“CEOs are telling us they have to be more creative,” says Saul Berman, Lead Partner, Strategy and Change, at IBM. “We’re not going back to the old normal.” Creativity was the highest ranked leadership quality at 60%, followed by integrity and global thinking (Thanks to Fast Company for this graphic, right).

The great challenge for CEOs is dealing with increasing complexity and change on all fronts, and because of that, according to the report, “Creativity is the most important leadership quality.” The best corporate executives “practice and encourage experimentation and innovation throughout their organizations.” The survey was based on interviews with more than 1500 CEOs worldwide, the largest one-on-one sample known.

So what are the characteristics of a creative leader? As the graphic below reveals, the creative leader is one who invites disruptive innovation and change, can tolerate ambiguity, challenge the status quo and invent new ways of doing things. For more on this study and to get your own copy of the report, click here.

Want more on creativity from Adam? See his Innovation On My Mind blog.

I love Harvard professor Youngme Moon’s sub-subtitle of her new book, Different: Escaping the Competitive Herd: “Succeeding in a World where Conformity Reigns but Exceptions Rule.” In her book, she makes the case that true innovation — and success — comes when a business offers something meaningfully different.

As much as we Americans often claim the mantle of individuality and freedom to be different, most of us rarely are. From what we wear to what we talk about, from the party at the bar to the big wedding we attend, conformity reigns and rains and, as my poor friends here in Chicago have heard too much from me lately, I’m feeling all wet.

Moon makes the case that almost every success story of the past couple decades has been the exception to the rule, the outlier that has rejected orthodoxy, the difference-maker that did not simply compete in the same game as others. “Differentiation is not a tactic,” she says. “It’s not a flashy advertising campaign; it’s not a sparkling new feature set. It’s not a laminated frequent-buyer card or a money-back guarantee. Differentiation is a way of thinking. It’s a mindset. It’s a commitment. A commitment to be different, not in a superficial, I’m-going-to-offer-a-couple-of-features-my-competitor-doesn’t-offer kind of way, but in a way that is fundamental and near impossible to replicate.”

Now I happen to be allergic to too much conformity, but I realize that it’s often easier, and even satisfying, to conform. But creativity — which we need more than ever in our organizations and for our own personal success — requires deviance, a willingness to be different. A willingness and a mindset and a drive to be the one who doesn’t do it that way, who draws outside the lines or creates meaningful new lines, who risks the stares and comments (and there will be many) from the conforming majority.

Moon’s wonderful Anti-Creativity Checklist video (above) shares her top 14 ways to keep your place in the conforming majority and ensure that you won’t be a difference-maker in your organization.

Want more from Adam?  See his Innovation on my Mind blog.

For creativity and innovation, the framework emphasizes Thinking Creatively (brainstorming techniques, creating new ideas, refining and evaluating ideas), Working Creatively with Others (communicating new ideas, being open to diverse perspectives, demonstrating orginality, viewing failure as part of the process) and Implementing Innovations (Acting on creative ideas and contributing to a field). These are terrific guideposts.

So the question is, how do we really teach creativity, critical thinking, communication and collaboration? These are right brain skills, those that are most difficult to teach in a codified, regimented way. With most school systems now fixated on measurable outcomes (usually test scores), how do we make these Four Cs a priority when they are so hard to measure? Illinois, for one, has charged “core content teams” with several tasks including to “ensure that the Illinois Learning Standards embody the fusion of the three Rs and the four Cs.” I’m looking forward to delving into this question and learning more about what states are really doing to embrace the framework. Let me hear from you if you know more about the progress being made.

In this Pearson Foundation video here, “Teaching Teachers to Teach 21st Century Learners,” we hear from various leaders from the worlds of business and education as they discuss the importance of 21st century learning and the need for change. Partnership for 21st Century Skills President Ken Kay begins to describe the skills needed with this distinctive pairing: “Non-routine thinking” and “complex communications.”

The education world has long been averse to change — in many ways we are still preparing students for a world that no longer exists. The fact that the Four Cs have been defined and already embraced by many leaders is a promising step. The conversation is happening. We’ll see if that can lead to real change and better learning for our kids in the near future.

