Key points
- Being creative and curious are soft skills that improve our ability to solve problems.
- Both concepts are linked to greater joy in life and better stress tolerance, even among young people.
- Creativity and curiosity help us find new solutions to problems.
There is a wonderful advertisement for Lee Valley Tools where they show nothing but a woodworker’s hands cutting and shaving wood, producing lots of sawdust and then scrap, as the piece of wood is thrown into a pile of waste. The narrator reminds us that it was all a great way to spend time, to learn new skills, to wile away the hours keeping busy and only sometimes ending up with anything to show for the time spent other than the satisfaction of the experience itself. Rather than focusing on success, the message is simple: the act of being creative is satisfying enough.
I’ve been wondering how our desire for output rather than quality is threatening our sense of meaning. What happens when fast fashion makes us feel momentarily trendy (with little effort or creativity)? Or when artificial intelligence provides us within seconds with the words for a speech at a friend’s wedding, a song, or a design to make our front yard look like the perfect holiday setting? What gets lost when creativity is removed from our lives? If we stop being curious and motivated to learn new things and even fail while learning, does that undermine our sense of self-efficacy and overall resilience to stress?
The woodworking advertisement gives me hope that there is still a desire to be creative. To embrace curiosity. A newly published study by Laura Cruz and her colleagues at Pennsylvania State University found that a positive attitude towards living life with curiosity is still very much valued. Cruz surveyed 650 undergraduate students, asking them about their level of motivation to learn new things. Overall, the results showed that most engaged in thinking creatively about solutions and were more than willing to tackle complex problems. From the perspective of building resilience, students who showed more curiosity tended to also score higher on questions that measured joy and stress tolerance. In other words, just like a home hobbyist wasting a Saturday afternoon accomplishing little but enjoying the time spent trying, undergrad students may still be inclined towards what has been termed “epistemic curiosity.” They want to learn new ideas that challenge them to see the world differently. Even in this age of easy-to-find solutions, there is still something very human about wanting to muddle through and solve a problem ourselves.
Creativity and curiosity needn’t be so academic, though. One can experience both through activities as basic as choosing colorful socks to playfully dress up a business wardrobe. Creativity is a superpower that helps us envision what is new and possible. It is a process that does not flinch from taking risks. In fact, as the American psychologist Robert Sternberg found when he looked at creativity as a force for change, highly creative people will redefine problems rather than choosing the most efficient solution to problems as they already exist. Resilience relies on this same willingness to look for better ways to solve everyday problems and make ourselves feel whole.
How to Cultivate Creativity and Curiosity
So, what does it take to be creative? How can we remain curious? It’s long been understood that creativity and its sibling curiosity require skills to explore the world (woodworking skills, reading skills, critical thinking, etc.), a willingness to consider all possibilities, and finally, the motivation to persist through the discomfort of failure. Little wonder that people who are comfortable with creativity tend to be better problem-solvers and more likely to feel optimistic about their future. Get stuck in a rut doing the same thing over and over again, and one can see how one can survive but seldom thrive.
There are plenty of ways to assess your own level of creativity. Here are a few questions to get you started
- When you are short on funds, are you still able to find something fun to do?
- When you see other people experiencing a problem, do you help them find a solution that they like?
- Do you enjoy learning new skills?
- Do you enjoy teaching others new things?
- Rather than being bored, do you find ways to entertain yourself that don’t involve time spent passively on a screen?
- Can you draw a picture of something you’ve never actually seen based only on someone else’s description of it (the quality of the drawing is not the point)?
- Are you okay with trying new ways to express yourself?
In general, the more of these questions you answered “Yes” to, the more creative and curious you are. It’s those traits that may be useful the next time the unexpected happens and a new solution is needed to a problem that’s been difficult to solve. Turning to AI might be a quick way to resolve the issue, but it may not be the most satisfying or one that improves your overall sense of wellbeing
Cruz, L., Strickland, M. & Cruz, C. (2026). An exploratory study of the dimensions of curiosity5, 551 (2026). https://doi.org/10.1007/s44217-026-01431-y
Sternberg, R. J. (2003). Wisdom, intelligence, and creativity synthesized. Cambridge University Press
