To be creative is to have a divergent thinking pattern.
If you are very logical then you have a convergent thinking pattern.
High amount of intelligence has a negative corelation with creativity. You should have average to above average intelligence in order to be creative.
Convergent thinking helps you to come to accurate conclusions if you have all the facts in hand. It will help you ask the exact right questions that you need to come to a conclusion.
If there is ambiguity, there is a natural tendency to resolve the ambiguity before proceeding further. It is pretty binary. If there are 10 possibilities and 1 possibility is the right one then you think. Either the first possibility is the right one or the remaining 9 ones. So on and so forth till you get to the correct answer.
You also tend to be confident because you are consistent and past experience has reinforced your world views. You are focussed and plow through obstacles till you reach your goal.
Divergent thinking helps you to come to a wrong conclusion very quickly using only limited facts out of all the available facts. But this is a heuristic approach. You iterate and go off on tangents till you come to a unique solution which is ultimately correct after a long while and this process cannot be replicated. You get the answer first and the rationality of it later. You backtrack from the answer and add rationality to it later so it is logical and people around you, including you yourself can be convinced by it.
Basically, you aim for a goal and then go off on a tangent in a different direction. This different direction is a waste of time but you will learn something indirectly that will help you reach your main goal.
If you are logical, you use your intelligence in a conscious manner. If you are a creative type then you will let your unconscious brain guide you into a solution.
If you are the logical type and want to be creative, then the best way is to be obsessed about finding a solution. Do your best with your intelligence and then take a break. Like, go hiking, swimming or running etc. Then your unconscious mind will have a chance to come up with the solution and will give it to you.
People who are insanely creative know they are creative. There can be absolutely no doubt about it in their minds.
People who are highly intelligent and logical don't know that they are intelligent without external feedback from their peers. They are just surprised as to why others are slow or have a difficulty in understanding something when it is so very blindingly obvious to them. They just "get it!" and have high cognitive processing speeds.
>High amount of intelligence has a negative corelation with creativity.
This has not been proven and I don't think this is the case. Here is a great post that highlights the faulty methodology of most studies that came to this conclusion.
I think intelligence gives you the background of ideas, philosophies, and history from which you can, if you are motivated enough, be inspired by when working on creative pursuits. I am likewise not terribly convinced that the correlation is as high as the GP asserted.
Also, I think that creativity usually comes from two ideas that no one really considered could be combined together, but someone did, and pursued it. The people who are best able to capitalize on that are those who are experts in more than multiple fields, like polymaths, and can use the knowledge from one field and pollinate in another field of expertise. I.e. polymaths, who I would expect to be some of the most intelligent people out there.
I think this means conventional intelligence. If lots of people think you are smart it is only possible if they all have the same internal definition of smart which must be the lowest common denominator.
Creativity and creative intelligence is unable to hook into established definitions and so such things can't be labelled. Often they are labelled as "different" or even "subversive" until small group mindshare makes it mainstream and eventually it is appreciated.
So if intelligence has a negative correlation with creativity than how do we have people like Conan O'Brien or Quentin Tarantino? This just feels like way too much of a blanket statement backed by faulty logic. Harvard, for example, has some really famous creative alumni, so did they admit average intelligence students? Or are they really not that creative?
Basic theory:
To be creative is to have a divergent thinking pattern. If you are very logical then you have a convergent thinking pattern.
High amount of intelligence has a negative corelation with creativity. You should have average to above average intelligence in order to be creative.
Convergent thinking helps you to come to accurate conclusions if you have all the facts in hand. It will help you ask the exact right questions that you need to come to a conclusion. If there is ambiguity, there is a natural tendency to resolve the ambiguity before proceeding further. It is pretty binary. If there are 10 possibilities and 1 possibility is the right one then you think. Either the first possibility is the right one or the remaining 9 ones. So on and so forth till you get to the correct answer.
You also tend to be confident because you are consistent and past experience has reinforced your world views. You are focussed and plow through obstacles till you reach your goal.
Divergent thinking helps you to come to a wrong conclusion very quickly using only limited facts out of all the available facts. But this is a heuristic approach. You iterate and go off on tangents till you come to a unique solution which is ultimately correct after a long while and this process cannot be replicated. You get the answer first and the rationality of it later. You backtrack from the answer and add rationality to it later so it is logical and people around you, including you yourself can be convinced by it.
Basically, you aim for a goal and then go off on a tangent in a different direction. This different direction is a waste of time but you will learn something indirectly that will help you reach your main goal.
If you are logical, you use your intelligence in a conscious manner. If you are a creative type then you will let your unconscious brain guide you into a solution.
If you are the logical type and want to be creative, then the best way is to be obsessed about finding a solution. Do your best with your intelligence and then take a break. Like, go hiking, swimming or running etc. Then your unconscious mind will have a chance to come up with the solution and will give it to you.
People who are insanely creative know they are creative. There can be absolutely no doubt about it in their minds. People who are highly intelligent and logical don't know that they are intelligent without external feedback from their peers. They are just surprised as to why others are slow or have a difficulty in understanding something when it is so very blindingly obvious to them. They just "get it!" and have high cognitive processing speeds.