How to Creatively Get Unstuck? - Start a Personal Creativity Culture

It was a brainstorming exercise in polytechnic where I tasked my students to generate new ways of using the drinking straws ideas .  

At the stroke of 5 minutes, a group of students came up to me and said, “Sir, our group got stuck.  We couldn’t come up with much ideas.  Can you help us?”

I went over to their group and listened to their conversations.  This was what I discovered; whenever someone in the group offered an idea, someone else would respond with, “yeah, but that idea is not new…”.    And when another person offered another idea, another person would go, “Hmmm, that idea is very similar to idea number 3.”

Immediately, I knew what went wrong. My diagnosis of their ‘problem’:   They were having a “Yes, But” syndrome.  

Dr Marako Marcus, a creative consultant and author of ‘Yes, But:  A Handbook for Workplace Creativity’, said that ‘Yes, But’ syndrome is a creative thinking disorder.  It stops you from being creative.  

Avish Parashar, a motivational speaker and improviser, shared similar sentiment indicating that ‘Yes, But’ is like saying “NO!” in a polite manner; the ‘But’ eliminates the positive effect of the ‘Yes’.  

In other words, “Yes, But” gets you stuck!  

Some other examples of “Yes, But”:

“Yes, but … I doubt management will agree to this idea”
“Yes, but … if I suggest this idea, I have to experiment it myself”
“Yes, but …. I don’t have the time to attend gym classes”

Have you had similar experience?

How then can we overcome this “Yes, But” syndrome?  

Embrace a personal creativity culture.  How?

I would recommend changing the phrase “Yes, But” to “Yes, And” in your conversations. Just change one word?  YES, just change one word AND it will make you more creative.

This “Yes, And” is an improvisational theatre technique and philosophy I learnt in actor’s training.  How it works in the improvisational theatre setting is that when an actor is presented with a new idea (or action, or movement) on stage, the rest of the actors would have to accept the idea (“Yes”) and add on (“And”) with their own ideas and progress with the show.  This is the same mindset I applied in my creativity classes.  

Coming back to my earlier story of my students getting stuck for ideas, in order to address it I stopped the group and got them to play a “Yes, And” game to illustrate my point.

In the game, I got two student-participants to pair up and engage in conversations.  I provided them with a scenario where the conversation was to tackle a problem - i.e. getting stuck from coming up with unique ideas to celebrate birthdays.

The only two rules they needed to adhere in this game were:  (i) Each person was to converse in a sentence one after another; and (ii) to always start their sentence with the phrase ‘Yes, And…’.

The conversation sounded like this:
Participant 1 (P1): “Yes, and let’s have a zoo-themed birthday party…”
P2: “Yes, and let’s use the monkey as a mascot …”
P1: “Yes, and we’ll decorate the venue with lots of bananas …”
P2: “Yes, and we can have many kinds of fruit juices as drinks…”

The conversation continued, until I (as the lecturer) stopped the game, which by then, already had them going close to a minute.

While the “Yes, And” game led their conversation to very interesting ideas, the process of playing this game exuded three distinct principles, which I defined it as the “ABCs of ‘Yes, And’:

1) Acceptance
Since only “acceptance” was allowed to take place here, no ideas had been filtered during the conversation.  Participants could easily come out with many new and interesting ideas to get the conversation going.  From the emotional point of view, the participant who contributed their ideas knew that he/she will not be “judged” for any ‘wrong’ idea.  This encouraged people to accept one another’s idea, thus spreading positivity.

2) Build On
When positivity set in, it was only natural for one to chip in with new ideas to make the conversations even better.  Thus, new ideas were built upon one another.

3) Collaborate
Have you heard the phrase, “It Takes a Village to Raise A Child”?  It was clearly about a collaborative effort to avoid getting stuck and to move forward. In the process, partnerships were formed and friendships were forged.  

These are the principles that you can use and bring over to your personal life when you are stuck, or even in business or career capacities.

Of course, I must admit that developing a personal creativity culture is not an overnight thing. Start cultivating creativity consciously by applying “Yes, And” in your daily thinking and conversations.  Do also consider embracing the following habits:

Habit #01- Ask Questions, Be Curious
Always be in a postition of curiousity, wanting to know on how things work (or don’t work).  

Curiousity leads to Creativity.


Habit #02- Compliment Others
To be creative, it is essential to be in a positive frame of mind.  One of the most effective ways to be in that state is to genuinely compliment others.  Start sending text messages or emails to someone daily, complimenting them of their accomplishments.  By the Universal Law of Reciprocity, someone (could be someone else) will send you a compliment and make your day - resulting in positive outcomes.

Positivity breeds Creativity.

Habit #03 - Think Like an Explorer
When you have a mind of an explorer, your peripherals start to widen up and you will start  to observe new and interesting things which you could not have noticed.  Jot these information down and park it as your vocabulary of things.  When you need to explore new ideas, look from this list.

Creativity explores New Ideas & Insights


Start cultivating a mindset of continuous learning and creative thinking, and you will in turn reap the rewards, which include some amazing results you will experience:

- increased engagement between you and another person
- increased motivation to get your work done
- increased personal productivity
- increased ability to solve problems faster
- increased team bonding and collaboration at work