The Accidental Creative

by Todd Henry

  In this case, Larry and his team understood that the solution to their creative problems was unlikely to come from staring harder at the problem, but would instead be found by immersing themselves in higher-quality stimuli. What are some characteristics that mark higher quality stimuli?

  It’s challenging. We want stimuli that will help us grow in our capacity to comprehend complex things. Pop culture is helpful for keeping up with trends (and for entertainment, of course), but we also need to commune with great minds and experience mind-stretching concepts and ideas that challenge our existing view of the world. This helps us break through mental ruts and consider new options that were previously obscured by our assumptions. While there’s nothing wrong with catching a sitcom or two throughout your week, you may also want to structure time into your life to watch documentaries on stimulating subjects.

  It’s relevant. This doesn’t mean that we should be looking only for stimuli that offer specific solutions to the creative problems we are facing, but it does mean that when we are working on highly intense projects, we should somewhat limit our stimuli to materials that will help our minds focus more effectively on those problems. Are there leaders in your industry who have published papers or articles that may help you think in new ways about your work? Are there trend reports that may help you think through where your business is headed next? A good rule of thumb is that every single day should include some kind of stimuli that is directed at your personal growth (working through a book, studying a skill or technique, et cetera) and some kind of stimuli that you’ve sought out for purposes of advancing your work (an industry trend report, a research study, a trade magazine).

  It’s diverse. While carrots are healthy for me, if I eat nothing but carrots for a few months I will probably find my body in serious disrepair. Similarly, we must diversify our diet of stimuli by exploring divergent topics of interest, by varying forms of media, and by ingesting the opinions of others we may be inclined to disagree with. This diversification will expand our capacity to process information, help us form new and interesting thought patterns, and stimulate different parts of our brain than would be triggered if we were to continue in the same stimulus rut.

  Another thing to consider with regard to diversity is that often our next great breakthrough is more likely to come from outside our industry or area of expertise than from within it. When we diversify our base of stimuli, however, it forces us to approach problems from a new perspective. Ben Nicholson, creative director at the video production house Lightborne, likes to look in nonintuitive places for inspiration in his work. He once shared short stories and essays with his team as inspiration for new projects, something pretty far outside the realm of video work. But this diversity of stimuli prevents the team from falling into ruts or unknowingly imitating industry trends.

  As you consider the diet of stimuli in your life, these three factors should play a role in the decision.

  STAYING AHEAD OF THE PRESSURE

  Another key benefit of being purposeful about the stimuli in your life is that you can direct your mind to begin working on problems before your need for ideas becomes urgent. For example, if there is a big project on the horizon that requires you to have an understanding of a specific topic, then it is a good idea to get a head start on the project by choosing stimuli that will lay the foundation for that understanding. You may want to do a little research to find the highest-rated or most recommended book on a particular subject. You may want to start reading a blog or two that covers emerging trends in this area and their cultural effects.

  Our minds require time to do their best work, and the more of a head start and the healthier a perspective we can give them, the more likely it is that we will uncover novel and relevant patterns. Not only that, but the more grounded we are in the subject matter, the easier it is for us to discern relevant versus irrelevant data. It’s almost as if we gain a sixth sense about problem solving once we are deeply immersed in relevant stimuli.

  There are three practices in the remainder of this chapter that I’ve found tremendously helpful for myself and for my clients in processing and assimilating information in a way that will be useful in the creative process. The practices, which are designed to instill rhythm and purpose into the stimuli we absorb, can be divided into three categories: cultivate, process, and experience.

  CULTIVATE: THE STUDY PLAN

  Maintaining a study plan will help you cultivate the kinds of stimuli you allow into your life and ensure that you are putting the most important pieces in place first. I have used one for years, and it has made a tremendous difference in my exposure to great thinkers, my understanding of key issues at work, and my ability to process new and complex thoughts. I consult and revise it regularly—typically in my monthly checkpoints (more on these later)—as a way to make sure that I’m continuing to challenge myself with the things I choose to allow in my head.

  Can you list the last three books you read? How about the last three magazines you perused? The last three movies you saw? How about the last ten web pages you visited? If you’re like many people, you’ll probably need to think a minute to answer these questions, if you even can. Because we often approach the stimuli in our life randomly and without any kind of formal structure, there are few intuitive connecting points between them, and, as a result, we draw few if any lasting insights from having experienced them. Anything we might have gained is forgotten as quickly as we turn our attention to something new.

  “I must study politics and war that my sons may have liberty to study mathematics and philosophy.”

