we move the food and the ingredients and the serving items?
Zorana Ivcevic Pringle
Yeah, it was completely rearranging where things were, where the individual orders for tickets of what’s supposed to come on a tray were, and where individual food items were placed.
Pete Mockaitis
Well, it feels like this could be a TV episode on HGTV or one of those restaurant turnaround situations. I could visualize how that could be transformational, and then maybe someone is crying toward the end because of the dramatic turnaround that has unfolded with this makeover.
Zorana Ivcevic Pringle
It could be. It could be. It certainly made them more awesome at their job.
Pete Mockaitis
Beautiful. Well, I was just going to ask for an inspiring story, and that’s a cool one. Can we have another?
Zorana Ivcevic Pringle
Well, I think that, really, whatever you are doing, you can do something creative. I’m a scientist and I oftentimes get the question, “What is your creative outlet?” with an assumption. Well, creative outlet should be something artistic, but my creative outlet is my science and communicating about my science.
We can use creativity in everyday life. I remember a couple of years ago we had one of the really impossible seeming problems of how to arrange our summer travel. Our child was young, there were these constraints from my end, from my husband’s end, and he completely transformed this seemingly impossible puzzle problem into something that was more interesting to deal with, and that we approached in a different way when he said, “Hey, let’s take this as a creative problem.”
What happened with this challenge is that our thinking changed from, “This is an impossible problem. This cannot be assembled into a coherent puzzle,” into, “Well, how do we play with the pieces, move them around so that they end up snapping together?”
Pete Mockaitis
Well, emotionally, that sounds a whole lot more fun and uplifting and edifying. But, well, now we’re in suspense, what was the ultimate solution here?
Zorana Ivcevic Pringle
So, what happened was that, because of different sets of travel for work for my husband and for myself, I ended up traveling with our son, who was young at the time, to Croatia where I grew up for him to see grandparents, stayed there for a week.
Then my husband came, joined me there, and ended up staying there with the child while I ended up traveling for my own work purposes. So, all was possible to do. And even, in the meantime, my husband and I went on just two of us, a trip together.
Pete Mockaitis
Oh, fantastic. Well, well done. And I really like what you had to say about science being a creative outlet. I am the kind of dork who will read the full text of many scientific journal articles. And it’s actually fun to peer inside the brains of the researcher. I was just reading one about a human randomized control trial about a yoga intervention.
And so, you can tell they were really racking their brains for “What’s the control here?” Because there’s consequences. Folks could feel disappointed if they’re into yoga, and they say, “Actually, you’re in the control group. You’re not doing any yoga.” And that could skew the results one way.
And so, they were very clever, they said, “Okay, we’re going to teach them about the history of yoga and some of the language and words and context and background, and then tell them that, after the education, they’ll get a chance to do the exercises.” And that seemed to be as satisfactory as they could come up with, and there was some real creativity there.
Zorana Ivcevic Pringle
Yes, certainly, there’s lots of creativity in designing the studies and coming up with questions, and seeing how different pieces fit together and in communicating that in coherent and persuasive ways.
Pete Mockaitis
So, your book is called “The Creativity Choice: The Science of Making Decisions to Turn Ideas into Action.” What’s the big idea here? What is the creativity choice?
Zorana Ivcevic Pringle
There actually isn’t the creativity choice. That is a title that was a little provocative, but there isn’t one creativity choice.
We start with a single choice, but then we have to make many more, because it is not as if, “Okay, you made one choice, and now you are done.” It is recommitting to the process of choosing creativity, choosing the challenging option, the original option that could produce something of interest and something truly awesome repeatedly.
Pete Mockaitis
So, the A choice, or a key choice, from which many subsequent choices flow is just that we are going to try to create something new and different here, as opposed to just kind of continue on going with the flow.
Zorana Ivcevic Pringle
Exactly. So, the first choice is the one, “Okay, you have an idea. Now you are deciding to do something with it.” Oftentimes, people have lots of ideas, but don’t do anything with them, don’t develop them, don’t have performances or products that come out of them. It stays in the realm of imagination and fantasy. You know, you meet over coffee with your best friend, you talk about your ideas, but it stays there.
And we oftentimes ask the wrong question of, “How did you come up with that idea?” Where, really, the more difficult question is, “You had that idea. How did it happen? How did you take something that is just in your mind into something that is in the real world?”
