Are there steps or tasks that are common to every creative process?

At first, this question terrified me. My initial reaction was "I don't know my creative process. I don't even know if I have one. You might as well as ask Dylan Thomas how he wrote Under Milk Wood!" Then I read some of the other answers for inspiration and it hit me. Normally I don't have time for a process. Someone will come to me and say "I have this problem, Phil ... blah,blah,blah ...what do you think?" and I have that long to come up with a solution. There is no time for preparation, incubation, inspiration and the like. Someone wants an answer NOW!

However, if I were to say that because it's a reflex there is no creative process, that would be a lie. Even reflexes have processes. But, not having the luxury of being able to film the process and play it back in slow motion, I have to keep replaying times I've used this reflex in my head to analyse it. So, if I miss something out I do apologise ahead of time.

1. Look for the pivot point. This is the one thing which everything pivots around. It is the axle of the wheel, the eye of the storm. Once you've found it eliminate all other clutter and focus on that

2. Be clear about what the desired outcome is. Somebody wants some result from their actions but they're not getting it. That will tell you where their current results are falling short.

3. Look for the path of least resistance that will take the person from the pivot point to the desired outcome by looking for similarities with other disciplines. You ask yourself "Have I seen this problem but with a solution somewhere else?" The most interesting example of kind of cross-application is systems analysis which is the basis of all good software programming. It was stolen virtually unchanged from civil engineering. Thinking about where to put an additional road into a city to alleviate traffic flow is exactly the same problem as alleviating information flow inside a computer system. This is the power of metaphor. This requires constant preparation (just to prove that the other answers aren't wrong). I read an awful lot. Not books but journals and even frivolous stuff like the tabloid papers and Fortean Times because you never know where an interesting factoid may appear. I also watch a lot of documentaries. I suppose what I'm doing is creating answers in search of a question so that when someone does ask, I'm not completely lost.This is why I describe myself as the least creative person I know because all I do is steal ideas from other places. But then again, I'm in good company - so did Shakespeare and Mozart

4. Accept that you may look like an idiot. This is the most important step. And for the vast majority, this is the one hurdle, their horse refuses to jump. People are absolutely terrified of being thought of as failures. My friends say I have a Get-Out-Of-Jail-Free card I use in this circumstance. I say "You know that I know absolutely nothing about [this subject] but I would do [this action]". That way, if I'm wrong, they look clever for knowing more than me (and I learn as they explain why the idea won't work) and if I'm right, they get a solution and they overlook that it came from someone who knew a lot less than they did!

5. Bring it into the real world by saying it out loud to someone else or by writing it down. Some ideas sound great inside your head but turn into dust as soon as you try to explain them to others. The important thing is to get it out of your head. While it's in your head and you think it works, the mind will stop looking for other options.

6. Learn to live with the voices. People talk about opening the floodgates and they're right. The bad news is that each idea wants to live and be heard. When I'm in a good mood, I describe it like living in a massive cocktail party where everyone is speaking and you have trouble hearing anything over the din. When I'm tired, I describe it as being driven by a hoard of demons on my back. Sometimes it's like trying to talk to someone in a rock concert. Beethoven didn't go deaf, he was deafened. He couldn't hear others speak over the noise in his head. Some will say that it was a very bad case of tinnitus but maybe it was that the voices got too loud. I haven't found a way of switching it off, perhaps others have. I find long walks alone (preferably on the beach) help.

In order to make this process work, you do need a creative mindset.

1. Be open to new ideas. Practice seeing things in a new way. Look at everything as if you were an alien just dropped onto the planet. Presume everything is hiding a surprise. Ask yourself if you had to re-design something from scratch, would you follow the same lines as have been previously used or would you go a completely different direction? Allow yourself to be wrong and remember that your beliefs are not you.

2. Believe there is an answer. If you don't believe that there is an answer, you will not allow yourself to find it.

3. Be prepared to reject the vast majority of your work. My wife can't understand why I do so much work that doesn't receive payment. I've pointed out to her that I'm lucky if 1 in 3 of my business projects gets off the drawing board. And then I'm lucky if 1 in 3 actually make any money. And I'm really lucky if 1 in 3 makes enough money to pay for all the time and effort I've spent elsewhere. This is nature's way. Millions of sperm produced but only 1 will get the chance to make a baby. Take another kind of race: the 2012 Olympics 100m sprint finals. How many people had to compete and lose to get down to those final 8? The problem with our society is that it idolises those that were lucky enough to get the winning combination first time. Or it talks about the Rags-To-Riches stories of successful people whilst conveniently forgetting any failures they were involved with along the way. Take Ray Kroc. He tried many business concepts before he came upon McDonalds. Or take Pixar. It was nine years after its formation in 1986 that it finally made money with Toy Story. And ideas are just like plants - some grow and bloom incredibly quickly; others are like trees and even decades to reach fruition. Unlike nature, the rejected ideas are not bad. Even if you can do nothing else with them, they made you think. And that is a precious gift.

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