A time to Twitter and a time to… not
We all know that the web is the greatest discovery engine (so far) ever conceived. And even if many of us experience an occasional overload anxiety, the array of tools to filter and manage all this goodness seem to be getting better and simpler (personally I’ve replaced delicious, StumbleUpon, digg and RSS/feed readers with just one thing; Twitter).
There’s also little doubt that the benefits of having the world and its information at one’s fingertips are immense and mind-blowing (although being able to resolve office/pub/dinner party discussions with the “why don’t we Google it?” seems to be a bit of a fun-killer). And I’m certainly no ‘serendipitard’ who believes that a surplus of information and algorithms are killing serendipity (as this recent debate so entertainingly raged).
And yet, even with so much being gained, halfway through last year I begun to sense that I was losing something as well.
In between Twittering on the bus into work, catching up on blogs and news at lunch, as well as playing a range of insanely addictive iPhone games (Drawrace, Flight Control etc), I realised that I had sacrificed something. In a word; downtime.
I had reached the point where I had filled up all the ‘dead time’ in my life with brilliant, stimulatory and fascinating snippets of goodness delivered to me in real-time by mind-blowingly powerful mobile digital devices and applications.
Obviously this approach (of my making) wasn’t all bad. But the potential folly of such fundamentalism was driven home to me shortly thereafter when I was wrestling with a particular thorny client problem. The breakthrough came to me in a flash of inspiration… while I was in the shower.
Everyone has had these moments. In the shower. Driving a car. Singing a song. Gazing out the window. And BOOM!, an idea just suddenly materialises in your mind.Everyone has had these moments. In the shower. Driving a car. Singing a song. Gazing out the window. And BOOM!, an idea just suddenly materialises in your mind.
So I started thinking. Why do great ideas strike at such mundane times (like in the shower)? Clearly these types of moments are not merely ‘deadtime’. They’re golden opportunities for subconscious inspiration. Actually, crucial and valuable ‘dreamtime.’
However a much more interesting question quickly emerges. That is, in a world that increasingly demands such constant attention, can our lives be better ‘designed’ to foster radically more creative spirits?
In my mind the short answer to this last question is undoubtedly yes. And I think that one of the secrets to this is ensuring and/or designing opportunities for subconscious reflection.
Years ago I read a book on creativity by Edward de Bono (this one I think) which proposed that when our minds are occupied by more thoughtless or ‘mechanical’ tasks, other parts of our brain are allowed to roam free. This struck me as amazing because it appeared to be a recipe for ‘managed daydreaming’ (you know, that type when you don’t happen to be lying in a lush, green field looking up at clouds drift by in clear sunny, blue skies). Of course perhaps it is not as easy as that. And while de Bono makes this point well, he then pursues the avenue of ‘stimulated’ inspiration with his brilliant variety of innovation techniques.
I suspect however that there is a more subtle ground to be discovered. One where ‘unstimulated’ creativity can be encouraged and indeed fostered. And not simply in the shower. But in our everyday lives, workplaces and environments.
Which makes this more than a misguided lament for simpler times. It’s a challenge to myself to balance the stimulation of the always fascinating digital world with time spent reflecting, letting my mind wander…. daydreaming.
On a quick delve into some literature, I came across this paper reviewing the evolution of creativity models. It notes:
Older models tend to imply that creative ideas result from subconscious processes, largely outside the control of the thinker. Modern models tend to imply purposeful generation of new ideas, under the direct control of the thinker.
So even academic models are increasingly discounting the significance of the subconscious. But all these ideas keep striking me in the shower, so it would seem there’s a mismatch between current science and anecdotal experience.
I know I’m not the only one to ponder the real trade-offs of our current age. The inimitable and inspiring master of digital storytelling Jonathan Harris released a compelling albeit slightly dark series of ruminations about the web in 2009.
Is crisis an overstatement? (Credit: Jonathan Harris 2009)
In ‘Our Digital Crisis‘, Harris writes:
“Our online tools do a great job at breadth (hundreds of friends, thousands of tweets), but a bad job at depth. We live increasingly superficial lives, reducing our relationships to caricatures and our personalities to billboards, as we speed along at 1,000 miles an hour. We trade self-reflection for busyness, gorging ourselves on it and drowning in it, without recognizing the violence of that busyness, which we perpetrate against ourselves and at our peril. For the last 100 years—from letters, to phones, to faxes, to emails, to chats, to texts, to tweets—communication has been getting shorter and faster, but we are approaching a terminal velocity. I doubt there is a shorter means of communication than the tweet, unless we start to make monosyllabic grunts at each other or communicate silently, brain to brain. Brief gestures of communication can be beautiful, but can also be shallow. So what will happen next? Will we stop at the tweet, or will we bounce back in the other direction, suddenly craving more depth? I’d bet on the latter.”