More from Adam on his Innovation on my Mind blog

I’m trying to turn toward my peripheral vision to uncover my blindspot(s) — where an answer lies — but what I see and hear instead is this constant barrage from my mind: Get to your 14 things to do, go through those 4 different pending email folders, make those calls, strategize then plan then do then act then go, go, go or you are in trouble. To escape this noise, I click on an email and suddenly find myself reading Will Marre’s blog, where he is addressing something similar in his post “Take Back Your Life.” He describes the increase of stress in our personal work worlds, and this part speaks to me:

Those who have decided to work for themselves as consultants or starting a new enterprise have so much pressure to outperform that the velocity of our warship has to always be moving at “warp.” If we slow down the immense gravity of our death-star economy will crush us. Whew.

That’s it. The pressure I too often feel has put some kind of neck brace on me. I can’t turn my head toward a very real force that is trying to get my attention. This is why I’m so antsy. I need to shift but the immense gravity weighs on me and I can’t move.

So now I’m trying to access a different part of my being through the less rigid, right side of my brain. I rifle through some writing and find a poem of mine that recalls a long-ago moment in Napa, CA. Yes, this is close to the feeling I’m having.

I remember the need I felt then to dip my head into some different kind of water:

What is it about Tina Fey? Wherever I find her – presenting on big award shows, interviewed as cover girl on this month’s Esquire, making the talk show rounds for her upcoming movie, Date Night, with Steve Carrell – she is always surprising me and making me smile. She continues to pile up Emmys and Golden Globes for 3o Rock, the show she created, produces and stars in. What is it that made this plain jane the AP entertainer of the year and one of the greatest creative successes of our time?

Watch 30 Rock and what you’ll see is a cavalcade of creativity, undoubtedly generated from the improvisational world of pushing the fool’s envelope. Fey first made her name here in Chicago as an improv player for Improv Olympic and Second City Theaters, where the great skills are in building on each other’s imagination, never judging an idea until later (if ever), and learning that for every time you create something idiotic there is another time you create something ingenious. I guarantee you the 30 Rock writers (and the actors) are experts in giving themselves full permission to be preposterous, because it is only when you open wide to ideas that the most creative can come out. And by creative I’m not talking just outrageous. I’m talking, as you find in each of the 30 rock characters, outrageously fitting. Which makes for funny.

But ultimately there is the great improvisor herself, the former head writer and performer for Saturday Night Live, whose Sarah Palin impression will be memorable forever. It’s Tina, whose Liz Lemon on 30 Rock is continually embarrassed and made the fool, who’s gotten so good at giving herself permission that creative gold comes out of her again and again, and the fool’s gold has become a treasure.

The better you get at giving yourself permission, the more creativity will come from you. So happy April Fool’s Day and may you take the opportunity for fool permission.

More from Adam: Check out his Innovation on my Mind blog.

Suddenly it’s feeling like spring here in Chicago, and I am reminded of my own commitment to be the driver — and not just passive passenger — of change this year.  But, wooosh. They say the older you get, the faster time goes, and perhaps that can partly explain it, but am I just imagining that the future has been coming at me at an increased speed? Do you also feel the acceleration of information, the more frequent gusts of change, the increased number of difficult but more urgent choices that need to be made in this new decade?

This time an outside force has caused me to shake up my mindset, but usually it’s hard to get unstuck and change how we’re seeing a problem or challenge. Creative people hold less tight to their mindsets, constantly seeking out alternative perspectives and foreign experiences–even those that cause discomfort–to keep themselves flexible and more able to adapt to change. Only by cultivating mindset shifts can companies and organizations make breakthrough innovations, like using Gore-Tex fabric for guitar strings and dental floss, or making money through clicks rather than a physical advertisement itself. The mindset of innovation is actually one that moves–that seeks out and considers other lenses all the time.

As I continue to speak out, discuss with others, and read/hear thought leaders grappling with how to make our culture more innovative, I am struck by common themes and agreements. Clearly, almost all of us see the need for change, and the need to support efforts that will bring about more creative solutions–in education, in organizations, in cities. We need more stimulation (rather than just stimulus) to get us excited about innovation and entrepreneurship, wrote Thomas Friedman in the New York Times a few weeks ago. “The best way to counter the Tea Party movement, which is all about stopping things,” he writes, “is with an Innovation Movement, which is all about starting things.”

But an innovation movement needs to shift our quite-stubborn mindsets that are currently not serving us well or promoting creative action. Here are the three key paradigm shifts necessary for cultural innovation that I see, with recent confirmation in the pages of a couple of our few-remaining national publications.

