This weekend, I was watching  a Japanese anime called Evangelion. In one of the episodes, I saw 30 seconds of footage, were one of the characters feels uneasy with freedom so, make him more comfortable they remove a degree of freedom (later on how they did this).

The 30 seconds sticked to mi mind, because the images easily portrait why creative thinking is hard. Creativity is define by the Merriam-Webster dictionary as “the ability to create”. Generally, when we create something, we use another “something”, as a base and build on it, therefore we are not being creative, because we are not creating, instead we are building. How do we create, rather than building? Here is where “no hold bars creativity” helps. No hold bars creativity, is the process of thinking, where you have the freedom to come with anything, that yet can’t be describe with words. You may ask, when do you really need to go through this creativity process? Well dear reader, by asking you are already lowering your freedom and getting in your comfort zone. The same happens if you argue that everything has been already invented, that is a good start on caging the creativity process: with bars.

Here is the clip to complement the above:

As you can see, the character has full freedom, but he is uneasy. Things get better when a line is drawn and he can see where is the bottom and the top. With the line he achieves a sense of familiarity by walking, however he loses a degree of freedom.

If I ask you: create the craziest virtual world you can? Or the most innovative mobile phone, by doing so, I’m staring to limit you with the words: “crazy” and “innovative”. Asking question will not help you with the process, neither defining a problem, to archive this here are two steps:

First: don’t use the term “No hold bars” or any terms…
Second: create.