Creative Reaction

Interruptions, at the very least, cause a loss of traction and a loss of time. The more complex your work is, the more likely an interruption will completely detour you, preventing you from returning to your task unless you are reminded of it. For creative work, interruptions are simply devastating; creative reaction is broken. Ideas can be lost entirely. Setting aside blocks of uninterrupted time is of utmost importance.

Creating blocks of uninterrupted time often requires explaining their importance to those around us, whether at home or at work. Guidelines need to be established and respected.

Take a minute to read this excellent essay from Harvard Business Review’s Peter Bergman to find out how you can reduce and eliminate interruptions and create more effectively.

Managers, are you allowing your creatives uninterrupted blocks of time? Are you protecting your creatives from interruptions? Are you leading by example?

John Cleese gave an excellent presentation at the Creativity Worldforum in Belgium and excerpts of it are embedded here.

Cleese’s background as a scientist has allowed him to observe his own creative process and present some ground rules for creativity.

It’s encouraging to find that he is in 100% agreement with that we’ve been presenting here at Creative Reaction for the past three years. He speaks of the dangers of interruptions. He also speaks of creating the proper environment for creativity; creating boundaries in space (separation from distractions) and boundaries in time (setting a start time and a time to finish). Without these conditions, creative reaction will be inhibited.

Most importantly, for managers of creatives Cleese offers two profound insights. The first is “to know how good you are at something requires the same skills as it does to be good at that thing.” And the converse is true as well. ”If you are absolutely hopeless at something, you lack the exactly the skills you need to know that you are absolutely hopeless at it.”

In other words, we are all blind to any lack of expertise we may have. There’s no point in bluffing. Those who truly excel can call  you out.

The second insight describes a pandemic issue in many advertising agencies.

“If the people in charge are very egotistical, then they want to take credit for everything that happens and they want to feel that they are in control of everything that happens and that means consciously or unconsciously they will discourage creativity in other people.” I’ve seen this first-hand. The impact this makes on creative output as well as morale is devastating. (In fact, it explains some of the career choices I’ve made.)

Humility, a willingness to learn, and giving others credit are not only valuable lifelong skills, they are also the basis for collaboration and learning together as a team. Without them, everyone is working against everyone else. Managers beware!

Be sure to watch John Cleese’s presentation.

Great post over at Zen Habits explaining how simplifying, constraining, and focusing are tools to boost creativity. Many of the tips can be used by creatives for brainstorming and day-to-day creative work. Others should be noted by managers to make sure they are creating the proper conditions for creative reaction to happen.

Lately I’ve been running into the research of psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, and the more I look into it, the more fascinated I am. Much of it validates the values expressed here at Creative Reaction.

So, what better way to introduce him, than by letting him speak for himself? Click here to see his 2004 TED Talk.

As you’ll see, Csikszentmihalyi’s big thing is “flow”, which I find to be more descriptive than “being in the zone” (uh, where’s that, exactly?) or having a “creative streak” which could be either something in your hair or your state of dress/undress. Of course, we all realize that what’s being articulated is more commonly known as “Creative Reaction”. We expect that academia will eventually catch on. 

Nomenclature aside (wink), an intriguing video!

The romantic notion of being a creative recluse in a cabin by a lake in the woods is far from the day-to-day reality of a collaborative creative business. Time management as well as the “management” of interpersonal relationships is an integral part of work.

Making Time to Make by Merlin Mann of 43Folders deals with exactly these concerns from the creative person’s perspective. We’re going to repurpose Merlin’s article to take a look at meeting creatives’ needs from a managerial perspective.

One of the keys to productivity is making a conscious choice to determine the most important thing to be working on at any given time. Of course, this choice alone is not enough; structures and conditions must be present to shelter creatives from distractions and the office environment must be conducive to creativity. Ultimately, it is up to managers to ensure these conditions are present.

Merlin’s article is primarily about interactions with people and determining what is appropriate; specifically, interacting with people “enough”, yet not so much that work is inhibited. It asks a series of questions (and I’ve added a few of my own) to optimize both work and creative output.

