You can’t rush creativity.
We have probably all heard of the phrase “all developers are lazy”. There is some truth to this and whoever coined the phrase probably had the principle of development of DRY- Don’t Repeat Yourself in mind. Every programmer hates writing repetitive codes, it’s the reason why libraries and functions exist. However, lately I can’t help but wonder maybe there is a whole new side to this. I’ll tell you why.
Leonardo Da Vinci was the epitome of “ Renaissance man”. A lot of geniuses have existed and still exist, but very few (in fact I think none) is comparable to Da Vinci. More than just an artist: he was a scientist, an engineer and inventor with more than 400 inventions credited to him. But despite being a polymath, Da Vinci was an incredible procrastinator. One of his well know paintings, the Mona Lisa took him approximately 4 years to finish according to historians. Generally, most of his art works took him years to finish and aside from that, there is evidence that the master was deemed “unreliable” in terms of meeting deadlines.
In one of Adam Grant’s TED talk, he goes ahead to explain what he has found out to be the surprising habits of original thinkers. In an experiment designed to find out how originals think, Adam and the team asked people to generate new ideas. Some were asked to do the task right away while others were assigned to procrastinate “by dangling Minesweeper in front of them for either five or 10 minutes”. The experiment revealed that those who moderately procrastinated were more creative than those who completed the task immediately. His general conclusion was that procrastination might be bad for productivity but maybe good for creativity, or as Aaron Sorkin would put it “You call it procrastinating, I call it thinking!”
And there is a science that tries to explain this, zeigarnik effect. In psychology, zeigarnik effect states that people remember incomplete or interrupted tasks better than they do completed tasks. Put in simpler words, creatives are quick to start but slow to finish.
Now, don’t get me wrong. I am in no way trying to encourage laziness. In fact, I am writing this piece mainly because I am stuck on a project that am currently working on. And because I can’t get past it, I thought why not write instead and get back to it later. It’s one of those ways that I can justify my “laziness”. With that said, I have come to understand that you can’t rush creativity. Sure, deadlines have to met and projects need be delivered on time. Nonetheless, inspiration strikes when someone is calm. You can’t sit down and say, I want to be creative and think you’ll come up with an original idea at that instant. It happens spontaneously, in an unexpected manner, time and place.
At this particular point I’ll take a break and go do something else and come back to finish writing this piece. Put the zeigarnik effect in action!
I thought maybe I’d come up with a more creative conclusion that would have a “wow” effect. Unfortunately that didn’t happen.
In a nutshell, creativity takes time and more people need to understand that. Inspiration flow more easily to a calm mind than one with angst. To all those creatives out there, if you hit a block like me right now; take a break, listen to music, play video games or do something you love. Once you get the anxiety out of your system, ideas begin to pour in. It’s the reason why every start up company we know has fuzz ball, ping pong and free food (Yes, free food also leads to creativity). With that said, I’d better go listen to some music myself!
