Accidental Creative

Closing A Few Doors

Good friend and fellow AC-er Matt Chandler sent a link to this NY Times article about the difficulty people have making choices and "closing the door" to opportunity. The article spotlights MIT studies featured in the new book Predictably Irrational. The gist of the article is that people tend to hold onto options as long as possible, even when those options aren’t particularly appetizing. It seems that we’re simply enamoured with the idea of many choices.

We’ve often discussed the need to "close doors" as we move through an organizational creative process, and the same principle applies to our own creating. To some extent, we have to be willing to let go of options in order to move forward. The longer we hold on to fading choices, the more difficult it is for us to embrace new stimulus and opportunities.  

LINK:  The Advantages of Closing a Few Doors [NY Times online]

AC Podcast: #99, Peter Block

Peter Block is a man who wears many hats. He is an internationally coveted speaker, a consultant to the biggest corporations in the world, and a best-selling author. Lately he’s also been making a name for himself as a citizen by facilitating conversations within communities. In this interview, Peter discusses uncovering and acting on what matters.

Peter’s latest books:
The Answer To How Is Yes
Community: The Structure of Belonging

The Art of Imitation

I snapped this pic of our daughter this morning with my Treo. In case you can’t tell, she’s holding my wife’s cell phone to her ear and saying “hello….bye” then putting it back down.

We didn’t teach her this. She learned it completely on her own. She doesn’t really even understand what she’s doing, she simply knows that to be like Mommy and Daddy, this is one thing you do.

I’ve spent a lot of time in my creative development trying to discern which skills I should develop and which things I should be imitating. (Remember the Phases of Creative Growth? Discovery, Imitation, Divergence, Crisis.) Most of the great ideas and growth, however, have come while I’m at play. Play is a growth tool. It’s what we’re wired for. But at some point, we become very practical about how we engage and we only do things that “serve a purpose.”

I had a fantastic conversation at my office this morning with Peter Block. (The interview will be released as the next podcast.) My favorite (and the most personally challenging) part of the conversation was about the nature of “being practical.” The biggest reason why we refuse to do engage in great work is because it’s simply not practical. It’s too “on the fringe.” It’s “not safe.”

My children are rarely too concerned for their safety while they’re playing. In fact, it’s usually one of the parents who says something like, “hey…maybe you shouldn’t hang upside down by your legs while you’re twenty feet in the air and holding that sharp stick.” (Come to think of it…maybe that’s a good interference…) The point is that when we’re lost in play, we’re creating and we’re discovering who we are and what we’re really wired for. I want more of this in my life. I’m tired of practicality.

When was the last time you really, truly “played?”

Turning It Upside Down

OK…therapy time, everyone…brisk confession here…

At some point, I got inverted.

I became a master of project-driven, next-action crunching brilliance. I was a productive machine. And the results were good…really. Very good.

But for some reason…I was having a hard time getting out of bed in the morning. Even with my ritualized systems and finely-organized project and task lists, I was having a difficult time engaging with my work.

I was certainly connected with “what matters” and was even working hard against the right objectives. Still, I was engaged with my head and my hands, but not my heart.

And metaphors are a thing of the heart, no?

I have always had a love-hate relationship with goals. This is mostly because I tend to set them so high that I never achieve them, even if I still achieve a lot along the way. (”Outline book proposal” turns into “complete book proposal by Friday.” I might get a good bit of it done, but I’ll always feel under-accomplished because I didn’t “hit the mark.”)

I am learning a lot about myself and motivation. I’m also learning that setting and accomplishing shorter-term, more realistic goals is much more enjoyable than accomplishing the same things but never feeling like I “measure up” because the bar was too high.

I now have three major goals for Accidental Creative and four major goals for my personal/family life. This doesn’t form the entirety of my daily activity, but it certainly allows for much more clarity about which projects to take on and which to defer. I’m tracking the goals in my notebook.

