If you want to thrive in the create-on-demand world, you must develop the capacity to focus deeply. Though broad and shallow engagement may feel necessary because of the number of priorities on your plate, to be truly effective you must cultivate the ability to do quick, focused dives into the depths of a project and emerge with useful ideas. More important, this must be done in spite of the increasing pressure to do things faster, better, and cheaper.
Because we tend to gravitate toward possibilities, many creative people wrestle with focus. We can quickly become fascinated with new ideas or bounce from unsolved problem to unsolved problem without really solving any of them.
This “priority ping-pong” prevents us from engaging in the kind of deeply focused thinking that facilitates insight and moves the needle on our projects. As the number of unresolved creative problems in our work increases, we can become overwhelmed or generally discouraged by all that’s left undone.
Whenever we choose to ignore the warning signs that we are violating the natural rhythms of the creative process, either by choice or because of our work environment, there will be unhealthy side effects. We can often go for weeks at a time without feeling them, but we will eventually begin to experience these drawbacks: apathy, discontent, boredom, exhaustion, frustration, a general lack of ideas. Working in the create-on-demand world, expected to be constantly on, you probably experience each of these side effects on a regular basis. Just like your car may continue to run for a while in disrepair, you can be very effective in short bursts, even violating your natural rhythms for a time, but eventually the negative side effects will catch up to you in the form of these symptoms.
While creative workplaces are very complex and there are many dynamics at play, there are three damaging side effects that serve as broad categories for all the others. I (Todd Henry) like to call them the “assassins” of the creative process, because they are stealthy and they effectively neutralize our creative capacity. They can creep into a work environment almost unseen and begin to undo our capacity to perform at our best. Once you understand these assassins and can spot their effects, you can begin to systematically weed them out.
Creative teams face two conflicting pressures: to produce timely and consistent work, and to produce unique and brilliant work. The pull between these two expectations creates a tension like that from two people pulling on a rope. When this pull—between possibilities and pragmatics—becomes too strong, the rope is taut, eliminating the peaks and troughs of productivity required do our best creative work.
We are constantly forced to choose between striving to improve the quality of our work and driving it to completion. This dynamic manifests itself in three tensions: the time-versus-value tension, the predictable-versus-rhythmic tension, and the product-versus-process tension.
As creatives, we are wired to take new ground. We love the thrill of the chase, pursuing objectives and tackling goals that seem just beyond our reach. We are fundamentally wired to be a part of the leviathan force, or we would never have chosen jobs that require so much self-definition. Much of our time as organizational creatives, however, is spent occupying the ground that we’ve already taken. We must deal with systems, processes, and protocol in executing our ideas. We have to deal with they everyday demands of communicating and creating interdependently. While we certainly gain new opportunities when we organize around the creative process, we must also deal with the inherent limitations and side effects of collaborative creative work.
The Pros and Cons of Team Creating
Organizations organize. It’s their reason for being. And organization is good, because it allows groups of people to leverage assets more efficiently and scale in ways that aren’t possible for individuals. Many people have brilliant ideas, but unless they are capable of organizing around those ideas, it will be impossible for them to get much of any significance done. As much as we may venerate the ideal of the lone innovator, slaving away in the garage or studio to bring a vision to life, the reality is that most of the time brilliant creations are the result of teams of people stumbling awkwardly into the unknown.
A few years ago my (Todd Henry) company, Accidental Creative, coined a term to describe this workplace dynamic: “create on demand.” You go to work each day tasked with (1) inventing brilliant solutions that (2) meet specific objectives by (3) defined deadlines. If you do this successfully you get to keep your job. If you don’t, you get to work on your resume. The moment you exchange your creative efforts for money, you enter a world where you will have to be brilliant at a moment’s notice.
You need to incorporate practices that instill a sense of structure, rhythm, and purpose into your life. You need to create space for your creative process to thrive rather than expect it to operate in the cracks of your frenetic schedule. This will not only help you generate better ideas now, but it will also ensure that you are acting on the things that matter most instead of drifting through your days.
Creative Rhythm
To unleash your creative potential now and thrive over the long term, you need to establish your own rhythm—one that is independent of the pressures and expectations you face each day. This Creative Rhythm will provide you with the stability and clarity to engage your problems head-on.
If you want to deliver the right idea at the right moment, you must begin the process far upstream from when you need that idea. You need to build practices into your life that will help you focus your creative energy. There is a persistent myth in the workplace that creativity is a mystical and elusive force that sits somewhere between prayer and the U.S. tax code on the ambiguity scale. But the reality is that you can unquestionably increase your capacity to experience regular flashes of creative insight—“creative accidents”—bring the best of who you are to your work, and execute more effectively, all by building purposeful practices into your life to help you do so. These practices will help you stay engaged and productive over the long term without experiencing the rampant burnout that often plagues creative workers.
In other words, purposeful preparation and training using the tools in this book will directly increase your capacity to do brilliant work, day after day, year after year.
J. Paul Getty would like to convince young businessmen that there are no sure-fire, quick-and-easy formulas for success in business, that there are no ways in which a man can automatically become a millionaire in business.
There is no tricks, no magical incantations or sorcerer’s potions which can make a business or a businessman an overnight success. Many qualities and much hard work are needed, as are innumerable other elements, before a businessman or woman can achieve success and reach the millionaire level. The various qualities, elements and factors which other successful businessmen and J. Paul Getty have found to be essential or helpful are subjects of this book.
Luck, knowledge, hard work—especially hard work—a man needs them all to become a millionaire. But, above all, he needs what can be called “the millionaire mentality”: that vitally aware state of mind which harnesses all of an individual’s skills and intelligence to the tasks and goals of his business.
Most men fall into one of four general categories:
In the first group are those individuals who work best when they work entirely for themselves—when they own and operate their own business. They want to be their own bosses and are willing to accept the responsibilities and risk this entails.
Next are the men who, for any of a large number of reasons, do not want to go into business for themselves, but who achieve the best, and sometimes spectacular, results when they are employed by others and share in the profits of the business.
