E8 – Creativity

Julie Legg and Jel Legg discuss the link between ADHD and creativity – a mighty strength for many individuals with ADHD.

They ponder what creativity is – from the arts, to communication, storytelling, and non-linear thinking. From hobbies, to careers, to household chores, creative thinking can be applied in every waking hour – even mowing the lawns! They chat about the links between creativity and dopamine, imposter syndrome, burnout and brilliance. They dissect their childhood and reflect on their present where creativity is very much alive and well.

Topics discussed in this episode:

  • Delving into what it means to be creative.
  • How dopamine plays a part in boosting our joy in creative fields.
  • Creativity, self-criticism, and imposter syndrome when comparing ourselves to others.
  • Looking back at our younger selves to find where creative traits were very evident.
  • Music, art, dance, crafts, DIY, photography, systems and processes, cooking, gardening, alternative thinking.

Key takeaways:

  • Creativity is more than just ‘the creative arts’. It includes creative thinking and problem solving too which can be applied to pretty much every, every minute of the day.
  • Even mundane tasks can become quite interesting by applying a creative approach.
  • Hyperfocusing on a creative hobby or project, while fun, can also lead to burnout or self-combustion, without life balance.
  • Perfectionism towards our creative endeavours can lead to dismissing our unique talents – be aware: creativity need not be a competition.
  • Creativity is a personal expression, much like storytelling.

Links:

Julie is the author of THE MISSING PIECE: A Woman’s Guide to Understanding, Diagnosing and Living with ADHD (Harper Collins, 2024).

Transcript:

JULIE: I’m Julie Legg, author of ‘The Missing Piece’ and diagnosed with ADHD at 52.

JEL: And I’m Jel Legg, diagnosed at 55.

JULIE: Welcome to ADHdifference. In this episode we’re going to be talking about creativity and for ADHDers it’s a mighty strength. So, whether it is art, photography, dance, writing, music, systems, DIY, craft … you name it, we’re pretty good at using our creativity in our everyday lives.

JEL: Indeed. I think our list of creative endeavors, our endeavors I should say, are quite long. Aren’t they?  Yeah.  Go on. Throw off some of yours first.

JULIE: Well, it’s interesting because you mentioned off camera that we are creative from the moment we wake up to the, you know, to the second … you know, we drift off into sleep land. And, it’s not always the big things. We’re creative in little ways as well, you know, whether it’s being creative in the kitchen for example, whipping up a recipe, or not following instructions and making it your way, but right now for me, I’m a writer, author. I do food photography. I am creative in the garden and when it comes to preserving the fruits of the harvest. I have been an actor, a screen actor for 25-30 years along with a voice-over artist so not only is it [the] fun things to do, we’ve been able to make a living out of some of our creativity as well.

JEL: And I think I’ve always been creative … well I have always been creative. What I struck me when we’re having this off-camera conversation is I had to stop and try and think what creativity actually was … because I can’t put it in boxes because I think I’m actually creative from morning till night. It doesn’t … there aren’t many occasions I’m not creative. Even silly things like cutting the lawns, which take quite a few hours to do, I can find different ways to go faster, or different routes, or something that’s more efficient. That sounds silly but actually I think creativity isn’t just being a painter, a photographer, a musician, whatever. I think it’s a whole mindset and how you approach everything. So, it can be as simple as how you write an email, how you structure that email. Are you trying to get across a point that is a bit tricky so use some creative writing to try to make your point or to soften the blow on something. Yeah, it really applies to everything … how you solve a problem. Even silly things like using a leaf blower which can be a bit challenging, especially when it’s windy. Coming up with solutions all the time that make a job easier. Simple gardening job, yeah. So, creativity to me is a mindset and it’s something that I think can be applied to everything, pretty much all day long one way or another, in the smallest possible way. sometimes.

JULIE: As a kid I’ve always been … I have always been creative as well but I didn’t do the big creative things. So almost I had creativity as an aspiration that I felt I never could enter those gates. And this is crazy because I was doing theatre, community theatre at primary school. I was, you know, learning to tap dance. I was a creative writer through poetry. I was into singing groups and the rest. I was very creative but my mother was, and still is, but doesn’t do so much of it now, a brilliant charcoal artist, and she was an amazing pianist, and a stage actor and I … for me, it kind of … it was normal. Our family was very creative and I thought I’d have to be outstanding in order to fit the creative box, if that makes sense …  to be able to give myself that label. So, again … been in bands for many many years and yet it’s only really in the last 10 years or so that I’ve acknowledged my creativity and looked back and thought “Oh oh gosh, yeah I have, from dot I’ve been creative.” But yeah, at the time it kind of … I didn’t see it as that. I just saw it as a normal thing to do.

