Fifty Phrases that Kill Creativity
You may be in this situation before. There are times when creativity is needed: Ideas are flowing, someone says a sentence like “We don’t have the time”, and flows stopped.
Dave Dufour developed a list called Fifty Phrases that Kill Creativity in the late 80s, to create an awareness not to kill off ideas – even if it is a bad one. As we hear on this saying – “bad idea generates good ideas”
Couple of common ones like:
# I don’t like the idea.
# I’m not saying you’re wrong but…
# You’re two years ahead of your time.
# Now’s not the right time.
# It isn’t in the budget.
# Can’t teach an old dog new tricks.
# Good thought, but impractical.
# Let’s give it more thought.
# We’ll be the laughingstock of the industry.
# Not that again.
# Where’d you dig that one up?
# We did alright without it before.
# It’s never been tried.
# Let’s put that one on the back burner for now.
# Let’s form a committee.
# It won’t work in our place.
# The executive committee will never go for it.
# I don’t see the connection.
# Let’s all sleep on it.
# It can’t be done.
# It’s too much trouble to change.
# It won’t pay for itself.
# It’s impossible.
There are fifty more. Have you heard of anything that stop you to brainstorm for an idea in a meeting?
Fifty Phrases that Kill Creativity – [Dave Dufour]
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Comments
Jonathan says on October 18th, 2006 at 4:24 pm
Great post, very relevant to me at the moment. I’m heading up a project committee in the music industry, so obviously creativity is important. And while I like to be a creative, optimistic, can-do person, I’m also very realistic when it comes to goal setting. If something’s financially or logistically impossible, no amount of positive thinking is going to turn a great idea into reality! Anyone got any tips for how to synthesise these two attitudes? As positive as I try to be, I sometimes find myself saying some of the things in this list!
Revmachine21 says on October 19th, 2006 at 6:00 am
Simple, ask “How”.
- How could we accomplish that while making money?
- How could we schedule around that to make this, that, and the other thing arrive on time?
tanyaacatherine says on October 29th, 2008 at 10:08 pm
Psychology says the brains of creative people appear to be more open to incoming stimuli from the surrounding environment. Other people’s brains might shut out this same information through a process called “latent inhibition” – defined as an animal’s unconscious capacity to ignore stimuli that experience has shown are irrelevant to its needs.
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Tanyaa
Addiction
juliana65 says on November 28th, 2008 at 3:35 am
Geared toward the business community, this list from Dave Dufour is a great reminder that by limiting ourselves, we are limiting our creativity.
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juliana
Debit Machine
juliana65 says on November 28th, 2008 at 3:38 am
Geared toward the business community, this list from Dave Dufour is a great reminder that by limiting ourselves, we are limiting our creativity.
—————-
juliana
Debit Machine
CK Construction says on January 16th, 2009 at 2:28 pm
So true, I have printed this list off for my team and am off to find the other 27 phrases.
Oleg says on January 28th, 2009 at 4:41 am
Something that really helps creativity and ideas is to try thinking of opposite for each item in the list with.
Oleg says on January 28th, 2009 at 4:43 am
To CK Construction: And then print it out :)