1. The valuing of the right brain. It’s one thing to say we need to be creative, but it’s quite another to support, value and honor those things which improve our creative, right brains. Corporate America in particular still has a hard time valuing anything that appears too “touchy-feely” or that can’t be measured easily through profit and loss. But as Einstein said, “Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted.” Recent commentators have been championing liberal arts–which support this blog’s emphasis on right brain power–in order to boost innovation. “If the country is to prosper–economically, culturally, morally,” wrote Jon Meacham in Newsweek recently, “we have to trust the institutions, old and new, that nurture creativity.” Even MBA programs are beginning to find ways to increase right brain education, according to a recent New York Times article. Roger Martin, the new dean of the Rotman School of Management at the University of Toronto, describes his goal as a kind of “liberal arts M.B.A.” and other programs are increasing focus on thinking differently and using design thinking to solve problems. The next step is for companies to put actual money behind programs that increase right brain thinking of their employees.

2. Collaboration across Disciplines. We are realizing that new solutions must come from a kind of collaboration that breaks down silos of expertise and combines perspectives and wisdom from many. We are currently set up–in academia, in business, in government–with very little communication between departments and domains. It’s time to be multidisciplinary. CEO of IBM Sam Palmisano recently wrote, “We will need ongoing, structured collaboration among city agencies; across business, the nongovernmental sector, academia and communities; and among cities and regional authorities. And that’s going to require that we develop new skills for both managing people and leading organizations.” Both because innovation comes most commonly from the intersection of disparate ideas, and because our economy demands now that we share best practices and help each other solve difficult challenges, collaboration across disciplines must become a real priority. That means working on our collaborative skills, as some MBA programs in the aforementioned article are doing. It also means we need more people who are comprehensivists, able to facilitate dialogue and problem solving among different groups.

3. Act for the long term and not just the short. This is currently America’s Achilles’ Heel, perhaps the one change of mindset with which most people wholeheartedly agree, but often feel helpless about. To become an innovative culture, we must insist that the quarterly earnings report, the short-term R.O.I., and the next primary election cannot solely determine our behavior. A company can’t be innovative if every new R&D project must prove its worth within a year, a requirement of one local large company that is handcuffing an employee I just spoke with. Short-term thinking, especially one ruled by data and numbers and not human values (Google getting out of China appeared to be a rare exception), is killing us as a culture. It limits creativity and prevents the adoption of unpopular-though-healthy policies and practices, regardless of how much the current system is limping along. Every expert in innovation knows that only by allowing for failure and taking risks, even during hard times, is innovation possible. And yet right now as a country we can’t solve any of our persistent problems–you name them–because of the suffocating idolatry of the short term.

The truth is, given the continued partisan ineptitude of our government, I’m not feeling particular hopeful that we can shift paradigms, despite some convincing clamoring for it. How about a little help from you, my elusive reader? Can you share any signs you see that we are valuing the right brain, collaborating across disciplines and acting for the long term?

Despite a more tranquilo relationship with time, the state of Oaxaca, like other areas of Mexico, is surprisingly safe, efficient and culturally vibrant. Creativity flourishes there, from its mole sauces to unique art contributions: black and green pottery, woven rugs and its colorfully painted woodcuttings known as alebrijes. But most amazing was the display of creativity during the Night of the Radishes, every December 23rd, where I and others waited in line for hours to see what artists could do with the otherwise inert and inedible root, which grows all around Oaxaca City. I’ve included a couple of examples.

I don’t believe we should be sacrificing our sense of well-being—let’s admit it, our happiness—for the currency we now trade in, one that ties our sense of self with how busy we are and how many things we can check off our to-do list. As I’ve argued before, our culture of perpetual-tasking and doing-rather-than-being ultimately compromises the breathing room we need for our creative selves, and fosters a consumerist rather creator culture.

In a new ChangeThis article, Olivia Sprinkel mirrors my own contentions with her “Creativist Manifesto,” saying our most important choice right now is whether to be a Consumer or Creativist. She makes some thought-provoking distinctions between the two: having vs. being, certainty vs. uncertainty, movement vs. stillness, answers vs. questions. “To be a Creativist,” she writes, is “to reclaim the right to our individual identities; to play an active role in shaping and in creating our lives from the inside out; to fulfill our need to create which is part of all of us.” Click here for more.

I have to admit: I struggle with this myself. I am an American, and I do feel the pressure of doing more, of finishing and publishing a book or three ASAP, of proving my worth through what I can say I’ve accomplished today. I am part of this culture that believes that claiming certainty to right answers will help my chances at success, even if I know that belief is as distorted as our incessant sense of urgency. Let’s help each other answer this more-urgent-than-we-realize question: How do we find the right balance?