JEL: Yeah it’s really sort of illustrates the point that if you judge whether you’re, as an ADHDer, creative, and you look at someone who is very accomplished in certain arts, people in your life, people around you, you’re very quick to give up sometimes and think “Well I’m not that good therefore I’m not creative,” but that’s not the way to go. That’s not the way to go, you know. All achievements in any art field really are incremental steps from the first start, time you start doing it and the way I approach art in relation to ADHD is I get huge dopamine hits off achieving something. Now it doesn’t have to be the very best art. It doesn’t have to have great accolades and it doesn’t have to be what society would judge as a success. It’s what I judge as a success. So, is something I’m doing artistically today better than what it was yesterday, or a year, or 10 years ago? And if the answer is yes then that’s good enough for me. It’s just incremental steps getting better at something. And then one day you suddenly … let’s use the example where we are at the moment, we’re in our recording … we have a small recording studio, and so from here we can produce albums and they’re available all over the world, and they’re hugely … well I’m very proud of them. I think they’re very professional sounding albums but heck, you know, even 10 years ago I didn’t think I could do that. Even though I’ve been bass player for 30-40 years now. So, 10-12 years ago I sat down and thought “Okay if I want to do the entire process how do I learn this?” It doesn’t just happen in one day, or one week, or one year. And it took about four or five years of really getting to the bottom of how all this stuff around us works, how to use it, and how to turn it into something at the end that I’m extraordinarily proud of. And this incremental thing and looking back’s really important because we recently have started reworking songs and released some songs that we wrote when we were together 25 years ago nearly, and so we’ve got original recordings of them. At the time I remember thinking “Wow, that’s just … what a recording. That’s incredible. How do we manage to do that? So fantastic,” and now it sounds absolutely terrible next to what we’re doing now, absolutely terrible. The song’s the same, the words are the same, the lyrics and …. it’s a great song or whatever, but the recording is atrocious. So, you know, at what point do you say “I can’t do this, I’m rubbish. I give up,” or just find something … Okay so how do you find that something? Well for me as I mentioned when I started this section was it’s the dopamine hit of each step, each incremental step. If you tap that dopamine hit into what you’re doing as a creative and you get the buzz back, and you go “That is a bit better than it was last time,” that’s a really good way to motivate you to keep going forward. And right here and right now, it’s a bigger dopamine hit than ever. It doesn’t disappear. I come in the studio, I can start from nothing, create an idea, have a song underway in a few days and I’m buzzing, absolutely buzzing and that will never go hopefully.

JULIE: I think that if it’s an area that we’re interested in or that holds our interest, we’re more likely to persevere and use our … you know, through our curious nature to … let’s see if we can push it a bit further as you’ve said Jel. But for those areas that we’re actually not that interested in … me personally, I’ll just give up. I think I went to play golf once and I could barely hit the ball … do you call it a ball?  A golf ball yeah. And so I’ll never play golf again, and you know I never have and it doesn’t bother me because I was never really interested in golf in the first place. But when it comes to something creative, yeah definitely I’ll keep having a wee little go at it and maybe have a bit of a Google, or get some inspiration elsewhere, or just think of a completely different way of attacking it or attacking the project. But the women that I interviewed for ‘The Missing Piece’ now they were hugely creative as well. They were into dance and theatre and problem solving. They could even make some mundane tasks quite interesting just by having a creative approach to it which stood them well. But there were those that felt that they were really creative as a child but as an adult it’s kind of, I don’t know, it’s gone past the wayside … is it the term?  Yeah yeah. Just because … life has gotten the way. They thought oh they probably weren’t that good at it, or just life’s pressures, and they don’t give any time to their creative self … and that there was element of sadness around that because they knew it was within them but they’ve kind of let that go.

