Creativity.

Creativity? That's mean. How is someone supposed to explain what creativity is? Theres a very good talk, you know, by John Cleese. He talks all about this kind of thing, and in a way I can't really match up to. I don't know why you're here asking me about these things, go and see him! He's famous, you know! He's got it all wrapped up, all settled down, all sorted, bish bash bosh! But still, you did come here (for some reason unbeknownst to me) and so I supposed I have to provide you with an answer. I'll link you to his video anyway, because y'know, that's where you should be, but aside from that I'll talk about my feelings on the matter and kind of steal all I can from John Cleese. Alrighty then.

Did you watch it? No? Well it is quite long, but you should probably open it up whilst you're in the bath, or doing a spreadsheet, or whatever it is you do in your time.

Creativity is our ability to... well.... to be creative. To create. Yes, we'll go with that. Its our ability to answer problems and to think without constraint in order to provide those solutions. As John Cleese says in his wonderful talk, there are two kinds of mindset- closed and open. Suprise suprise, you have to be in the "open" mindset in order to challenge ideas and concepts from various angles, until you find something which works. This, in essence, is being creative. It is closing the guidebook and coming at the problem with your own system, and thats where all those crazy little stupid ideas are born. Creativity does not lead to good ideas. In fact, creativity leads to an awful lot of terrible ideas, but thats where our closed mindset comes in! You see, with a closed mindset we can act on the decisions we made previously in our open mindset, and apply them correctly. Trying to apply anything whilst still being "creative" is futile, as you will find yourself rejigging your ideas and finding alternate approaches when really all you need is a bit of focus to see the idea through- to see if an idea is strong or not. In our closed mindset we can test our ideas rigorously, cleansing the chaff from the gold, and thats how we eventually do (or do not) find good ideas.

Some people can apply both of these mindsets together, in a sense, flicking between them to eliminate potential negative ideas as soon as they manifest themselves. We all do this, really, and there are always ideas we can almost instantly rule out as poor. With that said, it doesn't explain why we though of those ideas in the first place. Why would our mind wander to those things if we knew that they would be useless and a waste of time? In general, people dont seem to have as much control over their creative mind, as it runs rampant like an electronic two-year-old. Controlling our closed mindset is the only way to ensure that our open mindset doesn't get out of hand.

http://www.brainpickings.org/index.php/2013/09/30/janice-joplin-final-interview-animated/
http://www.latimes.com/science/sciencenow/la-sci-sn-creative-walking-study-20140425,0,4769211.story
http://www.ted.com/topics/creativity
http://www.creativityatwork.com/2014/02/17/what-is-creativity/