“Be more creative” they said, but what does that mean, and how do you do that? (brightonSEO, October 2026)

For those who couldn’t be at brightonSEO in-person, here’s a write-up of the talk I gave there in October 2026.

I’ve been working in creative roles for more than 16 years. In that time, my work has won a bunch of awards, and I’ve trained hundreds of people to “be more creative”.

But actually, I’ve been doing creative work for a lot longer than 16 years… Let’s go back to one of my earliest pieces of work:

When I was 7, I saw Jaws for the first time, and I loved it so much, I wrote my own version. I felt that the sea was too limiting in terms of potential terror, and so, in my version Jaws could swim through the earth’s mantle, and pop up through the crust to attack people on land.

I thought my story was really great, so I gave it to my Dad to read.

My Dad said it was very creative, BUT:

Jaws wouldn’t be able to swim through the earth’s mantle because it’s mainly solid, and very hot (between 500-900 degrees)
Jaws would not be able to breathe in the mantle
He also mentioned something about it being pretty tough for Jaws to break through the earth’s crust

Tough review, right?

But actually, 7 year old me was utterly unbothered by the criticism.

I said:

Jaws had been stung by a radioactive jellyfish & had special powers now – it was a bit like what happened to Peter Parker.

I took two things I loved, and smooshed them together: Jaws + Spiderman = a better story (according to me, aged 7).

My Dad suggested that I ought to include this origin story within my narrative – I have no idea whether or not I actually did that. But I do know that I continued to write an awful lot of Jaws fan fic. And I kept on writing lots of different things for a long time after that, until eventually I stopped.

But even when I stopped writing, I still considered myself creative, and I thought that one day I would have a creative job. It took a long time, but eventually, I did get that creative job.

But friends, my joy was short-lived, Because very early on in my first creative role, I was told:

We need you to be more creative

Which caused me to spin out, and I had a LOT of feelings which I didn’t know what to do with. I felt angry: What fresh hell is this? (all defensive systems were fully operational).

But beneath that anger… What was I really feeling?

I felt utterly confused: What does “we need you to be more creative” even mean?!

And I felt afraid: I always thought I was creative, but what if I’m not?

If you’ve ever been told: “we need you to be more creative” perhaps you’ve felt similar things.

As a result, I’ve spent the past 16 years trying to understand what creativity is, and trying to be “more creative”. I’ve taken a lot of wrong turns, and it took a really long time for me to realise that 7 year old me understood more about creativity, than adult me.

How so? Let’s get into it 🙂

Cardboard boxes & NASA experiments

I believe that we are all creative. It’s just that a lot of us stopped being creative somewhere along the way. Let me give you an example:

When you look at the image below as an adult, you probably see a cardboard box.

But as a child, maybe you saw a treasure chest…

Or a boat…

Or a time machine…

When you were a child this box could become whatever you wanted it to be. Now you’re an adult? Not so much.

I think the key difference is that:

Adults tend to see limits, and children tend to see possibilities.

But guess what? It turns out that this belief of mine: “as children we were all creative”, is backed by science.

In 1968, NASA asked Dr George Land, to design a test to help them identify their most creative thinkers. He and his team developed a test, and it worked great. But they weren’t satisfied. They’d been able to identify creative people, but they didn’t know how those people came to be creative: Is creativity something we’re born with? Or is it learned?

The test they’d created was very simple, so they thought: Why don’t we give it to some children and see how they do?

They tested 1,600 5-year-old children, and these were the results:

98% of the 5 year olds they tested rated as “highly creative”.

Based on these results, they figured they’d better make this a longitudinal study. And so, they returned and tested those same 1600 children when they were 10 years old.

They were shocked to find that just five years later the percentage of children who rated as “highly creative” had dropped from 98% to 30%.

They went back again and tested the same group of 1,600 children when they were 15. At that point in time the percentage of children who rated as “highly creative” had dropped to 12%.

They stopped the test there, but they have since tested over 1 million adults, and just 2% were rated as “highly creative”.

I think this proves that as children we were all creative, but as adults? Not so much according to Dr George Land’s study results:

Age	% “Highly Creative”
5 years old	98%
10 years old	30%
15 years old	12%
Adults(Over 1 million tested)	2%

I recognise this is all a bit of a downer, so before I move on, here’s what I’d like you to take away from all this:

If you think you’re NOT creative, remember:

Being creative is just seeing possibilities rather than limits
As a child you were wildly creative
You just might be a little out of practice (and you can fix that)

The sea was too limiting in terms of potential terror

I suspect that one of the reasons we struggle to “be more creative” at work, is because we’re not sure WHAT we’re supposed to be doing. And, if you’re not sure what “be more creative” means, that’s because it’s HORRIBLY UNCLEAR.

7 year old me understood that it’s easier to be creative once you’ve identified a problem you want to solve:

The original Jaws is great, but Jaws can only attack people in the water (too limiting, not scary enough). So in my new and improved version, Jaws can attack people on land too.

I’ve identified what I think the problem with Jaws is, and come up with a solution to solve that problem.

When someone asks you to “be more creative”, at work, they often have a problem in mind that they want you to solve…but they don’t always articulate that problem.

Let me give you an example:

“We need to “be more creative” with our client reports.”

Friends, this is a direct quote 🙂

What was the actual problem we were trying to solve?

