Thinking is hard!

We live in a world designed for convenience. Need a cab? Don’t stand and hail one, use Uber. Hungry? No need to cook, order on Just Eat. Want to watch a movie? Stay in and watch Netflix. Need an answer? Don’t trawl through searches, ask ChatGPT.

While these tools make life easier, they’ve also made us less comfortable with effortful thinking. But here’s the problem: creativity requires effort. It’s also messy, uncomfortable, uncertain and full of false starts. And that’s exactly why we avoid it.

Most humans find it uncomfortable to endure extended periods of discomfort. But getting comfortable with the messiness of creativity is the only way for us to do the type of thinking that leads to creative insights. It’s filled with twists and turns, dead ends and occasionally unexpected breakthroughs but it also takes immense time and patience.

Darwin returned from his voyage on the HMS Beagle in 1836 and developed his ideas for decades before he published On the Origin of Species in 1859 (about 23 years later).

CRISPR gene editing took about 20 years before it became a useful tool. CRISPRs were first identified in E. coli in 1987 by a Japanese scientist, Yoshizumi Ishino and his team. It took until 2012 for Emmanuelle Charpentier and Jennifer Doudna to publish their landmark paper showing CRISPR-Cas9 as a gene-editing tool.

mRNA vaccines have taken even longer (around 30 years) to develop. Research on mRNA vaccines began in the 1990s, but the first major success came with COVID-19 vaccines in 2020.

Creativity isn’t about finding the perfect solution quickly. Next time you hit a creative block, don’t rush. Give yourself permission to explore, make mistakes and stay in the process longer than feels comfortable. That’s where the best ideas come from.