  —John Adams

  Again, our minds are excellent at receiving new information, forging new patterns out of it, and then assimilating those patterns. But the more random the information you absorb, the more effort is required to process it and utilize it in your creative work. Variety is certainly helpful in forcing you to look outside your normal handful of solutions to the creative problems you face, but it can also lead you down irrelevant rabbit trails or cause you to feel overwhelmed. If you are more purposeful in how you structure the stimuli you experience, however, you can gently nudge your mind in a direction where creative insights are more likely to occur.

  The practice of deliberate study plays an important role in the development of your capacity to think and to process new information. When you assemble a study plan, you cultivate a queue of stimuli designed to grow your creative capacity. Your ability to synthesize new ideas is largely influenced by your depth and breadth of knowledge in diverse domains of expertise. As you study you develop networks of understanding that connect various bits of data in your daily life into meaningful patterns. The more you strengthen these networks of understanding through study, the larger they grow. Similarly, as you diversify your areas of study, you are able to make connections between various domains of knowledge. The net benefit of this greater understanding of the world is that you are capable of generating more novel and appropriate creative insights. You can more easily derive metaphors and see the similarities or connecting points between problems you’re facing. As this understanding grows stronger, your platform for creative expression grows proportionately.

  As Benjamin and Rosamund Zander write in The Art of Possibility, “The frames our minds create define—and confine—what we perceive to be possible. Every problem, every dilemma, every dead-end we face in life, only appears unsolvable inside a particular frame or point of view. Enlarge the box, or create another frame around the data, and problems vanish, while new opportunities appear.” Purposefully structuring stimuli in your life through the practice of study enlarges your framework for understanding the world and allows you to synthesize more appropriate solutions to your creative problems.

  Structuring Your Study Plan

  Structure your study plan in quarterly increments. This will give you enough of a horizon to ensure that you are getting ahead of your work without planning so far ahead that it becomes impossible to know which stimuli wi
ll provide the most appropriate foundation for your upcoming work. There are three criteria you want to apply when determining what should make the cut for your study plan:Where are you lacking information that you will need over the next three months? What will help you engage with your work more effectively? Are there any gaps of experience or knowledge that could become blind spots and prevent you from doing your best work?

  Again, with time on your side, you can be more purposeful about closing those knowledge gaps, and you can be more selective about how you do it. Maybe you need to read a book, peruse some old magazine articles, or line up a few conversations with experts in order to gain the insights you need. The main thing is that you are being purposeful in moving your mind in a specific direction. This “I need information for work” category should take up about a quarter of your study time.

  What are you curious about right now? Your study plan is not just a method for getting more done at work; it’s also a method for growing yourself intellectually, emotionally, and spiritually. Take note of where your curiosity leads you in various areas of your life and give yourself permission to explore those curiosities. So often the overwhelming flood of information we’re required to process on a daily basis squeezes out any time we might have for pursuing personal interests. By structuring these areas of curiosity into your study plan, you ensure that you’re allotting time and attention for cultivating your passions and growing your capacity to explore the deeper questions you have about the world around you.

  Your personal curiosities can range from broad subject matter (mathematics, physics, ancient Rome, the Revolutionary War) to specific skills you’d like to learn (cooking, gardening, woodworking). Pursue these subjects because you’re personally passionate about them, not out of obligation. These are your guilty pleasures, although there’s nothing to feel guilty about. In fact, this category should make up about half of your study plan.

  What would be good for you? This part of your study plan is the equivalent of eating your mental vegetables. Some items need to be a part of your study plan because they stretch your mind, cause you to grow in new ways, or help expand your worldview. When considering this category, think about areas where you may be deficient in some way, where you have an educational blind spot, where you need to gain more information that could be useful down the road. This category should make up the final quarter of your study plan.

  In his book The Contrarian’s Guide to Leadership, author and USC president Stephen Sample suggests that we spend the majority of our study time focusing on what he calls the “supertexts.” These are the works that have stood the test of time—Sample uses the examples of Machiavelli’s The Prince, various religious texts, and Plato’s Republic—in other words, texts proven by longevity to speak to the deeper human condition. Sample’s point is that much of the content that is produced today is simply derivative of these supertexts, and not nearly as helpful in forming our understanding of how the world works or forging useful patterns of knowledge. Rather than reading the derivatives, Sample believes that we’d be better served to go directly to the sources. He also includes among the supertexts great literary works, plays, spiritual texts, and fiction that have lasted for decades or centuries. I’ve adopted Sample’s recommendation and have found that reading great works not only stretches my creative expression but also helps me identify patterns in human behavior that haven’t changed much over time. In many ways, it’s like communing with the great minds of history and allowing them to illuminate your understanding of how the world works. This improved understanding increases your platform for expression and creative problem solving.

