by Tom Baugh
The key is to listen to what your subconscious mind tells you. Otherwise, problem-solving will be a constant, uphill struggle as you try to bully it into performance. Eventually, it will win and terrorize you into not trying to solve problems any more, as you will have proved yourself to it as insufficient to the task. After all, no one wants to work for some idiot who just harasses them with their problems but is unwilling to listen to the solutions.
I mentioned before that you have to get into the flow state to be able to communicate esoteric problems to your subconscious. Interestingly, when your subconscious comes up with a possible solution, if the conditions are right, it will put you into a flow state by itself. Whether or not you are able to accept this flow state depends on your willingness to listen to the signals, or if your creature comforts are currently being satisfied. When this solution bubble hits you, it will feel exciting if the conditions are right for flow. But, you may feel an unreasonable aggravation with some facet of the outside world if there is an obstacle or conflict blocking the flow state.
Everyone is familiar with examples of the former, and usually invoke images of the mad-scientist rushing around without pants. This concept stems from a story about Archimedes, who, while slipping into a public bath, discovered a way to measure the volume of an irregular object by measuring how much water it displaced. He is reported to have shouted "Eureka!", Greek for "I have found it!" and ran home naked. It is for this reason that I encourage ladies to do their thinking in a bubble bath.
The latter is less familiar, but probably more common. Intellectual types have a reputation for lacking social skills. This is probably an unfair assessment, as intellectual people, under normal circumstances, are no less deficient in this area than anyone else. However, if you happen to cross the path of one of them during one of those solution bubble moments, whatever brought you to their desk is just getting in the way of their flow state. They know how precious these are. If they don't let the solution flow at that moment it could be lost forever. So, they react with what little conscious mind is in gear at the moment to chase you away.
Dissociative identity disorder, DID, is distinct from schizophrenia. Both of them are characterized by some kind of social dysfunction. Sometimes, creative people will seem downright schizophrenic or dissociative. Pick one. One day you talk to some artist and they are as nice as you could imagine. The next day, or even next minute you talk to them and they won't give you the time of day, chasing you off as they are trying to not let the bubble escape. I suspect that quite a many creative children and adults are mis-diagnosed by professionals who benefit from having lots of patients, and thus funding. Besides, the collective certainly benefits by labeling the productive and creative as dysfunctional, and thus ensuring they are easily corralled, doesn't it?
Over time, I have learned to be a little nicer about the chase-offs myself. My family is used to my demands for solace, or a raised hand, or a shaking head as some brilliance comes to me. If they don't respond the first time, I insist more strongly. A decade or so earlier, First Wife would recoil in astonishment when I would shoo her away from kissing the top of my head as I wrote. This act pops bubbles as surely as an ice pick in a balloon. Now she just accepts the nibbly-bitting.
Some creative types aren't so blatant as me. The best diesel engine expert I know has about a dozen little five-minute stories he can repeat as he thinks of something. When you ask him about some problem, you can see him go into the zone as he pops one of these stories into playback mode. To keep you from interjecting with questions which would take him out of flow, he then patters out this story as he thinks. An objective observer might conclude that you are having a conversation with him, if somewhat stilted or socially awkward, but no, he is just trying to get you to keep your mouth shut while he thinks. Once he has an answer he stops talking wherever he was at in the story and grabs a wrench.
Be warned: if you want to improve your problem-solving and creative skills, you will begin to behave this way when you are in the zone. The only way to avoid it is to avoid creativity. It is that simple. This does not mean that creative people are stunted. If they wanted to, they could spend all day pretending to care about your knick-knack collection just like all of your other friends pretend to care. Instead of investing precious mental energy into lying to you, they are just honest with you about it as they go about solving problems which are more important than your feelings.
You may depend on a creative person, perhaps as their child or their spouse or their parent or their sibling or their boss or employee or investor. If you do, then you need to decide what is more important: your feelings or your future prosperity. Pick one, or they will pick one for you. Even better, figure out how to help them make you successful, instead of spending time, like the monkey collective does, in how to suppress them and extract value from them.
Otherwise, some of them might decide to turn their creative energy into solving that problem. Because they can, if they choose to. And unless you decide to become creative yourself, then you won't be able to stop them. But then again, by making that choice you no longer represent a problem to them, do you? Actually, you might still be a problem to be solved, depending on how you express your creative energy, as we shall see in a few pages.
How a creative person responds to a threat to their solution bubble depends on the threat. Recall that a certain level of creature comfort is required for a bubble to form or stay intact. If the office is too noisy, then a "Will you people shut the hell up?" might come wafting over the cubicle walls as coworkers gab about some reality show. Too cold? "Why the hell is it so cold in here?" Or "Why the hell is it so hot in here?" Guess what problem causes "Which jackass took my turkey sub from the fridge?" or "Why am I the only person in this f***** building who can replace the freaking water cooler jug?"