“We create dashboard-style reporting for our clients BUT our clients find them confusing. What should we do?”

Much clearer, right? Now we have a problem to solve, we know what to do.

If you’re not sure what “be more creative” means in the context of your work, behave like a child…and ask a bunch of questions. Keep asking questions until you’ve identified the actual problem that you’re being asked to solve.

1 + 1 = 3

As adults, we often put immense pressure on ourselves to come up with “original” ideas. But children intuitively understand that new ideas come from old ones.

Jaws + Spiderman = a better story (according to me, aged 7)

I took two things I loved, and smooshed them together

This is called combinational creativity.

And actually, many of the ideas we consider to be “original” are actually just two or more old ideas which have been smooshed.

old idea + old idea = new idea

Or, 1 + 1 = 3

Children are great at combinational creativity, and things are rarely just one thing: The cardboard box is a boat… The boat is caught in a storm…We meet a dinosaur that can talk…

Now I would acknowledge that my combinational creative idea (Jaws + Spiderman = a better story) was not commercially successful. But there are plenty that have been:

Jaws + Space = Alien (Ridley Scott, 1979)
Spoon + Fork = Spork (Samuel W. Francis, US patent 1874)
iPod + phone + internet = iPhone (Apple, 2007)

If you find yourself struggling to come up with “new” ideas, try combining two or more old ideas instead.

Final thoughts

I said right at the beginning of this article: It took a long time for me to realise that as a child, I understood more about creativity, than I did as an adult. I thought the skills that enabled me to come up with Jaws fan fic ideas were cute… But not useful in the working world.

But actually, my amazing Jaws fan fic skills were precisely the skills I needed to access, in order to be more creative at work.

Dr George Land’s study results show that as children we were all creative, but the vast majority of us lose these skills along the way.

Age	% “Highly Creative”
5 years old	98%
10 years old	30%
15 years old	12%
Adults(Over 1 million tested)	2%

This begs the question: how do you access the creative skills you once had?

I started by looking for answers to this question: What do children need in order to be creative?

Ursula Kolbe (artist & educator) on how to nurture creativity in children:

“The elements of time, space, & materials make it possible for children to explore, invent, and make their ideas visible…”

I believe that if children need these things in order to be creative, then adults need these things too. You need time, space, and materials if you want to nurture creativity in yourself, and all three are important:

If you’ve time & space, but no materials, you’ve nothing to play with
If you’ve time & materials, but no space, you’ve nowhere to play
If you’ve materials & space, but no time, you’ve no opportunity to play

Let’s deal with each in turn 🙂

Time

At school, your play time was scheduled for you…Now you’re an adult, you’ve got to schedule play time for yourself. Easy to say, hard to do, I know. But if it’s not scheduled, it won’t happen.

Space

You need to find a safe space to play. This is important to note because the space where you work may not be conducive to play – try out different spaces: coffee shops, the library, outdoors, etc.

Materials

You’ll need stuff to play with, and/or stuff to do…

Here are some things to get you started:

Creative Exercises

We are all creative – but a lot of us are out of practise. That’s ok though, because creativity is a muscle, and if you want to get your creative skills back, you need to work those muscles.

Here are some creative exercise books I recommend:

All of these books contain creative exercises that take no more than 5 or 10 minutes to complete.

Here’s the important bit: Do these exercises for fun, not work, and keep the stakes low. The creative muscles you’re building can be used in your work later.

Noticing Workouts

This idea is stolen from artist Bill Keaggy, a person who has made a career of noticing the things you probably ignore.

He authored 50 SAD CHAIRS, a collection of captioned photographs of abandoned chairs:

Image credit: Worst Vacation Ever, from 50 SAD CHAIRS by Bill Keaggy

Noticing workouts are simple: you just go outside, pay attention to what you notice, and take photos. For more on this, watch his TedTalk: How to find Attention, Mindfulness, and Creativity in the Ordinary.

Again here, I’d encourage you to do this for fun, not work. You’re seeking to build up those noticing muscles, and you can use them in your work later. But if you really want to, you can make your noticing workout a little more “worky”. Spend 30 mins:

On your website
On a competitor’s website
On a total unrelated website
Googling stuff
On a social platform / Q&A site
In your analytics platform

However, if you choose to do something like this, you need to ensure that you’re doing so with no specific aim in mind – you’re just paying attention, and seeing what you notice. Going to your analytics platform because you’re trying to diagnose the cause of a specific problem is not a noticing workout, it’s just you doing your work.

Become a collector

Children are prolific collectors. Any time they see something they love, they “collect” it (either literally, or figuratively), and they return to those things they’ve collected again, and again.

Jaws + Spiderman = a better story (according to me, aged 7)

I took two things I loved, and smooshed them together. Without that collection of things I love, I’ve nothing to smoosh, and no ideas.

Create a swipe file so you can quickly & consistently capture stuff you find interesting:

Again, I’d encourage you to make this as non-worky as possible.

I’ve been doing this for years, and whenever I feel stuck, my swipe file gets me “unstuck”.

If you’ve got thoughts, questions, or feelings about this stuff; or if you’d like a copy of my slide deck, drop me an email: hannah@worderist.com

Do you want to develop your creative skills?

Check out my new course: Unlock your Creativity, an 8-week live learning cohort delivered over Zoom.