The
STRESS Edition
The Sinking of Creativity
Feel stressed by having to do more with less? Do you feel as if there
is never enough time to get everything done? Then you could be captaining
a sinking ship!
It is no secret that today's business world is faster-paced than yesterday's.
Sometimes it seems that we go through more change in three months
than our parents did in a decade at their employment. Changing technology
and global competition add stress to our work. We are driven to continuously
improve, to cut costs, be more competitive, motivate our staff to
be more productive with less. Does it all sound familiar?
If it does, then you may be in trouble. You may be captaining a sinking
ship.
Through the tragic story of the Titanic, we learn that the probable
reason for hitting the iceberg was the fact that the owner of the
shipping line, Whitestar, wanted to reach New York's harbor ahead
of schedule. So he ordered the captain to speed up. Consequently,
the ship could not slow down to maneuver its way out of danger once
the crew spotted the iceberg. This is what happens to ideas without
incubation.
Joey Reiman in Thinking for a Living: Creating Ideas
That Revitalize Your Business, Career & Life, Longstreet:Marietta,
1998, p. 100.
Harvey, the great-grandson of the captain of the Titanic, looks around
his desk, stacks of files on all four corners, and starts feeling
an escalating anxiety. His boss, expounding in the coffee room at
lunchtime, commented that recent research shows that people aren't
working more than they used to and got into a heated debate with a
co-worker who immediately called out, "Research says they are!" Harvey
thinks about all the work left to do before he can leave and sighs.
Burying his head in his hands, he remembers back to the days when
he was part of the marketing team for New Coke. He really doesn't
care what the research says about hours of work because he KNOWS he
has a lot more work now than he did back then. Sometimes he even feels
that great-uncle Jumpin' Jack (he lost everything in the Stock Market
Crash of '29) had it easy compared to him. But not today - he breaks
into a grin as he thinks about that certain stock he is hanging on
to. He just knows that this continued dip in price is a temporary
setback and that soon he can chuck this job good-bye.
Most of us have felt like Harvey at one time or another. If you live
anywhere close to civilization, you've heard the reports that today's
Americans are working harder. If you are a Canadian, you probably
know for a fact that you are working harder for less.
The problem really isn't how much you work. The problem is how much
you THINK you've worked. When people start working more than 40 hours
a week, every hour over 40 feels more like an hour and a half. Even
if they haven't worked 60 hours that week, they think they have. Then
they compare those exaggerated work hours with what actually got done.
The perception that they are working too long and not getting enough
accomplished impacts their work behaviour.
This perception is the dangerous, underwater part of the time-stress
iceberg. What happens when we think we aren't getting enough done?
All we have to do is look at Harvey to answer that question. He doesn't
take a lunch break because it takes too long to go to the corner deli,
buy a sandwich and then chew and swallow it. Instead he drinks cup
after cup of coffee at his desk (liquids are faster to swallow than
solids - and besides, he always pops a vitamin pill with that twenty-third
cup of coffee). He refuses to take time for anything but work (can't
you see the work piled up on his desk?). He becomes obsessed with
not-enough-time and rapidly misplaces his curiosity. He doesn't stand
and look out the window lost in thought anymore.
Welcome to the destruction of creativity!
Time-stress, perceived or real, kills creativity because:
It takes time to get into the creative problem-solving mode.
"The more ambitious the task, the longer it takes to lose oneself
in it, and the easier it is to get distracted. A scientist working
on an arcane problem must detach himself from the 'normal' world and
roam with his mind in a world of disembodied symbols that now you
see, now you don't. Any intrusion from the solid world of everyday
reality can make that world disappear in an instant."
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi in Creativity: Flow and the Psychology of
Discovery and Invention, HarperPerennial:New York, 1996, p. 120.
There is this certain mood that seems to craft creativity at a faster
pace. Unfortunately, it takes time to realize this mood. And that
ringing telephone or whistling kettle can destroy it in a second.
It is like a sleeper getting into the health-restorative deep sleep.