  Remember that this study plan is not intended to be the sum total of all the stimuli you absorb in your life. It’s simply meant to provide a supporting infrastructure for your thought life and to ensure that there is some purpose and intentionality behind the kinds of stimuli that inform your creative process. The study plan, and your study time, will help you maintain stability and rhythm. Anything else you choose to absorb is fine as long as you’re building in the most critical stuff first. You can feel less guilty about mindlessly surfing the web or watching reality TV if you know that you have time and energy set aside to explore more purposeful, insight-yielding stimuli.

  Once you have determined the items that will be a part of your study plan, you may want to keep a Stimulus Queue. This is a place where you keep a list of items you plan to read, experience, or study. The most effective practice is to establish regular times for study in your schedule, then to work through your queue in sequential order during those times. Again, this will ensure that you are getting to the things that matter and are not simply drifting to whatever happens to capture your attention at any given moment. My study time has fluctuated depending on the season, but I’ve typically maintained one at 5:30 a.m. each weekday, and it lasts for about an hour. Other creatives I’ve worked with prefer to study at night because they find it a good release from the pressures of the day. Other creatives I’ve coached prefer to do it over their lunch break. Regardless of when, the critical principle is that your study time is consistent and nonnegotiable.

  During this time I work sequentially through the items in my Stimulus Queue, whether it means reading a certain number of pages from a book, reading a few magazine articles, listening to podcasts, or experiencing something else entirely. While I also read at various times throughout the day, and I am always listening to audio books in my car or on walks. This structured study time ensures that my personal mental development and the cultivation of my curiosity never succumbs to the busyness of the work day. Because of scheduling issues, others may need to break up their study time into increments, perhaps a half hour in the morning for personal growth and work-related study, and a half hour at night for personal study. (For a complete list of recommended tools you can use to keep your Stimulus Queue in order, visit AccidentalCreative.com/book.)

  What will you study? How will you structure purposeful development into your life? By doing so you are cultivating the soil and planting the seeds for future creative insights.

  CONVERTING INFORMATION TO WISDOM TO CREATIVE INSIGHT

  There is a significant difference between information and wisdom. But in a culture that is obsessed with sound bites and snacksized media, wisdom is increasingly taking a backseat to perpetual stimulation. The danger in this is that we stop thinking “what’s best?” and instead worry only about “what’s next?”

  In Birth of the Chaordic Age, VISA International founder Dee Hock shares some thoughts on how raw information is transformed by our minds into something more useful. Hock argues that noise becomes data when it is grouped into a pattern, when you can identify a noticeable and memorable connection between bits of noise. He continues to show the progression of data to wisdom as it becomes increasingly structured and useful in our day-to-day decisions.

  If you want to turn the noise in your environment into something useful, you must develop systems for filtering stimuli and discerning which of it is most relevant to your work. But then you must go a step further and actually learn to utilize this stimuli in your creative process in a meaningful way. The resulting benefit of a purposeful approach to stimuli is the ability to think more systemically and cultivate a deeper understanding of the world at large. In other words, you develop wisdom. This begins with becoming more observant and capturing insights in the moment.

  PROCESS: NOTATION

  The goal of study is not simply to absorb a lot of new information. You want to process and assimilate it, then apply it to your life and work. If you don’t cultivate insights from what you take in, then the value of stimuli in your life decreases dramatically. Taking good notes on your observations, insights, and experiences with a reliable thought-capture system prevents them from disappearing into the ether.

  “He listens well who takes notes.”

  —Dante Alighieri

  In the moment, we always think we’ll remember our best ideas later, but
many of us have learned the hard way that even the most profound insights can be fleeting. How many times has a solution to a problem suddenly popped into your head and seemed so obvious that you thought there was no way you could forget it, and then you almost immediately did? This has happened to me too many times to count. This fleeting thought was often something critical to my work. After getting burned this way a few too many times, I made a practice of taking regular notes throughout my day and of carrying a small notebook or index card with me as a way to record insights and prompts that may be useful later.

  We all know that note taking is important, but usually our notes are limited to facts, to-dos, meeting outlines, and so on. While these kinds of notes are certainly useful, they’re often shuffled into the back of a notebook or file folder and never looked at again. They’re more notes of record than useful fodder for our creative process.

  Observations and insights, on the other hand, often go unrecorded. These include anything from questions that arise in the course of a meeting to intuitions we have that we don’t deem noteworthy because they aren’t something we think we’ll be required to know later. This is unfortunate, because these little insights could be seeds of brilliance. You need to cultivate an attitude of active listening, which includes actively listening to your own thoughts and responses in the moment to whatever you’re experiencing.