Estimated reading time: 4 minutes

It’s Only Common Sense: Just Imagine…

There’s an old story that says we're all artists in first grade. Just ask a room full of 6-year-olds. One kid draws dinosaurs wearing sneakers. Another builds a spaceship out of cereal boxes and glue sticks. Somebody paints the sky green because they feel like it. Nobody apologizes for their ideas or worries about being judged. They just create without fear.

But, as the story goes, we get older. We become more experienced and practical. We learn rules, structure, and how business is “supposed” to work. We slowly trade crayons for spreadsheets and imagination for caution. Little by little, we retire the most creative part of ourselves long before we retire from work.

It’s one of the great tragedies of adulthood, because creativity should actually grow stronger with experience, not weaker.

When you were young, you had imagination but very little knowledge. Now you have decades of knowledge, wisdom, experience, relationships, perspective, and problem-solving ability. In theory, you should be wildly more creative now than you were in first grade because your imagination finally has tools to work with.

But the opposite happens: Experience becomes a fence rather than fuel. We say things like, “That’ll never work,” or “We tried something similar once in 1997,” or my personal favorite, “That’s not how this industry works.”

Whenever I hear that last sentence, I immediately assume innovation just left the building through the back door. Imagination hates rigidity. Routine, while necessary sometimes, can drain inspiration out of life if we’re not careful. The days begin looking identical: The same drive to work, the same meetings, conversations, and thinking. Everything is too automatic.

Do you ever notice how some of your best ideas happen when you break routine? You took a different route on your daily walk, vacationed in a new spot, or drove somewhere unfamiliar. Your brain wakes up because it’s finally seeing something different. That’s why keeping hobbies, side projects, and playful thinking matters so much.

What sparks your creativity? What gets your brain out of a rut? Do you like to build, paint, cook, garden, write something, take classes, or learn a new skill like photography or how to fix your toilet? 

Do something where curiosity and experimentation matter more than perfection. Those activities reconnect you with imagination. Don’t just look at it as an artistic skill, either. It’s a business skill.

Every great business breakthrough started with imagination for a better product or customer experience. They looked at a different way of solving a problem. Every innovation started as an idea that didn’t exist before somebody dared to picture it.

The future belongs to creative thinkers, especially as AI changes everything. The companies that survive and grow will be those that adapt creatively rather than mechanically repeat what worked 10 years ago.

Great leaders encourage experimentation. They create cultures where people can try ideas without being terrified of failure. They understand that not every idea works. Some will fail spectacularly. Occasionally, an idea fails so badly that it deserves its own documentary series. But even failed experiments create momentum because they keep people thinking.

I once worked with a company where employees had completely stopped sharing ideas during meetings. Finally, I asked one of them why. He said, “Because around here every new idea gets treated like a crime scene investigation.”

How many companies slowly suffocate innovation without even realizing it? How many leaders accidentally train creativity out of their people by criticizing every imperfect suggestion before it has time to grow?

Meanwhile, the best organizations I’ve ever seen challenged assumptions. They had energy and curiosity. People laughed. They weren’t afraid to sound a little ridiculous sometimes. Many brilliant ideas sound ridiculous in the beginning. If nobody laughs at your idea at first, it might not be ambitious enough.

I remember years ago visiting a small company where the owner encouraged employees to spend time each month exploring completely unrelated ideas. One engineer became fascinated with how racecar pit crews communicated under pressure. Another employee studied restaurant customer service systems. Somebody else became obsessed with how amusement parks managed crowd flows.

That’s how creativity works. It connects unexpected dots, and the more inspired your mind stays, the more dots it has available to connect.

Inspired people simply enjoy life more because they notice beauty more often. They stay curious longer. They remain fascinated by the possibility instead of being trapped in cynicism. They still get excited about ideas. They still wonder “what if?”

Inspired people push against the heaviness of the world, reminding us that creativity, possibility, and imagination still matter.

I think that’s part of why children seem so alive all the time. Their imagination is fully awake. Everything feels possible to them. A cardboard box becomes a spaceship. A blanket fort becomes a castle. A stick becomes a sword, a fishing pole, or the most important invention in human history, depending on the afternoon.

Now obviously, responsibility matters. You can’t walk into a board meeting wearing a pirate hat, announcing you’ve decided quarterly forecasts should now be interpreted through interpretive dance.

But there’s a balance. You can be responsible and still imaginative, professional and still playful, experienced and still curious. Don’t retire your imagination. Keep experimenting and learning. Refuse to let routine harden you into predictable versions of yourself.

Life becomes a lot more enjoyable when inspiration stays part of the journey, and business becomes far more exciting when creativity is allowed to breathe.

That’s not complicated.

It’s only common sense.

Dan Beaulieu is president of D.B. Management Group.