Creativity isn’t only art. Fixing a bike with zip ties and stubbornness counts.

Creativity is less a kind of object than a way of handling a problem with what you have. Fixing the bike uses the same moves as writing a song: look at it honestly, try something, see if it holds. Counting only paintings and poems leaves most of your real inventiveness uncounted. You have probably been doing it for years without the credit.

Think back over the last month for something you fixed, rigged or worked around. Notice how you got there, because that is your method and it transfers. Use it on purpose the next time a project stalls.