The creativity game

The ups and downs along the way

I heard a coach use the game Snakes and Ladders as a good metaphor for creating and the creative process. It went something like this:

• Show up and roll the dice each day to play the game
• Take chances to move in a forward direction by rolling the dice
• After you’ve rolled, you respond to what shows up along the way
• The more you roll, the more the odds are in your favour that you’ll end up eventually completing the game
• You might go up some ladders you didn’t expect
• You might go down some snakes you didn’t want to meet
• The more you play the game, the more opportunity you have to win but also to slip backwards and start again
• If you stop playing, then you have no chance of winning, learning or losing
• If you don’t play the game at all, you won’t move
• If you don’t start the game, you won’t know how much fun it could have been

What I got from this was that just by rolling the dice and starting to create something — whether it’s sharing a thought, having a conversation, writing something, sketching an idea or taking some other action — you’re moving further than you would be if you played it safe and stood still.

I like this metaphor for creativity and have been wondering what others there may be. What would it look like if the creativity game was a game of Risk or Chess or even Exploding Kittens?

This post is part of a series of atomic essays on Twitter for #Ship30for30