The Products of the Process: Toward Exploring and Expanding the Benefits of Being Creative

Abstract

The traditionally studied positive outcomes of creativity tend to be product-focused, such as Big-C contributions, good grades, or strong work performance. This paper makes an argument for the importance of less-discussed products of the process—the benefits that arise from being creative, regardless of one's abilities or level of achievement. These positive outcomes are more tied to such meaning-related concepts as self-understanding, feeling one's life is significant and worth living, and gaining both short-term and long-term purposes. In highlighting these potential consequences of being creative, we get to question clear separations between processes and products in the field of creativity studies and show that engaging in the creative process itself “produces” experiences that are less tangible or even noticeable but by no means unimportant.