I am really curious to know how you set and track meaningful activity. Do you set goals? If so, how and in what kind of time-frame? How do you track them?

Facebook and the Proliferation of the Click-Rut

I am a creature of habit. I like patterns and I like to push the right lever to get "the pellet." (This is a big reason why I had to eliminate my Treo for a while - I was constantly pressing "get mail" even though it was set to receive mail every five minutes.)

I notice the same patterns in my computer usage. If left in an empty room with my Macbook Pro, I could probably spend an entire day retracing the same click patterns over and over. (Stats, Facebook, news sites, blogs, wash, rinse, repeat.)

I’ve learned a few tricks to keep me from falling into a clickstream zombie. First, I’ve removed most of the blogs from my bookmarks and only read them via RSS. This keeps me up to date without the extra effort to visit each blog every day. (Hey…you can do the same for AC!)

Second, I’m developing the discipline of scheduled internet surfing time. Just like I have my TV time and study time planned, I’ve found that I need to keep tabs on my internet addiction. (It’s like giving me free soda on-tap all day long. What might seem like a few soft drinks will soon turn into 25 lbs of excess waist-weight.)

Third, I’ve found that most of what I find on the net is snack food. I’m trying to be conscious of how what I see and experience affects my overall mood and sense of sociability. I try to have real conversations as often as possible throughout the day. The net seems to drain all of my desire for sociability while simultaneously wiring me to billions of my fellow humans.

So…have you developed any means of dealing with "click-rut" and stemming the tide of the info age?

Reading List

Here’s what I’m reading this week:

Artful Making: What Managers Need To Know About How Artists Work by Robert Austin and Lee Devin
This is my second pass at this one. It uses the metaphor of a theatre production company to demonstrate how companies can be more thoughtful of the creative process in their systems. Overall, I consider it a good read. (Hence, the second reading…)

Duma Key by Stephen King
Ooh…spine tingling. Actually, I’m only a little into this one, but I’m already hooked. 

In the queue:
The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable by Nassim Nicholas Taleb
Then We Came To The End by Joshua Ferris

So…what are you reading? What should be in my queue?

If I Only Had The Nerve

To engage with our work, our clients and our life with a creative ethic requires a degree of intentionality and…if you will…bravery. I’ve been thinking about cowardice lately because I’ve been confronted with friends, colleagues and Premium subscribers who are dealing with important life-changing decisions about career and work.

We all want to wear the title “brave”, I think, but so often we find ourselves in situations where our bravery is challenged. As I’ve been processing what I’ve seen happening around me, I think I have distilled cowardice into three distinct types:

1. Principled
Principled cowards hide behind rigid rules and religious-like conviction that is ultimately founded in their insecurity. They make decisions reactively, typically based upon whatever allows them to preserve their self-image and reputation. What might appear at first to be strong conviction is actually nothing but a mask to hide uncertainty.

2. Unprincipled
Unprincipled cowards are all about their own comfort and security. They’ll do anything to feed the deep abyss of their own hunger for affirmation and approval. They waffle, flip-flop and gravitate toward those who can improve their odds of “drafting” off of someone else’s success.

3. Aprincipled
Aprincipled cowards are the “opt-outs.” They are choosing to dis-engage rather than proactively work their way through a situation. They rationalize that they are “above” all of it and that they don’t need to be bothered by other peoples’ issues. This is often sourced in bitterness over not getting their way, depression, or a need to preserve self-image.

I have exhibited each of these types of cowardice in my life. I’m trying to be more and more aware of how my decisions are based on self-protection or reactivity rather than proactive choice (which is often a grey area.) One thing I do know is that the more consistent my actions are with what I really stand for, the more openly I create and the more free-flowing are my ideas.

Cowardice and fear are not the same thing. A good analysis of risk/reward is always necessary, and being afraid of failure is nothing to be ashamed of. The difference between cowardice and bravery, however, is how we choose to act when confronted with a decision.

Now…if I only had a brain.