Pete Mockaitis
Well said. Absolutely. It’s funny, I had the idea for Airbnb along with a friend, and then again with another friend, because we were in consulting and/or accounting, and seeing, “Hey, there’s a lot of travel, a lot of empty bedtime in this apartment. Maybe that should really turn into money somehow. This could really be a thing.”
But we proceeded to do nothing about it after we, I think we chatted with a Hyatt executive that we knew, and he said, “Oh, man, that’s a liability nightmare. Random people inside your house and vice versa. There’s going to be crimes. There’s going to be problems. It’s going to seem…” It’s like, “Okay, yeah, you’re probably right.” And then just never did anything with it. But the Airbnb folks have done pretty well for themselves by pursuing it.
Zorana Ivcevic Pringle
Oh, I had the fabulous idea also. I am very small, so I get cold all the time. I live in New England and I had this idea to create a coat that, would from the outside, look just like a wool fancy fashion coat, and then the inside, have heaters so that you are always warm. Never did anything with it.
Pete Mockaitis
Did somebody else?
Zorana Ivcevic Pringle
Apparently, it seems that it’s starting. So, there are now coats you can buy with heaters. On the outside that don’t look up to my standards, but it’s just a matter of time at this point.
Pete Mockaitis
Understood, yes. Well, so then, you make the argument that creativity is more about decision-making than self-expression. Can you expand on this?
Zorana Ivcevic Pringle
Oh, I think it’s about both. So, creativity is about self-expression, in some ways that creativity happens. So, in the arts, there’s lots of self-expression. In the example I shared before with developing a new workflow, it’s not really about self-expression, it’s about solving a problem. And in other domains of creative work, it may be about something different, but throughout, no matter what is the psychological process by which something is done, the constant is this making of choices.
So, at any given point, you are facing a choice whether you will do something that is more commonplace, similar to something you have done before, or something that will be different, but still can work in some important ways, still effective for whatever you are after. And there are many choices along the way.
Like, I’m a scientist, there are choices of what research question you’re going to ask, how you’re going to ask it, what kinds of measures you are going to use in addressing it, in asking the question, how you will set up your studies. Will it be an experiment? Will you go into observing something that happens in the real world outside the laboratory? So, these are all choices that have consequences for what you end up doing.
Pete Mockaitis
Understood. And I’m curious then, since you and I have both had ideas we have not pursued, what are your pro tips for wise decision-making amongst our ideas in terms of what are the best practices or processes by which we discern whether to go ahead and go after something versus just let it lie?
Zorana Ivcevic Pringle
Well, it is really hard to get going. It is hard to get going. There are lots of uncertainties in this process. There’s an uncertainty of what psychologists call intellectual risk, a risk whether you can make it happen, whether you have what it takes to develop your idea and to build it. And then there are social reputational risks, “What are other people going to say?”
And in the example that you have mentioned with you invented Airbnb, you actually went to somebody, and that somebody told you all the reasons why it couldn’t be. And so, these are the risks, social risks of embarking on something, and they can stop you in the tracks. Well, what do you do for that not to happen?
Well, maybe you could have talked to more people, and maybe different kinds of people that is not just somebody who is an executive in Hyatt and who has a self-interest in business as usual, but maybe some other kinds of perspectives.
Pete Mockaitis
Oh, I didn’t even think about that. Was he torpedo-ing our idea on purpose? I think he’s a pal. I think it came from the heart. But you’re right. Why not say, “Oh, that’s a great point, liability. Let’s also talk to some people in insurance to hear if that’s the kind of thing that there is insurable against and how that even works”? Because it’s not like a home or auto or life policy that I know about. It’s a whole other thing. And then I could get educated there.
Zorana Ivcevic Pringle
Yeah, exactly. And there are actually things like Airbnb in different parts of the world, existed in some shape or form before. So, you could learn from experiences there. I grew up in Croatia and there is a great tradition of renting rooms in houses, in private houses. Didn’t exist here in the US, but maybe you can learn from other perspectives and from other ways of doing it. So, that is one big barrier.
Another big barrier is we don’t feel confident. We don’t feel that we can picture 10 steps ahead, and this feeling of, “I don’t have the self-confidence for it,” can be in our way. But when we say that we are making this assumption, we are making an assumption that you have to be 100% confident to try anything out.
Well, if we take an analogy with fuel, confidence being fuel of getting you started and getting you going, well, you only need enough fuel to go for a few miles until that first little task along the way, and then you refuel. You refuel by realizing, “Well, I was able to do something. Therefore, chances are I can do another task along the way,” breaking one big thing into smaller chunks.
