October 18th, 2006 in Communication, Lifehack

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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Leon Ho

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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?

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