JEL: Okay so that reminds me, I was thinking earlier when we were talking about doing this episode, if you take this thing called ‘creativity’ and put it in a box, and then surround it with barbed wire and lots of defences, you say “That’s there. It’s there. That’s a thing that I need to do sometime when I’m not busy working or going about my daily life,” but that’s not the thing to do with creativity. Creativity can be with you all day long … constantly there and it’s about understanding creativity of what it actually really means. And it can pop up in your job, you know, it’s recognizing and giving yourself a pat on the back that I solved that problem through a bit of creative thinking … and allowing yourself to say “Yeah okay, that’s cool.” So don’t put it in a box and just, you know … so we’ve got the dopamine hit from it … oh no it’s gone out of my mind, there was another thing to do with … hyperfocus. Yes, now so we always need to come back to these key words that define ADHD, so dopamine hit, the hyperfocus. Once you start seeing something you’re doing as creative, you kind of like, well for me I’m quite hyperfocus driven, I get a bit obsessed with it and then that’s when those incremental steps start to get bigger and bigger, and they start snowballing and rolling, and you find yourself getting quite good at something that you know, only a few months or years whatever before, you just thought “No hope, never be able to do this.”

JULIE: And creativity too is … it’s a very personal thing and we shouldn’t really compare ourselves with others when it comes to creativity. Your cake that you baked might be awesome. You don’t need other people to judge your cake. As long as you’ve been creative and you’ve enjoyed that whole process, and you’ve made it your own … that’s what’s to celebrate. I think, as you said, there’s a lot of crossover traits that can interrupt creativity. There’s the imposter syndrome, perfectionism that can trip us up sometimes … hyperfocus as you said … maybe we’re creative far too long in our day and it actually sort of disrupts the balance of the rest of our lives.

JEL: I’ll just dive in there that’s really really … that reminds me of something too, so this judgment. You create something and it doesn’t matter whether it’s a bit rubbish or it’s awesome. You … don’t allow other people to judge it. That’s a really really negative space to go into. Create it for your own satisfaction, for your own reward and let it just be for what it is. I … as a musician all my life I’ve really detested contests, band contests and competitions as songwriters, because it all means there’s losers, you know. Sport is about competition. Sport is about … that’s what sport is. Sure, if you want to turn your music into a business then well, we have to have a different mindset for that, but I’ve never really gone down that avenue. I think … well I have actually … I have gone down that avenue of doing more commercial music years ago and it was a bit of a soulless place. It didn’t really satisfy what I was trying to do as a creative. Sure, there were the dopamine hits as you got the radio play, or something was happening that was a bit quite exciting, but I could already see actually that was leading down a path that was not going to be grounded in creativity, it’d be grounded in business. Now if I wanted to be a really successful business person I wouldn’t probably go into music. I probably would have opened a chain of dry cleaners or something. Creativity and art are all about your expression of your feelings, your story to tell, and then how someone relates back to that. And heaps of people won’t like your story, or your art, or your expression. That’s fine.

JULIE: That reminded me … of the storytelling. So, my mother is very creative from a traditional point of view, as I said, an actress and singer and all sorts. My father would say that he doesn’t have a creative bone in his body. That’s what he would say, but he is the best storyteller and he writes amazing short stories. Now he would say, you know “I’m not creative like the rest of you,” but he’s really good … and it’s that storytelling. And as you’ve said, whether it’s through a sculpture, whether it’s through pen and paper, writing, or through a camera lens, or just the way you go about presenting your garden, your veggie patch, how you’ve used DIY to create interesting little trinkets around the house or your garden. It’s all telling a story and it’s very personal and I think it’s something to celebrate. And you’ve got to celebrate it yourself first. You can’t rely on others to pat you on the back and encourage you. Just acknowledging that yourself is a massive thing.

JEL: Back to this ADHD … so we are a creative bunch because our neurons fire off in all sorts of different ways. We connect and see things differently. We find different paths to solutions and really that’s where the heart of creativity is, rather than just following the standard route and …

JULIE: Or a paint by number.

JEL: Yeah paint by number and just repeating the same thing. So we are inherently creative. And so yeah, we do know that it’s often said that people give up or struggle with it, but actually we just don’t. Don’t give up. Just … doesn’t … and don’t set your sights so high that you’re bound to fail. Just … I keep coming back to these incremental steps. Start with something simple and build up your confidence. Yeah, and here’s a good one, you know, when you read your old school reports, if you’re lucky enough to still have them, you often find your creativity is in there as a child, in how you approach things in the class, and it’s the clues that you … didn’t mean anything to you when you came home at 12 and handed it to your parents. “So at least I’m not in trouble for this one.” But actually there’s often signs there and you know, sometimes look back 30 years depending on how old you are, and see what you were doing when you were a child … if you’ve got your old drawings and pictures. You know, if you still have pictures you drew when you were 10 or painted, you might be surprised how good they were and you might sit down now with the same pen and go “There’s a blockage. I can’t draw or paint like that.” Yes you can but there’s a this blockage, you know, that stops you allowing yourself to be creative. Perhaps that’s the thing, isn’t it, allowing yourself and don’t let anyone put you down, ever.