This is why the monkey collective invented human resource departments. By identifying the socially-don't-give-a-crap, it was also able to identify the most productive members of an organization. If you think your organization runs like a well-oiled machine, you have never had a chance to compare it to those populated by the jerks who smoked and drank and cussed. Jerks who, for inspiration, slapped the secretaries on their size twelve rocket booster butts as they put us on the Moon or invented atomic bombs.
Now the sanctity of that butt, disappointingly slimmer, is more important than getting anything done. And so we now have only a slight glaze of productivity. As with my office nibbly issue, the productive can only afford to let little tiny bubbles form so that the rest of their mental capacity can be devoted to avoiding the HR department. And so now space shuttles blow up or cost about a billion times more than they were promised to.
Other issues which can get in the way of creativity fall more into the obstacle variety rather than creature comforts. Here is a partial list of things which can deflate or prevent brain bubbles:
Unrealistic schedules. Creativity happens when it happens. Instead of counting on invention happening to a time-clock, managers should instead look for obstacles to remove.
Intercoms and open-call paging. "Bob, call your wife" keeps the receptionist from having to get up and deliver a message to Bob. Keeping her nails done is a small price to pay for destroying the productivity of every thinker in the building.
Cubicles. Now every running mouth in the building gets in the way, too. The more pointless the conversation, the better.
Speakerphones. For when the mouths in the building aren't enough.
Poorly prioritized or missing requirements. Let's make sure that the subconscious has only half the puzzle before you demand it start working.
Ties, polyester pants, and sport coats/suits. You may be able to pick out the non-conformists from the boss this way, but nothing beats killing the creature comfort zone faster than having to wear clothes which you can't stand. No one can get anything done, but at least they look snappy while not doing it.
Sensitivity training. For when you snapped at all thos
e monkeys.
Traffic or threat thereof. Sitting in traffic in the morning just reminds you that you can't start thinking until the chain is properly in place in the appointed cage. At the end of the day, worrying about beating traffic trumps getting that last brain bubble of the day going. Sitting in traffic is also great for dehydrating the creative types, forcing them to water up before getting started after arriving at the office.
Lack of sufficient equipment, tools or other materials. This is equivalent to planning for subconscious strikes.
Gatekeepers of all kinds. Need some paper or a special office item or a rarely used template or form or a special meter or wrench or hydraulic fitting? The aggravation of having to deal with a monkey whose job is specifically to get in the way is sure to keep those bubbles at bay.
Another kind of gatekeeper is the sort who tries to save the company money by turning the thermostat up in the summer, and down in the winter. So. You spend millions of dollars on highly creative people, and then gamble your entire company's future on what they create for you. Then, to save a few bucks, remove one of the vital creature-comforts which is required for them to enter the flow state. Great idea, bozo.
Enter the smart meter. Imagine the fun when the Department of Energy gets to control the temperature of every building in the country. If we aren't productive as a nation now, wait until that little gem hits the street. But at least someone's cousin gets to make a bundle importing the meters from China, and some jobs get created to install all these things to destroy what is left of creativity nationwide.
First Wife once worked as a title examiner at the headquarters for a nationally recognized title insurance company. Title examiners are the people who make sure you actually own your house, which they determine by creating charts of what could be fantastically complicated chains of title down through the ages. One of the senior executives had a fetish which would only allow the examiners to have one pen on their desk. This guy would skulk around removing extra pens from examiner's desks as they worked. When her pen ran out, she would have to turn it in to get another, like the warden counting spoons to keep anyone from getting shived.
Let's set aside, for a moment, the aggravation of some guy plinking around your desk scarfing up all your pens. Or the frustration of having a pen run out in the middle of something, forcing you to get up and stand in line to trade it in with all the other examiners. Let's say that for whatever reason, as you were walking from file cabinet to your desk, or coming in from having made a trip to a courthouse, you discover your pen is missing. Now, not only don't you have a pen, you don't have one to trade in. So now, you either have to steal one from somewhere or engage in a form of black market. To get a freaking pen. This company was more interested in saving a few bucks on pens than on inspecting your title. Never mind the destruction of all those brain bubbles. At least they had an excuse for billing you for more time while the examiners dealt with all that nonsense.
Most organizations seem specifically designed to prohibit creativity. They seem this way because they are specifically designed to prohibit creativity. Don't believe me? Then what is the business model of a defense contractor who gets to bill for cost plus profit? It sure as hell isn't to get anything finished. Ever. In our modern world, almost every organization you can name exists, not to get anything done, but to create jobs. If they get anything done at all, it is only the bare minimum required to keep you writing checks.
Producers aren't the only creatures who can use their subconscious creatively. As it turns out, monkeys have this ability also. And how do they use this creativity? To get in your way. Recall that earlier I said that, as a productive individualist, you have to be motivated by more than just the money. By focusing on providing value rather than making money, your subconscious gets tuned in the appropriate direction. However, if your focus is, instead, on simply making money, your subconscious will find ways to do so that is easier than just providing value, and getting easier every day. And in so doing, you would join the collective. And you probably would not like this book very much right now.
