The top left of your keyboard tells you everything about creativity. 

QWERTY. Have you ever asked yourself why it’s not BDGFHY? OR ZYXWV? It’s QWERTY because typewriters were invented around 1870. The keys were connected to long pieces of metal that each had a letter on the end. When you hit a particular key, a letter was raised. The letter banged on the ribbon, the ribbon on the paper – well, you know the rest. Initially, typewriter keys were arranged alphabetically. They needed to change that fast because some people typed so fast, the metal arms were flying up too quickly and everything got jammed. Fast typists had to unjam their keys all day long, Since the problem couldn’t be solved through technology, they did exactly the opposite: They slowed the typists down: They put the most commonly used letters in the hardest to get places. They made the keyboard as inefficient as possible. That’s why you’re looking at QWERTY and not AELOV. 

We still have QWERTY. We don’t even have typewriters anymore. We have keyboards, laptops, smartphones, tablets. And the keyboard always stayed QWERTY. Why is that? Why don’t we have the most efficient keyboard layout available to us? Why do we use a purposefully inefficient design, forcing us to slow down?

Because we don’t care.

No one questions it, no one can be bothered. We just go along and type away. How much of our lives is filled with things we don’t question? Because, it was always that way. That means, it must be right. 

Right?

Our lives turn quickly into this metaphor of a QWERTY keyboard. We take what is given to us. We might bitch for a second. Just to move on to other things we don’t care about. Our life has turned into a bar visit: Thousands of bottles are there, waiting to be mixed, to come up with new mix drinks, something that works for us, something that delights us. Instead, we look at the menu, choose one cocktail and move on. We don’t question the options. We have to look at the menu before we can decide what to pick. We never decide what we want without looking at the menu. The choices are being dictated to us. 

By other people.

By authorities. 

By circumstances.

By laziness. 

There are many things that make us so complacent.

One thing it isn’t: Creative.