Practice Does Not Improve Your Creativity

If you are a relentlessly upbeat thinker, you may be fascinated by the 10,000-hour rule, which holds that if you practice something repeatedly for a long enough time, you'll ultimately achieve mastery.

Well, sorry to burst your bubble. Regular sessions of brainstorming are not likely to lead to a rise in unique ideas. In fact, the degree to which your inspirations leave from convention actually might decline over time, according to a recent study by Stanford Graduate School of Business alumna Melanie S. Brucks and associate professor of marketing Szu-chi Huang.

‘To get better at creativity, you need to do some creative thinking about creative thinking. ’

"It was surprising, people got worse at one type of idea generation, even as they thought they were getting better at it." says Brucks.

The details of the article, "Does Practice Make Perfect? The Contrasting Effects of Repeated Practice on Creativity," is published in the Journal of the Association for Consumer Research.

However, as Brucks probed into the scientific literature on creativity, she discovered an intriguing gap in the research.

"To practice creativity efficiently, we have to change how we define the practice," Huang states. It might be more beneficial to disrupt routines and focus on routinizing the creative process intentionally. A team leader might alter the times that brainstorming sessions are held, for example, and change up the types of exercises employed.

Source: Medindia