For more from Adam’s Innovation on my Mind blog, click here.

My main argument is that as a culture, country and planet, there is now an innovation imperative like never before. As the speed of change continues to increase, we, as individuals and organizations, must improve our skills of innovation–which guide are ability to change successfully–to be able to prosper economically and to solve the increasingly complex challenges of our day.

Simply put, we need to become more creative people.

I’ve made that case for innovation by sharing ideas and videos from President Obama to thought leaders like Richard Florida, Daniel Pink and Thomas Friedman. I’ve taken you with me as I discussed breakthrough innovation and explored innovation efforts locally, including Chicago’s Innovate Now initiative. I’ve grappled with ways to help organizations harness their creativity, and underscored our need to make radical changes in education to activate creative thinking for children and adults in ways long overdue.Because the engine of innovation is creativity, I’ve focused in large part on clarifying what creativity really is and how we all can learn to be more creative. To understand creativity is to first understand the distinction between divergent and convergent thinking, which I touch on in this video (click on picture above, me presenting at Google this summer), and to embrace a shift of mindset that ground rules like P.T.S. offer. Throughout the blog, I’ve been fleshing out the three key competencies of divergent creativity, which make up my curriculum for creativity training:

1. Fluency: Our ability to generate many ideas, which require skills of initiation, improvisation and experimentation.

2. Flexibility: Our ability to think differently and generate different kinds of ideas. Since innovation most often occurs through the unusual combination of ideas, perspectives and domains–what I call multiparadigmatic or hybrid thinking–the flexibility competency is perhaps our most fertile. It includes skills of shifting, associating and challenging assumptions–and the leveraging of diversity.

3. Originality: Perhaps the most difficult competency to teach, this is our ability to generate unique ideas. It all comes down to the dance of the heart and the mind, and the skills of passion, engagement and synthesis. The more we can express our own unique selves–which was the initial intention of the Kreativity Network I founded and the Creativity Jams I now host–the more innovation will happen, guaranteed.

Finally, I am indeed passionate about changing education, and believe we need our curriculum for K-12, colleges and adults to build these creativity competencies and empower individuals to pursue their innate talents and more experientially tackle real issues. My contention is that we must create a new cadre of comprehensivists–those who can facilitate creativity and change in multidisciplinary ways. We need to break down the silos of expertise that currently separate and stifle us both in academia and organizations, so that we truly leverage our collective brainpower to creatively solve the challenges of our time.

I’m taking a break from the blog for a few weeks. Thanks so much for being part of this conversation and may the new year bring creative renewal–and proactive change–for you in work and life.

I believe the Simpsons to be one of the great breakthroughs in television history and one of the most enduring creative acts of our time. Breakthroughs are distinctive in not being predictable from what preceded them–and irrevocably changing the landscape of the domain.

Two key creative breakthroughs I see in television this generation:

1. The Simpsons. Even though there were cartoons before, the Simpsons created a human-surrogate family and world in a new way, using the limitless parameters of animation to allow us through them to experience realistic and fantastical turn of events and not be worse for wear. Combine that with rare intelligence, more jokes per frame than ever imagined, creative range and satirical commentary on the day’s issue, and you have a breakthough.

2. Reality Television: While there has always been an audience for realistic characters and real-life stories, the breakthough here was in thinking, Why not actual people? Sure “Candid Camera” had at least hinted in this direction and clearly the advent of cheaper video enabled producers to edit hours of film to capture the low percentage of interesting moments. But it was the crafting of narrative–telling a compelling story with real emotions and unpredictable turns reflective of real life–that has resulted in millions of addicted viewers and the prevalence of a new kind of program that did not exist before.

Developing our creative capacities includes cultivating our ability to make breakthroughs, so let me ask:

What TV breakthroughs am I missing here? What do you see as the hallmark breakthrough innovations of television and what enabled them break through?

The creativity competency here for you to build is flexibility, which includes your ability to break out of a paradigm or mindset that you may not realize you’re stuck in. Here’s a mindset challenge I like to offer in my creativity sessions:
A great mathematician determined that half of eight can actually be zero. How is that possible?

If you can’t figure this out immediately (usually only about 1/3 of people can), it means you need to change the way you’re thinking, which researchers refer to as “breaking set” or “blockbusting.” I call this the skill of shifting–your perspective, your lens, sometimes even your attitude. Understanding and consciously flexing our multiple intelligences is one way to do just that.

