They claim creativity is good, but it feels like they are only paying lip service to it, and only encourage it when it aligns with the agenda of discarding ( e.g. "Let's get creative here.." )
Disparaging metaphors are -
* "Tree with too many branches" ( an entire chapter in Stuff is named this )
* "Minds like snapping turtles - grabbing at everything" ( said by the adult twins' father to them, according to them - but clearly, Frost has no objections to this, since he raised none, and in fact it feels like there's tacit approval ; it's a mean thing to say to anyone by anyone.. )
You cannot prefilter creativity - either you exercise it, all of it, as it comes, or you stifle it.
Useful creativity comes along with a lot of "useless" or trivial creativity.
Cannot mine for gold or diamonds without going through a lot of rock / sediment.
The ability to see multiple uses for an object is not a cognitive distortion; it is a core asset of an inventive, problem-solving, and resourceful mind.
cf. my experiment with Ovecreativity - in a nutshell - I did petty much everything opposite to experts' advice,
and particularly I indulged deeply in just this kind of "Overcreativity" -
I not only thought of all the different uses of things in question, but brainstormed with AI, and recorded all remotely plausible ideas.
I also introspected deeply over items in question, and exercised some of the uses thus envisioned.
As a result, my creativity and problem solving ability appears to have skyrocketed, and every problem I turn my attention to gets solved.
This is the same period where I developed the most and the latests and the most insightful revelations, the most whithering critique of the mainstream, and many lternative models and solutions of this doctrine.
So, one could say, this here doctrine is exactly a product of such overcreativity.