Environment/Conditions:

• What kind of environment does my talent need to do its best work? The needs may change depending upon personalities, moods, energy, and even the time of day.
• What can I change today to protect that environment for extended blocks of time?
• How much busy work is expected of the creatives? Meetings? Paperwork?
• Does the busy work support the creative work by optimizing blocks of time or inhibit it?
• Can you assist with the busy work or hire an assistant to do this for the creatives?

Time to Create:

• How can we allow our creatives to be “unavailable” for blocks of time?
• How can we keep interruptions away from them?
• Can we shield them from phone calls, e-mail, IMs, and meetings?
• How can we structure work schedules to allow blocks of time to work?

We need the entire company as well as clients and collaborative third-parties to understand the reasoning for this.

Finally, creatives need to be trained to be social and yet stay on task. “Creative breaks” such as foosball or video games are healthy in small doses.

• Which kinds of interaction with clients and co-workers are necessary?
• Can we encourage mealtime interaction?
• Do co-workers make unnecessary demands on your creatives’ attention?
• Can we run interference if need be?

We may need to be the bad guy for them. Enforce a kind of elitism where you help shape interaction to focus on the bigger picture, whether that be the current project, client service, or long-term career decisions. Some requests for attention do not even deserve a response.

Ultimately, this is about keeping perspective. Creatives’ ideas are our company’s products; they’re often the primary source of income. Everything that gets in the way of ideas is a waste of precious talent, so let’s allow creativity to flourish!

I came across this Hivelogic blog post (via another blog, Daring Fireball) which keeps talking about this thing called getting in “the Zone”. Of course, we all realize that what’s being articulated is more commonly known as “Creative Reaction“.

Specifically, the post has to do with the difficulties of experiencing creative reaction in modern office environments (cubicle farms and open office designs). “Think about it: you’re hiring somebody who needs to concentrate to be productive, and then you’re putting them in a situation where they can’t.”

Nomenclature aside (wink), an awesome post!

Take a look at Do Not Disturb – I’m Experiencing Creative Reaction for some other tips.

Even though it’s focused on software development, Signal vs. Noise is my new favorite blog. This archived post, Getting Real: The alone time zone, articulates the importance of creating without interruptions, and offers some very practical tips to allow creatives to have blocks of time in order to experience creative reaction.

“Set up a rule at work: make half of the day alone time. From 10am-2pm, no one can talk to one another (except during lunch). Or make the first half of the day alone. Or the last half. But make sure to make the alone time zone contiguous — interruptions kill productivity.”

“A good formula may be 2 hours in the morning where you can communicate, then the next 4 hours alone, and then the last 2 where you can communicate again. No communication means no IMs, phone calls, no meetings. Emails can work as long as they aren’t expected to be answered during the alone time.”

Managers – you need to be on board if this is to happen!

This post from Kathy Sierra’s archives points out a subtle difference from a previous Creative Reaction post from last June, entitled (Too Much) Time Pressure Affects Creativity. In Creativity on Speed, she writes, “One of the best ways to be truly creative–breakthrough creative–is to be forced to go fast. Really, really, really fast From the brain’s perspective, it makes sense that extreme speed can unlock creativity. When forced to come up with something under extreme time constraints, we’re forced to rely on the more intuitive, subconscious parts of our brain. The time pressure can help suppress the logical/rational/critical parts of your brain.” Now she’s the brain expert, so there’s little need for me to comment, except to say that this doesn’t necessarily contradict the research studying time pressure. As she explains, “I’m not talking about the kind of time pressure we get from trying to get real work done under unreasonable deadlines. I’m talking about a specific technique for using speed as a creativity driver.” She then goes on to describe a number of “creativity deathmatches”. Lots of great information and links as well.

Bob Kodzis knocks another one out of the park in this article written for Create Magazine, where he reviews the best-selling creativity book, “The Medici Effect”.

“By intersecting diverse fields, cultures and disciplines we approach our creative challenges from a surprising variety of directions, making the possibilities almost limitless.”

Download a .pdf of the article here.

Welcome to Creative Reaction, a new blog to invigorate and excite those who manage or work within creative businesses or departments. Creativity and the business of creativity often butt heads, so I guess that makes us… a helmet manufacturer?

We’re still “in beta” as they say and we’ll be finding our feet for the next few weeks as we choose categories and subject matter and start posting. Then we’ll spruce up the joint and work out some of the kinks.

Thanks for visiting!