09 jun Why serious people are terrible creatives

There’s a comfortable lie we sell about creativity: that it’s merely the result of organized brainstorms, structured methodologies, and positive thinking. A serious approach to a serious problem, where everything must follow protocol. What we don’t say is that the most disruptive ideas in history were born precisely from the tension between structure and chaos — from the ability to use methodology as a springboard into the unknown, not as a cage to tame the wild.

Marcel Duchamp wasn’t “thinking outside the box” when he placed a urinal in a gallery and called it art. He was shitting in the box. And that’s exactly why he forever changed our understanding of what art can be.

The power of absurdity

20th-century Dadaism taught us something we prefer to forget: absurdity is a cognitive technology. It’s not frivolity — it’s deliberate intellectual sabotage against thought structures that have fossilized into dogma.

When you look at a Dadaist piece and think “this makes no sense,” you’re experiencing exactly what you’re supposed to. Your brain is being forced off the automatic neural tracks of conventional interpretation. It’s uncomfortable. It’s irritating. It’s creative.

The real question is: how many times a day do you allow your brain to go off track?

When play is grown-up work

There’s a deep-rooted bias in the corporate world: if it’s fun, it can’t be serious. If it’s playful, it can’t be productive. As if fun were a virus that contaminates efficiency.

Science says the opposite. Playfulness doesn’t just stimulate experimentation and curiosity — it literally reprograms the brain to take risks. When we play, our cognitive system frees itself from the fear of failure and creates a space where ideas can be explored without the weight of judgment.

It’s pure neurochemistry: humor and play increase dopamine levels, enhancing our ability to switch between cognitive sets. In practical terms, this means a brain that plays is a brain that connects better.

But here’s the paradox that should sting: we call “childish” precisely the behavior that optimizes our capacity to innovate. We grow up thinking seriousness equals competence, when in fact it might mean cognitive rigidity.

The quantum physics of humor

There’s a fascinating neuroscientific discovery that should be in every innovation manual: humor also boosts dopamine in the brain, optimizing our ability to switch between different cognitive sets. In practical terms, this means that when you’re having fun (or playing), your brain gets better at connecting seemingly unrelated ideas.

But here’s the paradox no one mentions: not all humor works. It’s specifically the “fun and silly” kind — the one our professional and social filters teach us to reject as “inappropriate” or “immature.”

Our social filter — whom I call Pedrão — always serious, always focused, is literally blocking your ability to break paradigms by refusing to play. Your seriousness is the obstacle, not the solution.

Creative ambivalence (or: feeling good isn’t enough)

Here’s where it gets really interesting: research shows that emotional ambivalence — feeling positive and negative emotions simultaneously — can be even more powerful for creativity than purely positive states.

This completely shatters the narrative that we need “always positive” environments to create. In truth, it’s tension, discomfort, productive irritation that forces our brains to seek truly creative solutions.

Think of your last genuine insight. I bet it didn’t come from a zen moment of pure happiness, but from a contradictory state — frustration mixed with curiosity, irritation tempered by humor.

Creative Subversion as methodology

Creative Subversion isn’t teenage rebellion. It’s cognitive strategy. It’s the systematic refusal to accept “it’s always been like this” as a sufficient reason to keep doing it like that.

In math education, teachers who subvert traditional methods aren’t being disruptive — they’re being scientists. They’re testing hypotheses about how learning really works, as opposed to how we believe it should work.

The problem is we confuse subversion with destruction. Creative Subversion isn’t about breaking for the sake of breaking — it’s about breaking to rebuild better. It’s cognitive archaeology: we excavate the foundations of what we consider “normal” to see if they still support the weight of our current needs.

Everyday artivism

In the 1990s, the concept of “artivism” emerged — the fusion of art and activism to create “political spaces of experimentation.” Argentine escraches used street theater to denounce impunity. They created “Temporary Autonomous Zones” where new social realities could be tested, even if briefly.

This isn’t just about protest. It’s about prototyping futures.

The question this raises for anyone working in innovation is: where are your Temporary Autonomous Zones? Where, in your daily life, do you allow alternative realities to be tested without the weight of institutional approval?

Because if your creativity always has to go through the feasibility committee before it even exists, you’re not creating — you’re editing.

Originality is an illusion

Here’s a truth that should be tattooed on every creative’s forehead: creativity is ALWAYS the intelligent recombination of existing ideas. 100% of the time. There is no idea that sprang from cosmic nothingness.

This is not a flaw — it’s how creativity actually works. Darwin combined Malthus with his observations on variation. Einstein combined Newtonian physics with the Michelson-Morley experiments. Jobs combined German design with Californian technology.

The obsession with total originality is what paralyzes. It’s the Process House of creativity — that perfectionism that blocks all real movement because nothing is ever “unique enough.”

Genius doesn’t lie in inventing from scratch. It lies in seeing connections no one else saw between things everyone knows.

Seriousness as cognitive block

Excessive seriousness acts as a cognitive lock: when we take our pursuit of solutions too seriously, our brain activates survival circuits — the same ones that favor the familiar, the safe, the already tested.

It’s a cruel paradox: the more serious you get about being creative, the less creative you can be.

The solution is not to be less committed to outcomes. It’s to be less solemn about the process. It’s understanding that play isn’t the opposite of work — it’s a different technology for getting where serious work can’t.

Saint MacGyver and the evolutionary hack

MacGyver solved impossible problems because he didn’t have the “right” tools. That forced him to see impossible connections between ordinary objects. A paperclip wasn’t just a clip — it was a lockpick, an antenna, an electronic component.

The Brazilian gambiarra works on the same principle: scarcity of “proper” resources forces creativity. When you can’t do it “the right way,” you have to invent a way that works.

This suggests something disturbing about our optimized work environments: by providing all the “right” tools, we may be eliminating the creative necessity that produces truly innovative solutions.

But here’s the motto that changes everything: giving up is not an option. MacGyver never had the luxury of quitting. The bomb would explode, the villain would escape, the world would end. The impossibility of quitting forces the brain to find exits that the convenience of quitting never would.

When quitting isn’t an option, your brain stops looking for excuses and starts looking for hacks. And hacks, make no mistake, are creativity under pressure — it’s the muscle of innovation being pushed to its limit.

The metacognition ofdisobedience

Neurocreative Engineering™ operates on this principle: using metacognition to consciously subvert our own cognitive automatisms, within methodological structures that work as cognitive scaffolds. It’s teaching the brain to disobey its own survival programming when that programming becomes an obstacle to adaptation — but with technique, not with anarchy.

This isn’t mysticism. It’s neuroplasticity applied with method. It’s recognizing that our brain evolved to keep us alive, not to keep us creative. Sometimes, those two needs conflict, and we need structured tools to navigate that conflict productively.

Methodologies aren’t cages — they’re trampolines. Genuine creativity requires the courage to temporarily destabilize cognitive systems that worked in the past, betting that such destabilization will generate superior organizations. But that destabilization must be intentional, targeted, methodological.

The final paradox

Here’s the central paradox: to control our creativity, we must let it get out of control. To guide it, we must accept that it may take us to unplanned places. To take it seriously, we must stop being so damn serious about it.

I’m not proposing chaos. I’m proposing a new kind of order — one that includes randomness, absurdity, disobedience as structural elements, not bugs to be fixed.

Here’s a question that might stick in your mind like dry crumbs in a dry mouth: if you knew your next big idea would come from doing exactly the opposite of what you consider “professional,” would you have the guts to be an amateur?