I define creativity as the ability to do great things with few resources. It is a combination of ingenuity, resourcefulness and focus; note that this definition includes a useful output as a key requirement.

Michel de Montaigne (1533-1592) is the archetype of long- term literary creativity; while his ingenuity and resourcefulness earned him a prominent place as an essayist, his focus turned him into a philosopher.

What was Montaigne’s purpose in writing? To gather facts, assess them independently, and draw valid conclusions. Every essay written by Montaigne aims at establishing the truth in a particular area, to answer a particular question.

Montaigne’s literary output is the result of extreme focus. It shows us how much it is possible to produce by employing very limited resources.

Nowadays, we could carry in a tablet or smart phone all the books in Montaigne’s library plus hundreds of other books, but I must hasten to add that our abundance of resources does not necessarily lead to abundance of output, let alone abundance of wisdom.

Without creativity, the input will not turn into an output that adds value to our lives, an output that makes us wiser and more effective.

To make it worse, too many people mistake randomness for creativity. They believe that random words constitute poetry, or that random shapes and colours constitute an artistic painting.

I see little value in randomness, chance or serendipity. They can produce an output, but not a useful or beautiful one. They can consume resources, but they cannot render the spectator or reader happier.

A practical focus enabled Montaigne not only to be creative occasionally, but to do it every day, year after year. He actually developed a method for exercising his creativity, and improved his method by trial and error.

Montaigne’s essays reflect his method for creativity, giving us important lessons. If we want to increase our capacity to do great things with few resources, there are important lessons we can learn from Montaigne. Let us pass review to those lessons.

Structure in Michel de Montaigne’s literary creativity

[1] Structure is the first pillar of creativity. When faced with a challenge, we should give ample thinking to its structure and components. What are the main elements of the problem? How do they interact and give it shape?

If we think in terms of structure, chances are that we’ll come up with solutions that address the problem effectively, that is, without waste or delay.

Montaigne defined the structure of his essays at the start of his literary activity. He was thirty years old at that time. If we read essays written twenty years later, the structure had stayed practically the same.

During those two decades, Montaigne had addressed dozens of subjects, but had kept the structure intact. Why? Because it enabled him to exercise his creativity very effectively.

For instance, when he was in his forties, he wrote the essay “On the Custom of Wearing Clothes,” employing exactly the same structure as in prior years. He started with a statement or question, provided half a dozen illustrations from history, gave arguments in favour and against, and drew a conclusion.

In this case, Montaigne concluded that a person’s identity is far more important than his clothes, which can only provide us preliminary clues.

If we take another essay from the same period, for instance, the one titled “On the Education of Children,” we can ascertain that Montaigne had changed the contents, leaving the structure untouched. When dealing with recurrent problems or projects, let us imitate Montaigne and create a solid structure.

Integration in Michel de Montaigne’s literary creativity

[2] Integrate the inputs into principles and put the principles into practice right away. Creativity requires integration of facts and concepts. In order to produce a valuable output, we should first have an organised picture in our mind.

Montaigne reread the books in his library often, but his goal was not memorise them. He wanted to draw universally valid principles that he could put into practice.

As time went by, Montaigne combined those principles with his own experience and also with each. The process resulted in an integrated intellectual edifice where each piece is connected to all others, and where discrepancies have been removed.

Montaigne’s essay “On Experience” provides an example of seamless integration of historical anecdotes, general principles, and personal experience. Its conclusion is a keystone crowning a structure that dissolves all contradictory arguments.

Integration enables creativity because it gives quick access to prior data. Montaigne wrote his essay “On Friendship” fairly quickly because he was conveying truths he had learned from Plato (427-347 BC) and Marcus Aurelius (121-180 AD), which matched his conversations Etienne de La Boetie (1530-1563).

Montaigne’s creativity comes from his efforts to integrate, assimilate, and update knowledge. His essay “On the Fear of Death” combines the serenity of Seneca (4 BC- 65 AD) with his own losses of family and friends, and concludes that “I accept death without complaint, but I am afraid to die anyway.”

Exercising creativity without integration is slow and messy. We need integration to remove all logical inconsistencies and produce a smooth, valuable output.

Montaigne himself had acknowledged that “humans often incur in contradictions.” Let us employ our creativity, remove those contradictions, and enjoy the benefits of sound answers.

If you are interested in putting rational ideas into practice in all sort of situations, I recommend you my book “Undisrupted: How highly effective people deal with disruptions.”