JULIE: Absolutely. This nonlinear approach to things, and as you said, with our neurons going bing bing bing, and bouncing all over the place, for me as a child I had such a creative mind. I was in heaven because I never could get bored. My brain actually wouldn’t allow it … and I spent some time on an island without electricity and, the house we were in that is, not the whole island, but I’d spent a lot of time outside and I’d imagine that I was in a circus troop. And so I had this teddy bear and I’d be … I’d tie it to a pole and throw darts at it.

JEL: Poor teddy bear, aww.

JULIE: I know the poor little thing … not to be mean but it’s just, you know, I imagine that’s …

JEL: Tell teddy bear that.

JULIE: … that’s what you do in the circus, isn’t it. I had this little tree swing and I’d be standing on it and, you know, trying to be a high trapeze performer. Yeah, no it was always there. So it’s fun how/where our creative mind can take us.

JEL: I thought of something almost completely opposite to sacrificing teddy bears … so I’ve been privileged in my career at times to work with some extraordinarily talented and clever people in the space industry in particular. Most of the people around me had PhDs or were working on PhDs in the most obscure things like micro-channel technologies for space satellite instrumentation, parts of components of systems that just meant nothing … that it couldn’t even be explained to me, and along with the electronics engineers I’ve worked with over the years, you might at firsthand if you at a party with them, think they are the least creative most logical people you’ve ever come across. There’s nothing that lights the room up necessarily about them, but heck are they creative, are they creative. Even if you’re using pure science, pure engineering. If you’re doing research work you’re doing, working and finding solutions to something that in theory no one else has done. That’s the whole point of a PhD. It has to be a unique piece of research. So you don’t just get to the end by reading everyone else’s work and saying “Oh yeah yeah that oh there’s the answer there, and there’s the answer there,” you have to use your imagination and be creative and come up with new ways of looking at things. So you may be listening and thinking well I’m not creative because I’m, you know … the left side right side of the brain, I’m 99% logical.” No, you are creative, you are. You may be a computer programmer and brilliant one. Well, you can’t tell me that writing code isn’t creative because it is. It simply is. I know because I do it, not very well, but I do it.

JULIE: You’ve also been creative as a kid too and I will prompt you on this one. You used to enjoy going to the local tip. [Oh yes.] That was an awesome day out for you as a child, why?

JEL: Well yeah, we can’t do it anymore health and safety, you’re not allowed to you know. You throw something away, it’s in a skip and it’s gone. But in this…  I guess late ’70s when I was a kid, we had these same places you get rid of rubbish but you were allowed to clamber all over them and lots of people did, and they would take things out, and they would repurpose them, recycle them, upcycle them. I guess from a health and safety viewpoint it could be argued as dangerous but boy oh boy, I would come home with old tape players, reel-to-reel tape players, old televisions, all sorts of obscure bits of electronics, and then I could take them apart and get the switches and the parts out of them. Then we’d take the carcass back to the dump, but incredible finds and I loved it.

JULIE: You were doing that … I mean you built your first amplifier at aged? 

JEL: Oh heavens, I suppose nine or 10. By 11 I was building a synthesizer from a magazine kit … well sort of not really kits, I couldn’t afford kits, but you’d find the circuits and you work out what all the bits did, and then you go to the shop. It’s like buying lollies, you know. It’s like “I’ll have two of those and one of those, ooh that red one there, I’ll … a couple of those.” They’re just like lollies and then you sort of solder of them all together. And most of the time it would just go off with a puff of smoke or something, but it was creative because … I wasn’t designing it, I wasn’t that clever. I was just a kid but it was creative it still was creative.

JULIE: And that’s happening still now, until very recently you had lots of leftover bits of wood and so I’d be running through the garden going “Oh you know what? I think we need some bird boxes, it’s almost nesting season.” “Hang on a minute,” says Jel and off he goes into the garage and all these little off-cuts of wood that’s been clogging up the garage for years, and all of a sudden you come out with this amazing thing complete with, you know, a little bird house with a chimney and a TV antenna just to be cute and, you know, that’s creative.