Multiple Intelligence theory, widely accepted in the world of education, came out of the work of Harvard researcher Howard Gardner, a great paradigm-shifter himself, who studied prodigies and people with brain damage to build his theory that intelligence cannot be measured as a single entity. In addition to the IQ-associated S.A.T. intelligences–mathematical/logical and verbal–he delineated at least six other autonomous intelligences that all healthy people possess, but not necessarily in equal strengths. They include the four above–visual-spatial, interpersonal, intrapersonal and bodily-kinesthetic–as well two others, auditory-musical and natural. These intelligences are quite different from each other–thus you can be great with words and terrible at math, smart in your head but not smart in the world. The key to understand about intelligences is that we are all smart. But it’s how we are smart that matters, especially when it comes to our flexibility and creativity. Flexibly acessing different intelligences is not only a hallmark of creative people, but it is also essential for teachers and presenters who need to engage people who learn differently.

Consciously shifting your intelligence is a technique I use in brainstorming/ideation sessions to get you to think in ways you hadn’t considered. When you’re stuck, ask yourself, “What if I think about this visually or interpersonally or naturally?” Most creative business breakthroughs–ranging from wearing your music to the latest software program, from an experiential marketing campaign to the new restaurant that feels like it’s outdoors–come from insight originating from a flexibility among intelligences, a movement from logical to visual, from words to moods, from the man-made to the natural.

Now back to our mindset challenge. To figure out why half of eight is zero, just shift from your mathematical intelligence to your visual…

For more from Adam, go to his Innovation on my Mind blog…

1. Use the opportunity to truly explore an identity quite different from yours. Come on, time to initiate.
2. Consult your inside to figure out what you want to be on the outside. What do you feel like being? Whose identity would you like to check out? Look around your home for possible costume components that call to you to put them on.
3. Avoid the standard personas and come up with something that you’ve never been before or perhaps you are creating just this once.
4. Stay in character all night.

Taking on another identity is a great way to build the creativity competency of flexibility–your talent in appreciating different perspectives and experiencing the “other.” To be flexible means that you are willing and able to try on different coats and see from different lenses, to visit diverse neighborhoods in the city and in your mind.

It’s not easy to take on another, especially unusual, identity, even on Halloween. People want to figure out “who you are” and don’t have a lot of patience for something they can’t easily categorize. Here in Chicago I’ve found people are hesitant to stay in character even if well-costumed, preferring to meet you at a party with their real name and the literal “What do you do?” question. Screw ‘em. This is Halloween. Commit to your identity, do what feels true to him/her/it, and forgive yourself later for any indiscretions.

Believe me, I know, as I was extremely unpopular last year as “Manimal,” the hair sprouting, woman-repelling hybrid man/animal; and almost entirely unknown the year before as the great Sufi poet Rumi (San Franciscans certainly would have known me and more actively welcomed my poetic proclamations). I did get some needs met, though, as “Mr. ExSqueezeMe” the year before (see shirt, minus a few squeezables, in photo above), where I used a glue gun to attach random touchable items, from a toilet paper role to stress balls, and encouraged interaction (and hugs).

You might get a kick out of an article I wrote a few years back when I was so taken by the colored leaves of the moment that I transformed into “Leaf Man”:
“It’s Halloween and I find myself going down into the bowels of Excalibur, a downtown bar, to enter the Red Masque Ball. Dozens of Chicagoans are in disguise, and I quickly find myself chatting with a Martha Stewart here, a bloodied biker there, an assortment of devils and angels everywhere. I hang out with a large, green cylindrical walking bong, while Marilyn Monroe and several versions of felines purr nearby…” Click to read entire article.

So Happy Halloween week to you, and may you use this opportunity to expand the confines of who you are and gain that special creative insight when you take on an identity that is not your own…

More from Adam, check out his Innovation on my Mind blog.

Remember, creativity does have a clear and consensual (by researchers) definition: something that both is different and has value. As I explain in my talks and workshops, it’s not enough just to be unusual or strange. Being creative requires integrating two fundamentally different forces: one that opens to the never-quite-imagined-before (divergence) and one that narrows to what is appropriate for the challenge or what “works” (convergence).

What makes art so difficult to evaluate is that the convergence is much more dependent on your reaction. We are unlikely to agree that Tichy’s light installations “solves a problem” or “works,” as we may be able to for products or other solutions. The convergence piece for artistic creativity has to do with meaning: Does it evoke something meaningful for you? It could just be a feeling, a sense of pleasure, or an intuitive resonance. If you can derive some kind of meaning, then the art is indeed creative for you. The people next to you might not see or feel anything meaningful and therefore the same installation cannot be deemed creative. For them.