It takes hours to gradually descend the levels of sleep. Then only
a second of the alarm clock ringing jolts us awake. Returning to that
deep sleep is often a problem. So it is with detaching ourselves so
creativity can flow. It takes time.
The most innovative solutions come when individuals spend
more time in the planning stage.
In both the artistic and business world, the people who are what HR
calls 'the really good producers' take more time examining the problem
and coming up with potential solutions. Both take time.
Creative solutions come from people who form a love affair with their
problem. We all know the rush of first love. We fixate on that person.
We dwell on how beautiful their eyes, their nose, their fingers and
their ankles are. We study them. In the same way, the most creative
problem solvers fall in love with their problem. They spend time studying
it, first from one angle and then the next. They feel a compulsion,
a need to know the problem.
Understanding the problem is only the first part of solving it. Only
after we understand the problem thoroughly (most people are satisfied
with a surface understanding of the problem) can we come up with a
more than adequate solution. And getting to a more than adequate solution
usually takes more than a normal number of ideas. For most people,
more ideas mean more time.
Those truly magnificent ideas come as a result of forgetting
about them.
A vital part of generating great ideas that is often cut from our
schedule is letting the ideas simmer in the stew pot of the mind,
spiced up with whatever other problems we are solving. Often, those
truly revolutionary insights come after studying a problem and coming
up with solutions – and then forgetting about them to work on something
else. Returning to stir the simmering stew by looking over the notes
on that problem (as well as the notes on the other projects), thinking
about them – and then leaving them behind to work on something else.
Then, when we least expect it, out from the idea pot wafts the most
delectable, delicious aroma. That's when we achieve our 'Eureka!'
moment.
Generating innovative solutions to work's difficult dilemmas takes
time.
Time? Do we have it? Do we have enough of it that we can commandeer
some to be creative? Unfortunately, thinking and dreaming are often
the first things we throw away when stressed for time. But when we
throw away time to think and dream, we also throw away the best solutions
to our problems. They end up wrecked and neglected on the ocean depths
of possibilities forgone, much like the Titanic. The less we safeguard
our thinking and dreaming time, the more the quality of our ideas
start to resemble Harvey's sharply falling stock prices.
Do we have time to think? Unlike Harvey (he'll never learn) and his
great-grandfather (he learned too late), we'll make time.
Bibliography
Bluestone, Barry and Rose, Stephen, 'Overworked and Underemployed',
American Prospect, (March 4, 1997).
Csikszentmihalyi, Mihaly, Creativity: Flow and the Psychology of Discovery
and Invention, HarperPerennial:New York, 1996.
Jay, Eileen S. and Perkins, David N. in The Creativity Research Handbook,
Runco, Mark A. (eds), Hampton Press:Cresskill, 1997.
Michalko, Michael, Cracking Creativity: The Secrets of Creative Genius,
Ten Speed Press:Berkeley, 1998.
Reiman, Joey, Thinking for a Living: Creating Ideas That Revitalize
Your Business, Career & Life, Longstreet;Marietta, Georgia, 1998.
Peters, Tom, The Circle of Innovation: You Can't Shrink Your Way to
Greatness, Alfred A. Knopf, Inc.:New York, 1997.
Sparks, Kate, Cooper, Cary, Fried, Yitzhak and Shirom, Arie, 'The
Effects of Hours of Work on Health: a Meta-Analytic Review', Journal
of Occupational & Organizational Psychology, 70(4), (12/1997).
Jean's creativity newsletter, The Creativity Catalyst,
is a periodic electronic newsletter discussing Jean V. Dickson's ideas
and thoughts on how individuals can insert innovation into their lives.
Contact Jean for further information at: jeand@jvdcreativity.com.
Want to sign up to receive the Creativity Newsletter? Click
here. To be removed from the subscription list, send email to:
nomorecreativity@jvdcreativity.com.
© April 2002 Jean V. Dickson. All rights reserved. Feel free to share
The Creativity Catalyst in whole or in part as long as copyright and
attribution are always included with the article.
|
|
|
