08.01.2025 Today’s Insights and Inspiration from Tony Award Winner Mindy Kaling in Fast Company: How Can We Become More Creative?
Dear Students,
As Writer/Actress Mindy Kaling paradoxically puts it in the brief Fast Company article below, the key to creativity may well lie in structure. And who among you doesn’t – or wouldn’t – want to become more creative, as an ambitious international student?
Creativity doesn’t just come into play artistically, although that may be our first association. In a commercial context, creativity impacts problem-solving, scenario forecasting, collaborating on teams, and even self-motivation. For example, Kaling, a Tony-award winning actress of Bengali descent, openly describes herself as “an inherently lazy person who needs deadlines” to parlay her “creativity” into actual results.
There’s a potential lesson here, perhaps for you or your friends, who may, for example, resist a trusted coach’s urging to commit to contacting 5 or 10 unfamiliar professionals from LinkedIn per week or attending two live networking events per month. If so, you know who you are! 🙂
Another key to extracting Kaling’s talents is leveraging her communicative nature. Whether by writing or speaking, aspiring professionals like you may find generating and conveying ideas (even if rough, initially), out loud or on paper, to be useful in homing in on the most promising approaches and solutions. The Dartmouth grad and Emmy-nominated mother of 3 also cites getting away from the computer (to no one’s surprise) and “conducting mental exercises,” requiring a student like you to consider an issue from two – or more – different perspectives – as being fruitful for stimulating novel concepts and possibilities. No doubt these techniques helped Kaling to be named “One of the most influential people in the world” by Time Magazine in 2013.
Our coaches are excited about helping students like you to find ways to harness and release your own creative juices, since you will soon enter the Year of the Snake, known for transformation, renewal and creativity. Why not partner with your personal coach to identify two (the snake’s lucky number!) professional skill areas of focus, to strengthen your “creativity muscles” in the coming New Year?
There’s no “slithering out” of this one!
Best,
Amy-Louise