Particularly for art, but really for many creative endeavors or insights, the claim of creativity depends on the interpreter. The eye of the beholder determines whether there is convergence and therefore whether the act or idea is creative.

Personally, I found Tichy’s work to satisfy my own creative lens. I particularly appreciated the story of the moving light–which though sometimes puzzling was evocative enough to stir meaning for me. Here’s more information about the exhibit in case you’re in Chicago and want to see whether it lights you:
Jan Tichy: Installations (October 9 – November 24, 2009) consists of nine works made over the past three years and is the artist’s largest solo show to date. Tichy works at the intersection of video, sculpture, architecture, and photography. Richard Gray Gallery · John Hancock Center · 875 N. Michigan Avenue · Chicago · IL · 60611.(312) 642.8877. Please contact gallery for specific hours.

Now, that’s not completely fair, as American innovation policy has not been entirely absent in the past decade, but Obama clearly is ringing the Innovation bell a lot louder. Last week, as I drove through the beautiful, purple-specked I-80 in Pennsylvania on a road trip East, Obama spoke nearby in New York’s Hudson Valley, once again emphasizing the importance of innovation for our economy, as he did in early August.

“So as we invest in the building blocks of innovation, from the classroom to the laboratory,” Obama told the crowd, “it’s also essential that we have competitive and vibrant markets that promote innovation, as well. Education and research help foster new ideas, but it takes fair and free markets to turn those ideas into industries.”

Click here to read the transcript of Obama’s talk on innovation.

As I’ll write about in my next blog, there has been innovation initiatives during the past decade that have had national aspirations and some impact. But Obama’s continuing focus on the Innovation Imperative–that we as a country and a culture need to embrace creativity and innovation to ensure a successful future–seems different and substantive. The White House calls it the Obama Innovation Strategy, which includes the following three parts:

1. Invest in the Building Blocks of American Innovation, from investments in research and development to the human, physical, and technological capital needed to perform that research and transfer those innovations.
2. Promote Competitive Markets that Spur Productive Entrepreneurship.
It is imperative to create a national environment ripe for entrepreneurship and risk taking that allows U.S. companies to be internationally competitive in a global exchange of ideas and innovation.
3. Catalyze Breakthroughs for National Priorities. Governmental can help support sectors of exceptional national importance–including alternative energy sources, health IT, and manufacturing advanced vehicles–that markets alone cannot make happen.

Now, the skeptics in us realize that another talk that is still urging that “we are ready” to do this may or may not lead to real change. But I believe the more innovation becomes part of our national conversation, the more likely we are to embrace our creative potential and proactively shape our future rather than letting it shape us.

Read more from  Adam at his Innovation on my Mind blog

One of the goals of my work is to help you develop your originality, an essential competency of creativity, and bring it out into the world in fulfilling and valuable ways. Ideally, we would all discover our true calling–that which most reflects who we are and what we enjoy offering–and spend more of our life engaged in its pursuit.

I like to think of this as finding your “sweet spot”–which comes down to actual moments or activities during which you are most deeply and creatively engaged. Sir Ken Robinson in his new book calls this your “Element,” “the meeting point between natural aptitude and personal passion.” As I’ve described previously, choreographer Twyla Tharp calls this discovering your “Creative DNA,” and researcher Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi calls this, in the moment, “Flow.” These different perspectives all help inspire and clarify.

I see the sweet spot of engagement depending on three different components, shown below, which I draw in part from Teresa Amabile’s Componential Theory of Creativity. To be in our sweet spot (marked in yellow), we do need some level of knowledge and skills and past experience of a certain subject or activity. We call this “domain” skills and knowledge. But skills are different from our “natural” talents and intelligences and creative capacities–we can build our skills in sewing, for example, by practice, but if our natural hand-eye coordination is weak, then we’re unlikely to find the sweet spot.

Finally is our own motivation. Being intrinsically motivated–driven by deep interest and involvement in the task/activity, by curiosity, enjoyment, self-expression or personal sense of challenge (rather than being extrinsically motivated by money or another person or a deadline)–is perhaps the most important determinant in finding our sweet spot. Research has shown, Amabile confirmed recently to me, that motivation at work that is primarily intrinsic results in higher productivity and increased creativity compared to a motivation that is primarily extrinsic.

So the great challenge in life should be to get to that sweet intersection, where we are internally motivated to use our natural talents and develop the skills and knowledge necessary to make an impact on the world. Go do it.