Pete Mockaitis
Okay. So, little steps, one bit at a time, gathering input from other sources, seeing what’s next, not getting overwhelmed. I like that. I also want to hear your perspective on putting more of an emphasis on problem finding as opposed to problem solving. How do you think about that?
Zorana Ivcevic Pringle
If you want to say it in, like, one sentence, problem finding is a way to problem solving. When psychologists called this process that happens in creative work problem finding, they made our communication a little bit more difficult because it suggests that, “Okay, you find a problem and then you solve it kind of step by step.” They didn’t really mean that.
They mean problem finding is a process of exploration. You identify a big umbrella problem and then you are approaching with curiosity and experimentation what it could be under that big umbrella thing. And you are asking the question in different ways in the process. You are arranging it and rearranging it in different ways.
If you are designing a website, you try it one way and then you move different things around, so you can see it visually as moving pieces. Sometimes it’s physically moving pieces in different places. Like, in studies, we sometimes arrange it so that people can physically manipulate objects versus they cannot physically manipulate objects in the process of design. And if you cannot physically manipulate objects, well, you are going to be less successful in it in the end.
Pete Mockaitis
Very good. Could you give us some more examples of that in practice?
Zorana Ivcevic Pringle
So, to give you an example from a research study, one of my favorite research studies of all time, actually, it was a study of art students. And researchers invited them into the lab and said, “Your task is to make a drawing of a still life.” And they give them lots of different objects. There were more than 30 objects on a big table. They could choose whatever they wanted.
And the researchers observed what these art students were doing. And they found out that those who were judged to have produced the most original, most creative drawings in the end, did not just take a bunch of objects, arrange them, and then spend a lot of time and a lot of effort and a lot of detail into the minutiae of creating the drawing itself.
Rather, what they did is they played with the objects. They would physically lift them up, feel them, weigh them, compare them. If they had mechanical parts, play the mechanical parts. Think of why are they playing the mechanical parts? They’re never going to be seen on the 2D drawing, right? You’re not going to see what this toy is capable of doing or how it moves.
But if you did that anyway, it ended up being more creative in the end. You’re getting more feel of what the objects are, what their potential is, what it could suggest. And if you didn’t try just one possible arrangement of objects, but try different ones, sketched a little bit, came back and rearranged them, your end product is more creative.
Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, that really resonates. And I’m thinking of how that can work even in a more abstract sense. Like, if I’m working on a thing, I’m thinking about a thing over time, and then I’m just exposed to more stimuli, like just things, environments, ideas, perspectives, it’s like they just collide.
And it’s really, really handy and beautiful in terms of, like, what can someone use to lean on when their ankle is sprained. It’s like, “Well, lots of things. It doesn’t have to be a cane per se. It could be a baseball bat. It could be a wood, for example. It can be a broom.” And so, it’s interesting, and these ideas did not even occur to me until I actually had that problem in mind, and then bumped into those objects in the environment.
Zorana Ivcevic Pringle
Yeah, that’s a great example in everyday life. There are examples in the world of work. There was a study that analyzed 1.2 million companies in the United States, big database with lots of information about companies. And they wanted to see, out of those 1.2 million, what will happen to startups, depending on what point they scale up and whether they engage in this problem finding, this construction and reconstruction of what you’re actually doing.
And they found that those companies, those startups that scale after two years, as opposed to in the first six months or 12 months after being founded, are 20 to 40% more likely to survive. That is a huge difference. That is a huge effect. And the reason for that was that they engaged in lots of testing, testing of their ideas, seeing how it worked, going back to the drawing board, and not scaling until they figured it out a little bit more.
Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Very good. I’d also love to hear a little bit about the emotional groove, if you will. Because sometimes I feel like I’m in a spot where ideas are just flying left and right, quick, quick. And other times, I am just bone dry, got nothing. What’s behind this? And is there a way we can kick ourselves into high creative gear?
Zorana Ivcevic Pringle
Yes, there is. What you are describing there is the fact that how we are feeling influences how we are thinking. And the good news is that we can use those connections to our advantage. So, what you noticed is that there are times when ideas are flowing and flowing and flowing, and you are feeling positive and you’re feeling energized. And when you are in these kinds of moods, you can very quickly come up with ideas.