(On a related note Harris’ reflections on “city ideas” versus “natural ideas” is an equally provocative vignette)
I have far greater enthusiasm and indeed optimism than Harris (“crisis” is slightly OTT!) for the democratising power of digital to bring about brilliant, revolutionary change. It’s for this reason I do what I do and choose not to move to a remote mountain cabin retreat like Harris. And yet, I still believe that this wonderful web world we have spun should continue to serve us humans and not the other way around. What’s clear is that there is a balance to be had.
In this case, it’s about ensuring that my thinking, creativity and inspiration is as rich and diverse as possible. More *is* better. But not if if it becomes *all*.
So these days, you’ll still finding me loving my work in the world of digital strategy, but if you happen to see me on the bus to work, it’s less likely I’ll be peering at a 3.5 inch LED screen in my lap and more likely I’ll be reading a (hardcopy) book or looking out the window as London rolls by. And while I’ll continue to dive into the wonderfully maddening digital crowd, I will also be keeping an eye on distant, hazy, analogue horizons.
21 comments
good thinking batman.
hence why so many ‘social media experts’ focus on the ‘how’ rather than ‘why’.
Of course the majority of information online is retrospective (ie its been written in the (albeit near) past, or at best ‘real-time’.
The future needs imagining – and space is the place.
Nice post Justin.
Personally I think that all the “stimulatory and fascinating snippets of goodness” go towards fuelling my thinking during the down-time. Both are important.
Great post, really thought provoking and with a couple of signposts towards other writers I’m yet to discover.
We live in exciting yet scary times – can’t wait to see what the next decade will bring!
Sorry mate, you lose ten points for using ‘-tard’ as a suffix meaning stupid: what would Edward de Bono think of that?
Oh dear. Great post, but Twitter really does get the bad rap for everything. Now stealing ideas:)
Cracking last line eaon! And an excellent way to distinguish content (past) with imagining (future). Thanks for the thoughts.
Spot on Mike. It’s partly a question of discipline to ensure you get that downtime. It can be so tempting to fill it all in…. to be a stimulus junkie!
Ha ha. Twitter as the thief in the ideas night ;). I’m not blaming Twitter completely! Although I suspect the Twittertards won’t see the subtlety in the argument and will swarm onto the post….’if you don’t like it, get off it!’
I have a colleague who’s famous for saying “That time you see me looking out the window? That’s when I do my best work.”
It’s been a while since I’ve read any Edward de Bono, however, ‘stimulated’ inspiration sounds like an interesting avenue. However, I’ve often thought the best way of solving a problem is often to forget the problem. Might be difficult to forget if you’re trying too hard though! Switching off from the digital world and spending more time in an analogue fug sounds much better…
Interesting. I too use pubic transport to read a book uninterrupted. I picked the habit up (again) while living on an island which enforced a half hour on a ferry twice a day. Best learning I made.
Love that comment… although if it’s from the colleague who also has an unhealthy obsession with Soreen, it would lose some heft!
I totally agree – you simply cannot beat a long walk ideally somewhere green – leaving phones, blackberry etc at home just to clear your head and think. Too many screens in our lives obscuring the natural one we have surrounding us – to get all spiritual about it
nice work. i always have a book or a magazine in my bag just in case but bus rides are one of my favourite times for pondering.
I like what you’re saying here, Justin.
“[Why do great ideas strike at such mundane times (like in the shower)?] Clearly these types of moments are not merely ‘deadtime’. They’re golden opportunities for subconscious inspiration.”
I think you’re right — it’s because the off position isn’t necessarily ‘off’. Downtime is fallow time, transitional space, and we need it, even if it’s not always easy to assign a value to it. (I reckon we ALL undervalue it, too.) Of course, it’s a balance — too much downtime is just a downer. But I think the off switch is an increasingly underutilised mental tool, especially as we spend more and more time ‘on’.
As much as I love them,Twitter and iPhones and 3G and iPods make it easier for us to be ‘kinda on’ more and more of the time, so we’re spending less and less of it in the off, or fallow, position. This can make it tougher to achieve that mental chill state that is such a conducive prelude to creativity.
Like you, I get my best creative ideas when I’m NOT looking for them — usually mid-shampoo or whilst cooking. I ‘solve’ the problems that have been nagging me all day when the answer emerges as I drift off to sleep, and I land on the the phrasing that’s eluded me all afternoon when I’m riding my bike home.
But if I spent a lot more time in mental fallow mode, washing my hair, cooking and riding my bike, would I ratchet up my creativity levels (as well as my water and grocery bills)? Hard to know, but I don’t think so.
I think Edward de Bono would think “po”.
a timely post justin, and very good too :)
perhaps mediation offers an answer? i’m not going to get all born-again-zealot on you but i was having this very discussion this morning with Andy Puddicombe who is teaching me the ancient art of meditation.
as i understand it, being ‘present’ blurs the boundary between the conscious and unconscious minds to the point whereby they effectively become one (his words, badly paraphrased unfortunately). this is no easy task – trust me! – and probably requires many many years of practise, but i think the idea of mind fallow is something that we can, and should, actively cultivate daily.
the idea of not looking, but rather just letting the mind do its thing unhindered inevitably leads to those eureka! moments. but i think the fallacy is that we need to be in a field looking up at the sky, or even in the shower for that matter. we simply need to be aware that the harder we strive for the answer the more elusive it gets.
anyway i’m going to invite Andy into this discussion to elucidate a bit more, and perhaps there’s even some research on meditation and creativity that he can share?
