Creativity and Action

I came across the title of a book called, Never Check E-mail in the Morning, by Julie Morgenstern. After reading the reviews I decided that this wasn’t the book for me. However, the title offers quite a challenge for avioding distraction.

Of course, the bold and the brave can get down to it and will be able to ignore the phone, and email. I do both of these things when I’m engaged on a commercial writing project because I’ve sold time to someone else who gets my full attention. So why is self-discipline for my own writing more difficult to honor?

The work of creation is work. It’s about regular action. It’s a habit, a custom. But habits, like obsessive email checking, can be mindless and monstrous as Shakespeare says (I do believe he refrained from checking his email or he wouldn’t have been so prolific.):

Assume a virtue, if you have it not.
That monster, custom, who all sense doth eat,
Of habits devil, is angel yet in this,
That to the use of actions fair and good
He likewise gives a frock or livery,
That aptly is put on.

Hamlet Act III, Scene IV

Getting the habit to block out uninterrupted time is necessary for concentrated work. Sales managers understand that salespeople can’t make customers buy. The results are not in the salesperson’s control, but her actions are. It’s the same with any creative discipline. You show up and do it. Sometimes the results are appalling. Sometimes they are mediocre. Sometimes, just sometimes, they are wonderful.

Steven Pressfield’s inspiring and insightful little book, The War of Art, is about battling resistance, although he spells it with a capital R. Resistance takes many forms and certainly one of them is to check email in the morning. The act of checking email is an invitation to be distracted. For me, the morning time sacred. It’s when I can write at my best. Or at least that’s the story I tell myself.

I am susceptible to the stories I tell myself too (more about this later). And right now I’m going to tell myself that I shall not check my email until mid-morning. Let’s see…

Tags: Creativity by Christopher
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Art critic Robert Hughes aptly titled his book and BBC documentary The Shock of the New. It’s a long time since I picked up this book, or saw the series. The book is about contemporary art. Many people scratch their heads when looking at a work of art hoping to understand its meaning as if it were a signpost the understandable. It’s not unusual for some of us to get quite upset when we encounter a concept or object that doesn’t fit into a pre-existing category. The new is destabilizing. We have to make room in our conceptual system and reevaluate what we know. Scary stuff!

To understand is to put the object of our attention in context. We can’t make sense of the new.

Fine art is purposeless. Commercial art used to be called the servile art because it was seen as inferior, only serving a secondary purpose. Yet art, whether music, dance, sculpture, or painting, has no other purpose than to exist: to be what it is. However, art of the fine variety influences everyday commerce. Those dazzling Op Art creations of Bridget Riley soon became high fashion for women’s clothing in the 1960’s.

Most of us consume art as a finished product. We don’t see the process, the rehearsal, the innumerable wrong turns of the storyline, the throwaway sketches. To engage in this purposeless activity, taking time to manipulate a medium, requires courage. The blank canvas, the white sheet of paper, can be terrifying. This is true if we are goal oriented, or in managementspeak, “results driven.” Being focused on the outcome can destroy the creative way. Not knowing and acting despite despair is the subject of Rollo May’s classic psychological text, The Courage to Create.

Innovation, by contrast, is limited to a purpose. It improves something already in existence, or creates an alternative. David Edgerton’s, The Shock of the Old: Technology in Global History Since 1900, cites many examples where old technology, once seen as obsolete, has been put to innovative purpose. The condom lost favor as a birth control device when the pill became available. Now, the condom has a new purpose as a barrier against new sexually transmitted diseases. Edgerton believes that the most innovative time came in the early twentieth century. Those inventions continue to have a continuing impact on the lives of people around the world.

According the Economist this week, Sweden, Finland, and Japan were the only countries out of the 30 rich countries of the OECD last year who spend more than 3% of GDP on research and development.

Actions that lead to a clear purpose are easy to accept. But encouraging the messy creative process that could well generate value (or not) is a much harder sell.

Tags: Creativity by Christopher
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