JEL: But I never throw anything away. I mean, because you start with a long piece of wood that cost 30 bucks or something and that’s great. I mean, you need that piece of wood and then you cut it down and there’s some bits left over and but you start with that long piece of wood, you cut a small piece off because you need that small piece, but it’s having stuff that is there in the future so if you’re inspired to make or do something, at least you’ve got the materials around you. Materials. Resources. Resources is a good one. So you think you might fancy yourself learning how to paint as in an artist with a brush and so forth. You don’t have to go spend $1,000 on all the gear but get some basic stuff. And it might sit in the cupboard for 6 months and then one day just pick it up and start messing around, mixing some colours. You don’t know until you try.

JULIE: And the other thing too is that we have in our minds we can see, we can already see the finished result and it’s going to be amazing because we can see it in our minds. That’s what we think. [Mind’s eye.] But actually when it comes to getting it out of our head and onto paper, or you know onto that canvas, or onto that clay spinning wheel, it’s not quite as easy as that. And I think a lot of people give up. They can imagine it but they can’t implement it but your suggestion too is, you know, being kind to yourself and just starting at the basics learning and working things through and not giving up at the first hurdle.

JEL: So yeah because ADHD, we ADHDers have, we really do … we are often very creative. I often think, you know, you read all the time why are so many actors and musicians, and singers and famous people in creative industries getting diagnosed? Doesn’t surprise me at all. You know, it’s a heck of a motivator or driver in certain areas. When you focus it and push it into a very pointed direction … it does bring up all sorts of other things, certainly there’ll be other episodes, but burnout … you can burnout when being too focused. You can be too creative, you know. You’ve got to find that balance. But I do highly associate ADHD and creativity, I really do and as I said when we started, I had to stop and think about what creativity probably was because it seems to be something that we just have from morning till night whether it’s some of the paid work we do, or whether it’s just what we do when we’re not working. You know, every time I walk in the kitchen you’re writing a blog or something, you’re doing something creative or …

JULIE: I know when I should be probably doing something not so creative, which goes to the bottom of my list. And in fact, I don’t have a list. It just doesn’t get done. Bits … yeah, the non-creative things aren’t so much fun at all. But you know, even little things. We talked about our veggie patch and, you know, come harvest time we’ll have 30 pumpkins, you know, are far too much. You know, we give a lot away to friends and family and through our crop swap that we go to regularly but I’ve just got to find creative ways of using it.

JEL: My music teacher, who had no time for me because I was rubbish at music at school, not interested, he said something that’s always stuck with me. He was trying to get to sort of sing a note and I can’t sing, I really can’t, and he … I thought I was tone-deaf, and he said “In all my career I’ve only ever met one person who was actually tone-deaf. Everyone else is just a bit rubbish at singing but all could be improved with some effort.”

JULIE: Now I’m going to step in here because, you know, at times we agree you’re not quite … you’re not quite on track when you sing, however …

JEL: Out of tune is the word you’re looking for.

JULIE: Yeah, but actually what I think you’re doing is you’re trying to sing lead and a harmony at the same time. So, it kind of makes sense, it’s just perhaps in a different scale.

JEL: Well if it mattered I’d go for some lessons. You’re the singer so it doesn’t really ….

JULIE: No no! But what I’m meaning though is that actually you can sing. You can sing but I think your mind is going ping ping ping, all over the place, and that trying to get a note out sometimes it’s bang on, and other times it kind of has its own little path to wander along.

JEL: Yeah that’s interesting. I certainly can’t sing enough to sing a song and release it to the public and think there’s any reason inflicting on the public, but I can sing or try to use my voice enough to show you a harmony idea I’ve got that perhaps … then you pick it up and go somewhere with it and great, we’ve got a result. Because I’m trying to communicate with you in a … I can’t say sing A, C sharp, F, F [sharp] … it doesn’t work like that. I have to try to communicate it. So creativity is communication.

JULIE: I think having … being around creatives, it’s catching you know. Their enthusiasm, and the excitement, and the dopamine you know you, the energy level is just so heightened and it’s lovely being in a room full of creatives.

JEL: Now that’s, okay, that’s really good thinking. It’s being around people who acknowledge their creative and do what … the best they can with their creativity, that’s the Infectious part. If your group of friends or the people you’re with are the people that don’t think they’re creative at all and just quash any sense of it in themselves then they’re going to squash it in you. And you may end up masking, you end up thinking “Yeah this is .. yeah I probably am a bit rubbish. Who am I? I’m not a tall puppy. I mean everyone around me rubbish.”

JULIE: That’s your imposter syndrome.

JEL: That’s my imposter syndrome.

JULIE: But masking is that “Oh, do you think if … if I was a famous … or if I was a singer, I’d have to sell lots of albums before someone would acknowledge me.” Oh no, that’s imposter syndrome too! Masking …  maybe I should look this way if I’m going to be an artist. I need to look this way. Well, no. Just be yourself.