But at other times, ideas are not coming. and everything seems stupid, right? Well, it turns out that those kinds of feelings are also useful. They’re just not useful for coming up with ideas. They are very useful for critical thinking. And if we take creative work as not just coming up with ideas, but also developing them, making them into best products we possibly can, then you see how this could be helpful.
So, you are feeling happy, energized and upbeat. You come up with lots of ideas. At a different time, you are feeling down, you are feeling gloomy, you are feeling maybe grumpy. You can very much evaluate, successfully evaluate those ideas, find all the problems potentially with them, and then problem solve around those problems. We need both.
Pete Mockaitis
That’s cool. Yes, so the grumpiness is just like, “Oh, I’m out of luck. There’s no value in this grumpiness,” but, oh, no, perfection. Critique away now. You’re in the groove for that.
Zorana Ivcevic Pringle
Exactly. And you can use it to your advantage. So, for instance, I am not a morning person. People know to stay away from me in the morning. And so, I use that to my advantage. In the morning, I can really tear apart things that I have written before. I can find all the things that are not clear, all the things that are flat, that fall not quite just right. And I can mark them. I can solve problems around them. And that is something that you need in creative work too.
Pete Mockaitis
So, that’s a great perspective there, is match the work you’re doing to the mood you find yourself in. That’s really cool. And I’m also curious, is it possible to make the shift? I am in the grumpy mode, but what is needed from me in the moment is creative, generative mode. Do you have any tips or tricks to manage our own emotional states to find that groove?
Zorana Ivcevic Pringle
Yeah, the good news is that we have more agency in relation to our moods than we seem to, and then we oftentimes believe we do. And a very powerful tool there is how we think about the situation. We assume that situation, emotional reaction, one comes immediately after another, but there’s something that happens in between, actually.
And what happens in between is how we think about the situation. And if we think about the situation as a threat, it’s something that is one way or another dangerous to us or can put us at a risk, then we are going to have less control over it, and it will be experienced in a more negative and unpleasant way.
But if we shift how we look at the situation, and say, ‘Hey, right now, I’m about to give an important presentation, but I’m feeling nervous. If I’m really being truly honest, I am feeling anxious right now.” But if you say to yourself, “Hey, yes, you are feeling anxious. However, you are feeling anxious not because you are not prepared, not because you are not ready for this, but because you truly and deeply care about it. This is important to you,” you are going to do better.
Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Understood. So, the interpretation, the meaning that the frame we’re putting on, it makes a world of difference. I suppose at times, it’s perhaps easier said than done to choose an empowering, useful, effective frame. Any pro tips in the heat of battle?
Zorana Ivcevic Pringle
Yeah, you’re right. Sometimes, we just cannot make that happen. And at those times, an emotion can already happen, we are already experiencing something unpleasant and something that seems to be getting in our way. Sometimes the only thing we can do with those instances is to choose how we react. So, what our physical reaction is going to be like. That can be influencing the activation in our body by taking a deep breath, by taking just one moment before we react.
I give a lot of talks, and sometimes you get unexpected questions. And when you get unexpected questions, you can start to feel your body getting jittery. So, you take a step back and take a breath. Taking a breath can make you seem thoughtful to the audience, but it’s also going to calm your physical reactions. And as your physical reactions calm, your emotional ones do too.
Pete Mockaitis
All right. Thank you. I also want to hear your take on creativity and AI. What are the best ways to engage with it and the worst ways to engage with it as we do creative stuff?
Zorana Ivcevic Pringle
Oh, the worst ways. The worst ways are the easiest. The worst ways is you ask ChatGPT or whatever is your AI of choice, a question. You copy paste that answer and you are done.
Pete Mockaitis
Okay.
Zorana Ivcevic Pringle
And you are laughing at it, but you are laughing at it because you wouldn’t do it like that.
Pete Mockaitis
Well, those who have, I’m thinking about attorneys and others have faced severe consequences of the negative variety.
Zorana Ivcevic Pringle
Exactly. So, it is a chuckle for us here in the conversation because we wouldn’t do it, but people are doing it. So that’s clearly the worst-case scenario. What are better ways of using AI is a little bit of a sparring partner. I oftentimes use AI when I’m writing, and I don’t necessarily use anything it produces. It is more of asking a question, “How could this chunk of text be said in a different way, be expressed in a different way?”
And I have heard stories from writers who are using it in a similar way, never actually taking the output itself, but having it as inspiration, as a jumping point, as, “Oh, I didn’t think of it to put it that way.” And it could be in opposition to it, or in agreement with it as a different perspective.
