from make-believe to must-achieve: how adulting killed our creativity
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part 4 (of 5):

The Creative Paradox = Ideas Desert and Idea Hoarding

But First, Here's What We Know:

Recap of Part 3 (of 5): the professional spillover of personal creativity scarcity

Our urgency culture has bred a sea of sameness. Same ideas, same branding, same coaching methods, same sales systems
We're sacrificing creativity, diversity of thought, and personal authenticity at the altar of corporate compliance and the entrepreneurial rat race
The real work begins when we dare to show up fully, unapologetically ourselves and use our creativity and ideas to spark change to these broken life systems

This essay is a resounding wake-up call making people everywhere question everything – and finally take action on executing the ideas that matter.

The suppression of creativity has become so normalized in adult life that we barely notice its absence anymore.

From corporate offices to home businesses, from classrooms to community centers, we've internalized the message that practical beats being imaginative, that efficiency matters more than exploration.

While we see organizations championing "innovation" in their mission statements and on the bulletin boards in their offices, the truth that I’ve experienced first hand, more times than I can count on said hands, is that creative risk-taking is often treated as a liability rather than an asset.

This translates to professionals confining their wildest ideas to private journals, entrepreneurs defaulting to "proven models" instead of revolutionary concepts, and everyday individuals gradually trading their creative passion projects for more "productive" or monetized activities. The result of all of this is a weird sort of cultural poverty – not from a lack of resources or talent, but a lack of permission to imagine and create freely.

This has left us in an ideas desert where even our personal dreams have become cautious and constrained (and that’s if we even dream anymore at all).

The Ideas Desert

The Definition

I define an ideas desert as a cultural and social environment where genuine originality has been replaced by repetitive iteration – a space where we see endless variations of existing concepts rather than true breakthroughs. It manifests in how a talented artist becomes a social media manager creating templated content, how an inventive child learns to give "correct" answers instead of novel solutions, or how a passionate entrepreneur ends up franchising someone else's business model instead of creating something unique.

How The Desert Plays Out In Real Life

This desert shows up in our daily lives in subtle but pervasive ways. Book publishers increasingly favor formulaic sequels over original stories. Independent restaurants copy trending food concepts rather than developing distinctive cuisines. Interior designers follow cookie-cutter templates and styles instead of reflecting individual creativity.

Even our personal expression – from fashion to home decor to social media content – tends to cluster around safe, proven formats rather than breaking new ground. You can scroll Tik tok at any time to see this in action where everyone is doing their own version of the latest challenge or lip syncing to the same trending audio. The result is a landscape where "new" rarely means novel, just slightly repackaged or recombined.

The Irony

What makes this all even more ironic, is that our current ideas desert doesn't feel empty – it feels incredibly busy - the polar opposite. We're surrounded by constant activity, endless content, and ceaseless production. But just like an actual desert's occasional flash flood that fails to produce lasting growth, this bombardment of nonstop activity produces little of lasting value or genuine originality.

Ultimately, the real scarcity that comes with an ideas desert isn't in the quantity of ideas being generated, but in their fundamental originality and transformative potential.

‍When we optimize our lives for safety and predictability over creativity and possibility, we create an environment where true innovation becomes increasingly rare and difficult to recognize, let alone cultivate.

the result of the ideas desert

The Idea Hoarding Epidemic

To take this a step further, picture the ideas desert as more like a vast landscape where everyone has buried their creative treasures underground. Think about your own stash of ideas: that business concept you've never pitched, that solution you kept to yourself at work, or that creative project you've been quietly developing for years.

We've all become idea hoarders, carefully guarding our most original thoughts instead of sharing them with the world.

But here's the catch – when everyone plays this game, we create exactly the kind of creatively barren environment we were afraid of in the first place.

what we're doing when we idea hoard:

Each time we hold back from sharing an innovative thought or developing a unique solution, we're contributing to the creative drought.

This strange situation we’ve found ourselves in is that our collective fear of judgment or failure has led us to create the very scarcity we were trying to avoid. The result?

A world that appears to be running low on original thinking, while in truth, we're all just sitting on a goldmine of hidden ideas that never see the light of day because we’re hoarding them.

We also need toxic productivity to enter the chat.

This idea hoarding behavior is often driven by a toxic "productivity over creativity" mindset, where we feel obligated to constantly demonstrate our worth through visible action and output.

Instead of taking the time to fully develop and share our ideas, we end up "action faking" - doing things to make ourselves feel like we’re being productive, when in actuality we aren’t taking the critical action needed to move a project forward to execution.

Action Faking Is A New Type of Procrastination

This can look like you continuing to obsess over your brand colors and fonts versus picking one, launching your business and then updating the brand palette later.

It can look like you meticulously organizing every single task in your enormous to-do list inside ClickUp, just to end up overwhelmed and ultimately not even use it.

And an even more potent example - it can look like you continuing to purchase course after course and never finishing any, or investing in Coach after Coach but never implementing the strategies you learned.

PSA: The world desperately needs the ideas you’re hoarding.

Your unspoken ideas aren't pipe dreams or unreachable goals – they are potential lifelines in a world desperately gasping for solutions.

Every seemingly wild concept, every "what if" scenario, every unconventional approach you've kept hidden could be the missing piece to solving our most critical societal challenges.

Climate change, social inequality, mental health crises, failing education systems – these issues aren't waiting for someone else's perfect solution.
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‍They're waiting for your unique perspective, your unlikely connections, your seemingly "impractical" innovations.

The breakthroughs we need won't come from the safe, vetted ideas that have already failed us.

The breakthroughs we need will emerge from the risky, unpolished, seemingly impossible concepts currently gathering dust in your mind.

By keeping your ideas locked away, you might be unknowingly withholding the spark that could illuminate a path forward for someone else, or the crucial perspective that could bridge the gap between problem and solution.

Your "crazy" idea about reimagining urban spaces, your "unrealistic" approach to healthcare delivery, your "too simple" solution for community connection – these aren't just personal creative exercises.

The world doesn't need more careful iterations or safe improvements.

The world needs your bold, unfiltered, even uncomfortable, ideas.

Because in this critical moment in history, the cost of not sharing is absolutely far greater than the risk of speaking up.

here's what matters most:

For our final section, we will get to the heart of what is needed to quench the idea desert, stop the idea hoarding, and reclaim our creativity.

We will explore the journey of re-architecting our lives and work to be full of purpose, impact, and meaning.

up next: part 5 (of 5)

The new creativity and innovation process that helps you create your vision for the future and carry your vision from idea to execution.

Continue on to Part 5

Head back to Part 3

The Creative Paradox = Ideas Desert and Idea Hoarding

Reality Check 4 - We’re in an Ideas Desert because you’ve been hoarding your breakthrough ideas.