No worries Zoltan…and great post Justin, thanks.
From a meditation point of view, the starting point is to recognise that all thoughts arise from the same place – the mind!
I know that western science pushes hard to differentiate between conscious and subconscious, but that can be a bit of a red herring, as it suggests that they are distinct places and that we somehow have to ‘access’ or ‘tap-in to’ this creative space.
Subconscious thoughts are simply those thoughts which we are unaware of, which we are not conscious of. Yet they arise from the very same place as conscious thoughts.
The reason we are often unaware of these creative and inspirational thoughts is generally because the surface of the mind is constantly moving – like ripples on the surface of the water after you throw a stone into it. The untrained mind is the same, each new thought causes a ripple.
Most people get so caught up in the appearance of the ripples that the water never has a chance to settle. Imagine looking into a pool of water…the calmer the water, the clearer the reflection. Again, the mind is no different, when the surface thinking settles, it becomes much easier to see the contents of the mind – and therefore become conscious of that which you were previously not conscious of!
So these moments of downtime may reflect a slowing down of mind-traffic, and therefore greater clarity and headspace.
But there is something else happening in these moments too, which is equally significant. It is an absence of effort, an absence of trying, and absence of doing. We are so used to doing things – even ‘doing thinking’ – that the mind can become very narrow, very limited. It loses the spacious quality in which creative thoughts are commonplace. But when you allow the mind to wander off in situations like taking a shower, it’s a bit like taking the mind off the leash, and it begins to behave slightly differently.
The only downside with this approach is that it is a bit hit and miss…and you never know what might come to the surface…pleasant or unpleasant, productive or unproductive.
The only surefire way to orientate the mind towards an authentically creative space, on-demand so-to-speak, is to train it. Some people call that training meditation…but that word has become so loaded with meaning over the years. I like t think of it as ‘Headspace’
Meditation allows you to train the mind in such a way that it develops ‘focused awareness’.
Meant to reply to this earlier. It’s a good point about the prospective balance between active time and “mental fallow’ time. Too much fallow and no harvesting is a little fruitless (excuse the mixed metaphor/pun). Although I do admit that when I used to work from home, if I got really, really stuck on something, I would actually jump into the shower in the middle of the day to jump-start some new perspectives. And it worked too! Even if it was a slight waste of water :(
Thanks for joining in Zoltan. Love the fact that the reach of this topic has broadened to include meditation. Certainly agree that the ‘green field’ or ‘taking a shower’ moments are a little cliched. And that striving ‘harder’ can mean obfuscation. Hard to argue with the deeper ‘solution’ to this being from within, however what has been fascinating me – perhaps influenced by my recent reading of ‘Nudge’ – was what small contextual things could we do/create/design in our external lives and environments to increase the opportunities for reflective time.
Thanks so much for taking the time and effort to articulate that so beautifully Andy. Your comment should probably be a post unto itself! I would be fascinated to know if – in your experience – you’re seeing any evidence that the ‘maddening digital world’ is creating a boomerang effect whereby people get pushed so far from “focused awareness” and “absence of trying” that they arc back more eagerly to activities such as meditation…?
No worries Justin…it’s a pleasure.
In answer to your question, yeah I think there might be some kind of boomerang effect taking place. In fact I know a number of people who are right on the brink right now. They wake up to their e-mails, are bombarded by digital traffic all day long, and then lie in bed awake at night trying to process and file all the information.
This means our mind is constantly moving, and more often than not we are applying a lot of effort in trying to control that movement…chasing after the stuff we like, trying to get away from the stuff we don’t, or simply ignoring the mayhem altogether.
It reminds me of the frantic policemen of Bangkok or Delhi, who stand in the middle of busy intersections trying to control the traffic. Can you imagine these guys sitting still when they come at night? At the very best they can hope to drift off into some kind of unconscious slumber.
I see a lot of young professionals at the clinic where I work and almost without exception they say they feel frazzled with the constant engagement with digital.
I suspect it won’t be too long before we start taking digital holidays…signing off from cyberspace for a few weeks to recharge the batteries. Its tough to have any kind of headspace when you are constantly plugged in.
But I’m a little wary of any kind of extreme. You can see it on Twitter this past year…the same extremes of behaviour are taking place as they do in every other walk of life. People are tweeting like crazy and then signing off, swearing they’ll never do it again…only to come back to it a few days later. Its a bit like yo-yo dieting, with a binge mentality.
So I think maybe it has more to do with developing the right kind of relationship with digital, and finding some balance. This is where meditation comes in again. It doesn’t change the world around you, but it shifts the perspective of the world around you to such an extent that it feels fundamentally different.
Having that headspace reminds you of what it feels like to be at ease, free from agitation.