John Hegarty thinks that everyone is creative. While only a few can paint a masterpiece, write a symphony, or invent the iPhone, the rest of us shouldn’t feel discouraged. Hegarty reasons that as long as you are a human being, most of what you do stems from an ability to imagine something that isn’t there – or that hasn’t been done – then perform an action.

This is observable in the everyday things that we don’t think of as being creative at all. Deciding what to wear? Creativity. Planning your next career move? Creativity. Choosing where to go on a date? You guessed right. Anything beyond our base animal instincts requires some form of it, according to the advertising luminary.

“We are all creative. It’s just that some people earn a living from it,” he says. “The same principle applies to singing. I can sing, but I’d have a hard job finding anyone that would happily listen. Creativity is what marks us out from the rest of the animal kingdom. Your dog doesn’t wake up in the morning and ruminate on what hat to wear. Humans get up and think about things. Problems, solutions, idle thoughts. And that’s what makes us creative.”