Sometimes our biggest creative failures reveal what we actually believe about creativity. In fifth grade, a disastrous California Mission project forced me to rethink what it meant to be “creative.” Years later, I can see how many of my assumptions were actually common cultural myths: that creativity belongs to certain types of people, requires total freedom, comes from completely original ideas, thrives in chaos, and demands fearless confidence. But what if creativity works almost exactly the opposite way?

My Failed Fifth Grade Project

I sit alone on the busted up vinyl bus seat at the middle section of the nearly empty bus. I’m not nearly nerdy enough to be in the first three rows and not cool enough to sit at the back. I’m holding my project carefully, bracing against each bump on the barely kept up county roads. Does this thing even have shock absorbers? 

A half a mile later, the bus stops and two fifth graders step inside holding their immaculate sugar cube California mission replicas. Jennifer R and Jennifer T. The dual Jennys whose moms had both spent hours placing each cube to the perfect specification. 

“I had some help but I painted it all myself,” Jenny R says to my brother. He offers the coolest, most apathetic nod because that’s what you do when you’re in the very back of the bus. 

I reach into my backpack and pull out my PE shirt, carefully covering my mangled mess of a project and set it next to me like it’s a passenger. Then I pull out a spiral notebook and begin scribbling the story. 

See, this was an immaculate mission in Carmel and the aliens showed up assuming it was pronounced like Caramel and then they got frustrated that none of the monks had any of that sweet syrupy goodness made from melted sugar. So they parked their UFO and waited impatiently. Now, if you know anything about aliens, you’ll know that the most dangerous ones are not the ones looking for conquest or the ones trying to do good. It’s the bored ones. Don’t get me wrong, they saw how poorly the native population was treated and it irritated them. Bust honestly they were mostly just bored and annoyed. So after the monks tried repeatedly to make caramel (by using whatever sugar substitute they could find) the aliens grew ever more impatient and decided to vaporize the mission. However, the adobe didn’t really vaporize. Instead, it melted. This whole thing really happened . . . in another dimension. You could see it but you’d need a DeLorean and a flux capacitor. 

The truth is, my project is an epic fail. My mom had refused to help. Not because she she’s been too busy but because she believes in academic integrity. My twin brother’s finished. He aced the project and turned it in two days early. However, I hav procrastinated. So on Sunday afternoon, I flipped through the directions and glued together my sugar cubes. Unfortunately, the glue wasn’t sticking well enough so I used the hot glue gun. It turns out hot glue isn’t the best adhesive for sugar cubes. Hence my melted mess of a mission.

I had thought about asking my mom to go to the grocery store and pick up more sugar cubes. However, money was tight and we lived out in the country. A trip to the store would be over an hour round trip. So, I salvaged what I could and slapped on some tempera paint.

For what it’s worth, I earned a C. 

“The project was a bit of a mess and I think you could definitely do better. However, your story was really creative so I gave you a C. If you want to redo the model, you can move this grade up to a B or maybe an A.” 

A Change in Projects

In this moment, Mr. S is defying the trend. This is an era steeped in traditional grading philosophies, where students easily lose half their points by turning an assignment in late or receive zero credit for forgetting to put their name on a paper. It’s a time when you can’t redo an assignment for higher points but you can still earn extra credit by bringing in tissues or sticky notes for class supplies. Joey pulled his grade up to a C by raiding his pantry during the canned food drive.

So, the fact that he’s letting me revise my work is actually a huge deal.

But then he changed his mind again. He snapped his finger and said, “I know. I have an idea. You love baseball, right?” 

I nodded. 

“You draw pictures of old baseball stadiums?” 

“Actually, I design my own stadiums based on pictures of old ones,” I correct him. 

“Okay, I’m going to let you do something different here. I want you look at pictures of the California missions and design your own baseball stadium that has elements from mission architecture. You’ll still have to use sugar cubes for your model.” 

“When is it due?” I ask. 

“Three weeks.” 

He sends me to the library and I check out every book I can find on the California missions. I bring them home and start flipping through pictures and reading short snippets on the design. There is no internet at this point (or if there is my rural hometown has no awareness of it) but I pepper one of my dad’s friends with every question I can ask about later architectural styles that were influenced by the California missions. 

I sketch out images of this ballpark from every angle. It’s a mess. The proportions are way off. The field looks enormous. I think I might have forgotten the foul poles. Still, I sketch away with multiple renderings. I frantically work through the model. Mr. S actually excuses me from silent reading at one point to let me continue. I finish the model one day late and he gives me an overall grade of an A (despite the fact that the proportions on the model are even worse than the sketches I’d made). Honestly, I’d forgotten about the grade. 

 

My Misconceptions About Creativity 

At one point in the project, Mr. S pulls a chair up next to me and asks about a key decision I just made. After the explanation, he says, “I love it. You know, you’re really creative.” 

I didn’t believe him. I couldn’t. Because creative kids knew how to make models that looked pretty. They knew how to get the proportions right on their drawings. I could name three other students in the class that were creative. I was just a nerdy kid who liked baseball and architecture. 