JEL: There’s nothing worse than trying to be like someone else.

JULIE: Yeah, absolutely. You’re an individual and you’re an alternative thinker. Just do it your way and you can guarantee you’ll do it well if you do it your way.

JEL: And you’re only doing it well enough for yourself. Yeah. If you’re lucky that some other people genuinely think that it was well done, if you get more than that well, well done, awesome. But if you’re only doing it for yourself and the only … I wouldn’t say judge and I certainly wouldn’t say critic, but the only person that should measure how well you think you’re doing is yourself. And just remember that’s your dopamine. That’s you giving yourself the pat on the back as you get better at what you do, you know.

JULIE: Isn’t it interesting. As a parent, your child comes to you with a crayon drawing and you go “Wow that is … I love the colours, that … wow, would it wow tell me about it?” “Oh this is you and the family, we’re at the beach and this is a seagull.” “Oh yes of course, of course it is.”

JEL: Thought it was an explosion in a firework factory.

JULIE: But we … for the people we love, as a parent we’re full of this really genuine and generous, you know, applaud and encouragement for the younger people. As you get older you don’t necessarily get that in your life anymore, do you?

JEL: No, you don’t.

JULIE: And you know if someone was to say “Oh, that painting is a bit rubbish really, I don’t quite get the perspectives,” or a song, “I don’t quite understand what you’re trying to say.” 

JEL: As we get older we’re expected … in our 50s, we’re expected to be brilliant of what we do. Because you know, people my age are brilliant music producers and they’ve got a great long history of great success. Some are.

JULIE: Some are …  and the majority aren’t.

JEL: But we’re expected to be brilliant and there’s … we, as adults, we very quickly lose our innocence and our support for people who we should say … if they do show …you know, you show your art to someone, your creative endeavours, you know if they’re kind and loving they should say “Yeah absolutely. I’d keep doing that if I were you.” You know.

JULIE: “I don’t quite understand it but hey, wow, great. It looks very complicated and wow, good on you.” Yeah exactly. I know, there are nice ways, nice responses.

JEL: Well, hang on then, we going full circle don’t we? Because if we’re scared of criticism we mask and … but we mustn’t stop that creativity. And we mustn’t put it in this box that it’s got to be a specific label. Yes, it can be anything from problem solving, making the mundane fun, through to creating new systems. Communicating is a good one. How you communicate, written, verbal, facial.

JULIE: You’re telling a story and it can be done through so many different ways, as we said earlier, through art, or dance, or speech, or theatre, or photography, or you name it, it’s a beautiful thing. So … so don’t stop it.

JEL: Or simple things, simple things. The simplest of jobs. Doesn’t matter how simple the job is, if you come up with better ways of doing your simple job, you’re being creative.

JULIE: Ah that’s a frustrating thing though in a work environment when you’re told … when you’re told “This is how we do it. “Always done it this way.” “We do this one and then we do that, and then we do that.”

JEL: As we sort of draw to an end on this one, I think it reminds me of the work environments we’ve been in. We have often been in an environment where we bring ideas, system ideas to the organizational way an environment works. Think this could be made better, faster, this could be done cheaper. And you do often get this kick back don’t you, “Well we’ve always done it this way. Don’t see any reason to change it now.” Well, I can see a reason to change it and therein perhaps there’s another episode when we should talk about work environments, because that’s when your creativity … “Well, I can’t paint, I can’t sing,” but actually at work your changing things, you’re implementing system changes, that’s improving things for the company, the profit, the satisfaction of the people working in that company and it’s this blue sky … oh God, that’s a corporate word ‘Blue Sky Thinking’, this creative thinking that often companies desperately need in order to improve and … because they don’t change, if they stay still, they go backwards. Isn’t that the expression or something like that? And change comes from creativity. So, it’s not always this box of something that, you know, the arts … there’s the word I’m looking for. You could … if you’re a change person that goes into companies and changes them for the better, you’re not an artist but you are a creative, so a subtle difference isn’t it.

JULIE: So therefore, creativity is thinking outside the box.

JEL: Don’t say the word, you said it. The Box, oh dear no … there was all the barbed wire around that. We don’t … we’ve got a real pet hate for all of those dreadful corporate expressions. Anyway, should we run that up the flag pole and see what happens?

JULIE: Yeah, my door’s always open.

JEL: Blue sky thinking. Are you with me? Are you with me?

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