So, engaging with AI as a tool, where it could be a conversation partner that has a perspective of having swallowed the internet, can be something to make you think, make you think in a different way, make you arrange what you’re doing in a different way.
You are the one asking the question. Always remember you are the one asking the question, which brings us back to what we talked about earlier of creativity and the importance of problem finding in creativity. You are always the one doing the problem finding when working with the AI agent. It can give you answers, but you are the one asking the questions, asking the questions in a different way, formulating it and reformulating it to find different angles.
Pete Mockaitis
Yeah, I like that a lot. And I think that often what AI will produce is the opposite of novel and innovative and kind of the most obvious standard issue, “This is what the internet says, response on a matter,” which can be helpful.
It’s like, “Oops, I overlooked that.” And also, it gives you, what I find is my experience is like a lot of great reminders, like, “Oh, of course, I should have thought of that. And because you mentioned that, this makes me think of this other thing.” So, a sparring partner is a great way to put it.
Zorana Ivcevic Pringle
Yeah, “It makes me think of this other thing,” is really interesting. Sometimes we do that with other humans. It’s just, this AI is readily available at any time, and it has the knowledge of the whole internet so it can be useful in that way, even if it is to point to you the usual commonplace ways of looking at something. And the usual and commonplace is not creative, but usual and commonplace can be a starting point from which you make something creative.
Pete Mockaitis
Well, beautiful. Thank you. Well, Zorana, tell me, any other top things you want to make sure to mention before we hear about some of your favorite things?
Zorana Ivcevic Pringle
The one that I want to mention is, “How do we make creativity reliable? How do we ensure that we are not a one-hit wonder?” and in the context of your job, that you are sustainably and reliably and sometimes on demand, doing creative things.
Pete Mockaitis
Tell us.
Zorana Ivcevic Pringle
Well, the secret is it’s not secret. The key is in the social nature of creativity. When we are creating, when we are doing something, even if the act itself is solitary, like writing a book, I was the only one writing it, but there are social influences on it. There are the voices of colleagues who you interacted with and from whom you have learned. There are those lessons from having read, in my case, journal articles and books that influenced your thinking that became part of what you write and what you do.
And then there are those social influences that create an infrastructure or an ecosystem of the job. And when that climate, that job climate is one that is favorable to creativity and innovation, then it can really flourish and not just once, but sustainably.
Pete Mockaitis
All right. Well, now could you share with us a favorite quote, something you find inspiring?
Zorana Ivcevic Pringle
It is by Frank Barron, a creativity researcher from the 1950s and ‘60s, and he said that creative individuals are occasionally crazier, yet adamantly saner than the average person.
Pete Mockaitis
And can you share a favorite study or experiment or bit of research?
Zorana Ivcevic Pringle
One study that I find very intriguing is a study where people have looked at the influence of instructions on creative thinking. So, there was a standard test of creative thinking, but one group of people was given the standard instruction, “Come up with as many ideas as you can.” And the other group, that same instruction plus three words, “Please be creative.” And those three words made a bunch of difference. When we ask people to be creative, they rise to the occasion.
Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And a favorite book?
Zorana Ivcevic Pringle
My favorite book on creativity, since we are at the topic, is a very old one. I like to uncover things that are sometimes forgotten. And it is from 1975 by Rollo May, and the title is “The Courage to Create.”
Pete Mockaitis
All right. And a favorite habit?
Zorana Ivcevic Pringle
Make it a habit to learn what works for you. So, to learn that, yes, all the advice out there says, “Write first thing in the morning,” but if it doesn’t work for you, don’t do it that way. Create your own way that works for you, depending on who you are as a person.
Pete Mockaitis
All right. And is there a particular nugget, a sound bite, a Zorana original that you’re really known for?
Zorana Ivcevic Pringle
Creativity is social even when it doesn’t feel like it is.
Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And if folks want to learn more or get in touch, where would you point them?
Zorana Ivcevic Pringle
Well, my website is Zorana Ivcevic Pringle with dashes in between, and that is the best way to find how to reach me, or all the information on what I’m doing and how to stay in touch.
Pete Mockaitis
All right. And do have a final challenge or call to action for someone looking to be awesome on their job?
Zorana Ivcevic Pringle
Look around you. If you have a point of frustration, it is telling you that something could be done differently, and that it is ripe for problem solving.
Pete Mockaitis
All right. Zorana, thank you.
Zorana Ivcevic Pringle
Thank you.