But looking back on this, I had bought into some of the big myths we have about creativity. I use the word “myth” here rather than lie because I don’t think these are malicious. Instead, they are culturally perceptions that we tell and retell through stories that often fail to convey the whole truth. I bought into the myth that creative talent is innate and that it connects directly to a polished finish product. I believed in the idea that creativity has to be hands-on. I assumed that if I was failing I was a failure at creativity. I thought creativity should be fun and effortless. I assumed that creative inspiration was spontaneous and free. Meanwhile, I had followed a strict schedule with limitations. 

The original California Mission Project was not a project at all. It was what Chris Lehmann (spell) would describe as recipe-based learning. It was hands-on but not minds-on. It was too loose in areas that should have been tight (failing to incorporate routines or make use of creative constraint in design) but also too tight in areas where it should have been loose (like providing student agency in the actual design). But in many respects, this project was also a product of those same cultural myths. Meanwhile, the redesign he allowed me to do was so different because it defied those same cultural myths. 

So, as we think about routine creativity, let’s explore some of the myths that get in the way of a routine creativity approach. 

 

Myth #1: Some people are creative types. 

Throughout my California Mission Project, I continued to define myself as “not very creative,” because I had a picture in my head of a creative type. This was someone where every artistic endeavor was effortless and the finished result was always top quality. The truth is, this archetype doesn’t exist. Every creative genius you’ve seen has unfinished work and total duds and epic fails they’ve made along the way. 

But underlying this misconception was a larger cultural myth that the world includes a binary of “creative types” and “not very creative types.” That simply isn’t the cause. 

Reality:  Creativity can be practiced and developed.

There is no creative type. We are all creative. It’s just that we often express our creativity in ways that are different based upon our skills, personality, and lived experience. 

In other words, we need to move from viewing a “creative type” to understanding the types of creativity. Creativity is not always artistic. Generating ideas, solving problems, and using divergent thinking apply across all domains, including STEM fields. Moreover, every area of creativity (including visual arts) are learned skills rather than innate talents. We can grow and improve with practice. 

At a school-based level, we can help students cultivate all of these creative types in different subjects but also in combining certain activities and assignments in a way that is interdisciplinary. We can affirm students’ creative strengths in one domain while also helping them develop creative thinking in an area where they might be weaker as well. 

 

Myth #2: Creativity requires total freedom. 

We often assume that freedom leads to deeper creativity. We imagine the creative process as a blank canvas or a wide open space where we are free to express a creativity vision. Here there are no rules, no restrictions, and no one telling us what to do. The assumption is that every added requirement limits our creativity until we are stuck inside a box. A word count gets in the way of writing. A limited set of materials gets in the way of designing. A deadline gets in the way of making something great. If we could just remove the boundaries and give people unlimited choices, they would become more creative. But often, the opposite is true. Often “the box” is the very constraint that leads to divergent thinking. 

Reality: Constraints unlock possibilities.

I can’t tell you how many times I have seen memes suggesting we need to let children “color outside the lines.” I get it. We can sometimes stifle a child’s creativity by constantly layering additional rules and requirements. And yet . . . creative work nearly always requires some level of coloring within the lines. 

Unlimited possibilities feel like a gift but they are too open. Researchers have repeatedly demonstrated that too much creative freedom actually leads to more familiar and even cliche ideas and outputs (something we’ll explore in-depth in an upcoming blog post). Meanwhile, creative constraints often become the design features for original works. They push us to find new solutions and use materials or ideas in unusual ways. 

In other words, the best way to think outside the box is by repurposing the box. 

When my teacher offered a redesigned project for me, he gave me a tight time deadline and required me to do as much as possible in class. He limited my materials. He offered a tight brief of a baseball stadium inspired by mission architecture. But these constraints actually pushed me to be more creative. 

 

Myth #3: Creativity means being completely original. 

We have a cultural archetype of the lone creative type generating a bold new idea that’s completely original. It’s the inventor who comes up with a product no one has ever imagined. It’s the artist who takes a blank canvas and not only paints an original picture but also sparks an entirely genre or movement. 

However, almost nothing is created from scratch. Creative work exists within a larger ecosystem of pre-existing work and tried and true approaches. It’s often connected to larger communities and movements. 

Reality: Imitation sparks inspiration.

Earlier this summer, I attended an A$AP Rocky concert with my daughter. During a song called “Sundress,” I kept thinking, “Wait a minute, I know this song. Is it a cover of some sorts?” A few songs later, it hit me. He had sampled a song from Tame Impala. In this case, he had sampled a key segment of the song in order to create something entirely new (which means he had to pay to use the song he was looping). However, on some level, this is how all musicians work. 

A few months after the A$AP Rocky concert, I saw Tame Impala and suddenly it hit me. This sounds like a John Lennon song. His vocals here feel very much like the white album and the John Lennon solo works. But the vibe of this song is giving Flaming Lips. I could also hear some melodramatic Queen mixed with guitar riffs from Queens of the Stone Age.  