In fact, your focus on creating value rather than making money identifies you clearly as a productive individual, instead of one of the team. All those guys out on the golf courses aren't wandering around with a solution in their head. No, that would just look odd. Instead, they are in a different kind of flow state, a shmooze state. A cheese bubble, if you will. They are being just as creative as you, it is just that their creativity revolves around the deal. What the deal is, usually doesn't matter at all. Most of these guys get paid on some kind of commission or bonus structure which is hardly ever based on actual economic effect.
A good friend of mine with about thirty years of experience in the microcontroller world, who has worked on more projects than anyone I know, once said that a manager gave him the secret of how managers view engineers. Instead of engineers, of course, you can substitute any creative field you like. The secret? Simple. As the manager put it, "You guys are just too honest. You are focused on facts and solutions. And that is why you will never get ahead."
Wow. The engineer is focused on the design. The diesel engine guy is focused on compression and power. The artist is focused on the mood, the writer the script, the grader operator the slope, the welder the bead and so on. And the monkey with the coat and tie or the golf shoes or the sauna towel? Suit monkey is focused on how to cheat every single one of them out of each dime he can. Otherwise, who needs him?
While the driver of the pulp wood truck is keeping the wheels between the lines, somewhere on a golf course some guy is trying to convince his boss that he can make more money with pulp derivatives than with the pulp itself. Or some lawyer is working up an environmental lawsuit or a harassment or wrongful termination case which will put them out of business no matter how much valuable pulp they actually provide. Or increase their operating costs to the point that it is cheaper done overseas. Those pleasingly plump and irresistibly whackable butts became more valuable as risks to be mitigated, for a fee, than as inspiration.
Providing value is too much like work. Theft or fraud is a hell of a lot easier. And, if the fraud is legal, so much the better.
I had a mortgage with Countrywide, who was recently bought by Bank of America. A few months ago, they sent out a nastygram telling me I had to show them proof of insurance or they would jack my payment through the roof to cover it. Now, when our house closed, we sent them proof of insurance. Nothing had changed. But, to be safe, we sent it again. All was fine.
For about two months. Then, as we received our first statement addressed as Bank of America, we received a similar notice. Why? Presumably, hoping that if enough people miss the notice, they get to start charging outrageous fees. As it turned out, they didn't even give you time to miss the notice. When First Wife called them a few days later to discuss, an expensive "lender-based policy" had already been added, even though the notice stated that we had over a month to chase this down.
Their excuse? Our coverage had changed with our original insurer, a change which Bank of America claimed was a cancellation. Imagine all the thousands of customers whose coverage changes for any of hundreds of reasons, who then had to fight with them to get those charges removed. If any of them missed this, or didn't have time to fight, worrying about keeping their jobs, for example, think of all the money they get to collect. For absolutely nothing in return.
We have several credit card accounts, some with Chase. A few years back, they offered some credit card deals with great interest rates. One particular offer was for 3.99%. For life. Hell, yeah, sign me up.
Now, years later, having not missed a single payment in all that time, Chase decided to unilaterally add some fees to the account, start adding high interest rates on those fees, and dramatically increase the minimum payments. When First Wife called to complain, some guy who can barely speak the language offered to cancel these fees. For a fee of course, and only if we switched the money over to a higher interest rate. We
refused, because a deal is a deal and they came to us with the original offer. Of course, all along, if we had faltered they could have hit us with a high rate. But we didn't falter, and now they wanted out of their little trap.
So we sent them a nastygram of our own, demanding that they live up to their obligations under the agreement. We got this answer back pretending to be legalese, but written in the same broken language as the customer service guy. A month or so later, we noticed on the news crawler that the New York Attorney General spanked them for this. A few weeks after that, Chase refunded the fees, but didn't refund the interest which had accumulated on them, nor restored the minimum payments to the previous level. Interestingly, although we had three of these offers on three separate accounts, two were hit with this fee, one was not. Which two were? Mine and a corporation of ours. Which one wasn't? First Wife's, who had applied for credit many times before, having listed "paralegal" as a former profession. Huh. I wonder why she didn't get her account hit with this new fee? Could it be that they screened cardholders to determine which ones were less likely, or able, to fight this unjustified fee?
We applied for a commercial mortgage with BB&T, who had impressed us with an Objectivist handout stating their corporate philosophy. #1 on the list is that employees are to be based in reality. Cool, maybe we can do business. So, we filled out all the paperwork and sent it in, First Wife and I personally owning a nice office condo free and clear. A few days later some chick called back and apparently didn't know the difference between an S corporation and C corporation. I came to this conclusion when she tried to weigh down our application with our C corp debt, but didn't include our corporate income. Pick one or the other, lady. And what happened to that whole reality policy?
Now, if BB&T doesn't want to make commercial mortgages right now, fine, just say so. I don't blame them, I probably wouldn't want to right now, either. But instead, their approach seems to be to monkey the numbers to justify their position. If so, what are they doing with our checking account, I wonder? I also wonder whether that Objectivist handout is just intended to sucker in the producers.