It’s impossible to feel overwhelmed AND creative at the same time.
After you’ve started, you must ask yourself: “How can I get creative?”
Teresa Amabile, Professor from the Harvard Business School and coauthor of The Progress Principle, observes a funny thing in her workshops:
“Many people freeze if they are given a blank sheet of paper and told to draw something creative. But if they are given a blank sheet of paper with a squiggly line on it and asked to elaborate on that squiggle, they often have fun turning out something pretty interesting.”
Having that squiggly line starts the creative process because:
- The line triggers an idea
- An idea triggers an action
- An action produces a change in the environment (adding a word or symbol to a piece of paper)
- The change triggers several new idea
“Ideas that have been evoked trigger many other ideas, in a spreading cascade of activity in your brain.”
– Daniel Kahneman, Psychologist and author of Thinking, Fast and Slow.
When we externalize our ideas we create an opportunity for new associations to emerge by establishing a creative feedback loop – each idea we output is an input for the next idea. Fumbling around with an idea in our mind takes up precious mental resources and prevents more valuable ideas from emerging. A study in 1956 concluded that no more than about seven items can be held simultaneously in working memory (Miller, 1956). The role of working memory is to simply shuttle new ideas onto the page without judgment. Don’t filter, just put them down.
“Your mind is for having ideas, not holding them,”
– David Allen, author of Getting Things Done
Simply start writing, sketching, or typing to initiate the creative process.
There is no delete key, there is only a return key.
When I write, I write fast and freely. If I make a mistake I simply keep writing. If I have a stupid thought I just hit the return key. I don’t fix anything, I simply get my ideas out and trust that my mind will provide me with the next idea. There is time for editing, but now is not the time.
“Write drunk; edit sober.”
– Ernest Hemingway
“Almost all good writing begins with terrible first efforts. You need to start somewhere. Start by getting something — anything — down on paper. A friend of mine says that the first draft is the down draft — you just get it down. The second draft is the up draft — you fix it up. And the third draft is the dental draft, where you check every tooth.”
– Anne Lamott from Bird by Bird
When starting on that big project or that critical client email, let your inner child take over. Don’t sensor yourself, just get everything out. You may find yourself 1000 words in before you have anything useful. Sometimes you’ll simply be moving your fingers and creating pure non-sense. That’s OK. The key is to allow one sentence to lead to the next sentence. If a sentence has no relevance to your subject just hit the return key and try again. You may get it wrong 20 times in a row. Anne Lamott, author of Bird by Bird, reminds us that we should simply “let it all pour out and then let it romp all over the place, knowing that no one is going to see it and that you can shape it later.”
Yesterday we learned to embrace starting for ‘just a few minutes’. If we want to spark creativity, those first few minutes need to be an exercise of imperfection.
“Imperfectionism is determined by what you care about – care less about doing it right, care more about doing it at all. In general, the idea behind imperfectionism is to not care so much about conditions or results, and care more about what you can do right now to move forward.”
– Stephen Guise, author of How to Be an Imperfectionist
For these first few minutes of your work require you to think differently. Think: ‘action over results’, ‘quantity over quality’ and ‘any action is better than the perfect action’.
You’re only going to look stupid for a short period of time. Don’t worry, you can go back to being perfect in a few minutes.
Act like an improv comic
When an improv comics is on stage she is forced to work with any suggestion the audience shouts out. The audience may shout out a logical, straight forward suggestion…but often times it’s completely random and totally ridiculous. No matter how ridiculous the idea may be, the improv comic needs to roll with it. The only response an improv comic can have is: “Yes! And…”. They must accept the idea, see it as a gift, and build upon it.
Surely I can’t just continue writing non-sense…when do I stop pushing for creativity?
Something strange occurs when once you get enough ideas onto a page: no matter how nonsensical your ideas, your brain correlates the amount of ideas you’ve generated to the value of your work. Your brain can’t help but think ‘I produced a lot of ideas…this work must be important!’.
This phenomenon is called the ‘availability bias’.
Daniel Kahneman explains the phenomenon in his book Thinking, Fast and Slow:
“A professor at UCLA found an ingenious way to exploit the availability bias. He asked different groups of students to list ways to improve the course, and he varied the required number of improvements. As expected, the students who listed more ways to improve the class rated it higher!”
When you start with imperfection and continue with improvisation, you go from an idiot to an innovator. Making squiggly lines on a page leads to more lines, which eventually turns into something legible, useful and brilliant. The moment you allow yourself to approach your work like an improv comic – seeing every stupid idea as a gift and only allowing yourself to think “Yes! And…” – you turn the creative self ON.
The moment we find ourselves acting creatively, the feeling of being overwhelmed disappears.
The ONE takeaway for today?
Yesterday you learned to start by thinking “just a few minutes” – use those first few minutes to embrace imperfection and spark creativity, because when you’re creative, you become engaged and you escape the feeling of being overwhelmed.
Practical action sequence:
- Dump: When starting your next task get all your initial ideas out of your head and onto the page/screen in front of you.
- Improv: See each idea as a source for the next idea by thinking “Yes! And…”
- Draft: Make your first draft in a carefree, uninhibited and childlike way.
- Satisfy: Stop when the amount of ideas you’ve generated seems satisfying and feels valuable.
An image to take home with you:
A sketch artist starts with a few seemingly random lines on a page. Those turn into objects. The objects turn out to be facial features which are connected to form the image of the face.
Distraction Hit-list:
Unmotivated – ELIMINATED
Overwhelmed – ELIMINATED
Bored – Day 3
Anxious – Day 4
Apprehensive – Day 5