On some level, that’s what little fifth grade me was doing in my revised California Mission Project. I had spent a full year checking out every single book I could find on old baseball stadiums. I’d been talking to every adult who feigned interest about Ebbets Field and Shibe Park and the Polo Grounds and often that feigned interest became deeper storytelling about their childhood experiences with now extinct ballparks. I then engaged in deep research on the architecture of the California missions. 

This is often how creativity works. It starts with consuming and exploring through a process of curation. 

Whether you’re an engineer finding a new way to solve a problem or an writer cranking out a new novelist, it often begins with exploring what already exists. Artists borrow techniques. Musicians build on familiar sounds. Writers imitate the authors they love before developing their own voice. Engineers study existing solutions before designing something better. Creativity is less about avoiding influence and more about what we do with those influences. We collect ideas, combine them, remix them, and eventually make them our own.

As educators, we can incorporate research and fact-finding into the design thinking process (something I included in our LAUNCH Process). 

We can also incorporate elements of curation into the creative process. We can provide exemplars that allow for students to mash-up ideas and approaches. 

 

Myth #4: Creativity is chaotic.

Do a simple internet image search for creativity and you’ll see images that evoke chaos. Messy paint strewed everywhere. Arrows pointing all over the place. Explosions of color and images in the most abstract pattern imaginable. The message is clear. Creativity should be chaotic. 

It starts with a bold “aha moment” and expand outward through a messy productive process. You have a new insight and suddenly you are frantically working on a new project trying to catch lightning in a bottle. In fact, if you continue to work when you are uninspired, you’ll burn out and if you somehow manage to complete the project, your work will be less creative. 

However, nearly all “aha moments” aren’t what we think they are. We’ll be exploring that in a future blog post. But nearly every example of big “aha moments” turn out to be much longer hunches that evolved over time. Whether it’s Newton’s apple story or Darwin’s big realization in science or a sudden inspiration for a song, these moments actually occur through long periods of daily, habitual creative work. 

Reality: Habits create spontaneity.

Habits create the structure for spontaneity. We can’t always predict when you’ll have a new creative insight. If we wait for inspiration, we lose the creative habit and the skills we develop by doing repeated daily work. By contrast, if we show up repeatedly to do creative work, the creative insights occur at times that often feel random. 

One of the things I’ve learned in studying the habits of elite artists, engineers, and entrepreneurs is that planning and structure support improvisation. Even the most idiosyncratic maker is inevitably a planner. They use routines and protocols. They set deadlines. And they show up every day. They might dress odd or even seem a bit chaotic but get below the surface and you’ll see the routine and mundane. 

A caveat here. Sometimes we do get stuck and have to shelve a creative project for awhile. We might be in a planning phase and we simply need some time and space to function as an incubation period. Other times, we hit a creative block and we need to set our work down and go for a walk or solve a hands-on puzzle for awhile before coming back to it. 

 

Myth #5: Creative people are fearlessly confident.

As a kid, I thought creative people had to be bold and confident and fearless in their creative identity. I’d watch late night shows and see an actor hype up the movie she had just appeared in. I’d read an interview with a novelist who talked about how he pushed hard against an editor in order to keep his creative autonomy. Years later, I’d see tech founders like Steve Jobs offer bold statements that bordered on hyperbole and I’d think, “There must be something wrong with me. I’m constantly second guessing myself.” 

But the reality? I was watching the end result once a product was ready to ship. I wasn’t seeing any of these creators in their moments of frustration after they had failed on a particular area for the nineteenth time. I was watching a carefully curated marketing speech or sales pitch in the form of a late night interview. I wasn’t privy to the late night thoughts of a creator who hadn’t yet seen the finished result.

Reality: Safety and humility make creative risk possible.

The best makers actually seek out intellectual humility. They run pre-mortem on products to find the mistakes. They ask for feedback from users early on in the creative process. They work and rework a draft. They seek out new approaches to refine their processes. They look for key aspects that they might have missed and often ask for yet “another set of eyes” on a prototype. In other words, they exude confident humility. 

In other words, by being truly humble, they are more willing to take big creative risks. They realize that humility isn’t a sign of weakness. Instead, you’re being confident enough in your creative ability to divorce your work and even your creative approach from your personal identity. This essentially gives you a “get out of jail free” card with creativity that then leads to better creative risk-taking. 

But this requires an environment where you feel free to take risks. It’s true that some bold creative types can be fearless when the system pushes back on them. But these are often the authors or engineers who gained the power and prestige to be able to put their foot down. Most of us don’t have that level of clout. That’s especially true for our students. 

Here’s why psychological safety makes a huge difference. If we want students to take creative risks, they need to have a sense of safety first so they can wade into the emotional discomfort of taking bigger risks. 

As educators, we can find key ways to provide this psychological safety so that students take creative risks. For example, we might vary the high-stakes and low-stakes elements in a project by building ample revision time. We might incorporate peer feedback protocols so that students demonstrate confident humility. We might allow for resubmissions or even focus on the creative process rather than the final product for certain assignments. 

Ultimately, routine creativity breaks through these cultural myths to demonstrate how creative thinking often works in small ways. We can see that creativity is actually for everyone and can work in all subjects. Throughout this series, we’ll be exploring specific strategies we can use as we incorporate creative thinking into our daily practice.