Creative Productivity is not Mechanical

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I was an efficiency nut as a kid. I remember figuring out that 9 bites was the most efficient number of bites to eat, politely, a piece of bread or to cut french toast. I love being really, really productive. And I can be so quick and effective that the dishes are done and the kitchen cleaned while you slipped into the bathroom for 2 minutes.

However, being productive when we are talking about creative acts is completely different. It is not a matter of having a system to handle all the details of things to be done. It is not a matter of staying focused. So much of this seems to be left-overs from the factory world. Start the clock, run the system, get the output. Right, well the rewards for productivity of mechanical tasks need to be different than the rewards for creativity. So it shouldn’t be surprising that the productivity process for creative tasks differs significantly from mechanical tasks.

Creativity is a matter of grace and the muse. Yes, there are tricks to bringing the muse to you. I say muse, because this just seems magical. Not because it necessarily is magical, but because we just don’t know enough about it. So, what do you do about it?

Yes, you can just sit there until something comes out and keep working it until it gets decent. But that is, in my experience, a paltry second to the brilliance of the muse when she arrives. GTD is not going to help me get a poem written, an innovative approach to approaching my market, nor a creative solution to the challenge in my business. It will help me deliver on the tasks I put into my plan.

So I have other games and techniques. This is what works for me. Your mileage… may vary… of course.

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Take the pressure off

You know when you are trying to remember a word or reference and you can’t do it? Then you shift your attention elsewhere, and suddenly the answer comes to you? Yep. Take the pressure off. I walk, do the dishes, or otherwise occupy myself until the insight comes. Creativity seems to often be a background process – it isn’t about focusing the conscious mind on it. It is about letting the rest of the mind make the connections.

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Hold Space

When the slightest hint of muse is present, I put other things on hold and listen. I regularly juggle my tasks for the day to accommodate the muse when she arrives. If now is the moment to draw the graphic or write the article, then I do it now. If it doesn’t feel like now is the moment, I move onto other things until the feeling hits me to do it. I know that seems passive or irresponsible. Too bad. Do what works.

Last summer I got stuck trying to figure out how I wanted to facilitate an event. I was stumped the day before the plan was due. The client wanted a lot of work across different dimensions pushed into a short timeframe. I slept on it. I woke up still unsure. I walked away from my desk, and I did something else for awhile. I felt nervous that the idea might not come, but I decided to trust myself that it would. In my walk down the hallway back to my desk – boom, insight, and the whole plan came into my mind ready to be written up. It was done with an hour to spare. After the event, the client gave me one of the best testimonials I have ever received.

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Give Yourself What You Need 

If you are an introvert, and I am, then allow lots of being alone time before expecting anything creative to emerge. It can take a whole day. I know it isn’t in the planning calendar, but trust the process. If you are an extrovert, go do that.

Time and again when I try to force myself to get work done on the clock, and that work is creative, it seems to take three times as long. I can’t focus. I resist myself. I have learned to just allow myself the hour of doing something else so that I will cooperate with myself when I attempt the task.

Not everyone has the luxury of doing this. And it does seem to me like a luxury. But I have learned to give myself that so that I can enjoy and be effective when I do the work.

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Follow the Seasons

I allow myself a “winter” to let things percolate while I appear dormant. Then I get excited in my “spring” with the bursting forth of new ideas. Next, I care for them over “summer” and harvest in the “fall.”

I have had lots of conversations with colleagues about the emotional dip after a creative surge. When I offer the seasons metaphor, there seems to be a giant internal sigh of relief. As if we expected ourselves to, once we create output, to continue at that level indefinitely. Or we expect ourselves to get emotionally high from it. However, that doesn’t take into account what motivates you to be creative. If you want recognition, then you might get the emotional high once the work is out in the world being acknowledged. But if your motivation is connecting with others in a co-creative process, then your emotional high might be in the middle of the effort. Learn what gives you the emotional high from creative efforts, nurture that, and allow yourself space for the other emotions that flow in the seasons of your creativity. Your flow. Not the expectations of others.

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Productivity-obsessed people seem to think they can have harvest season all year long, as if they are optimizing a factory. If they could just get the right mechanics in place, then they can perform at their top levels of creativity continuously. Nope. Not me. I don’t work that way. And I allow that and work with it. I think it brings my work freshness, aliveness, and vitality to not be pushed through some deadline-driven productivity machine.

Nobody Warned Me

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Nobody warned me what this journey would be like. No one took me aside and said – your beliefs, your very morality will change on this adventure. So before I embark on the next endeavor within this adventure, let me share a bit about what I discovered. Cause I sure wish someone had warned me. Not sure that would have stopped me, but warnings are nice.

Jean on beach1. Forgiveness

No one warned me that I would learn deep lessons in forgiveness. Of myself. Of others. But sure enough, it came. I thought it was enough in my twenties to have learned compassion for those who I perceived wronged me because they too were caught in their own struggles and patterns, often spanning generations. But no, that wasn’t enough. It had to go further. I had to learn to forgive myself for the paths not taken, the options chosen that led to pain or failure, the consequences of what I had – at one time – thought was right action, but turned out to have negative consequences I didn’t want. I had to learn to forgive myself for hurting those I loved when I made difficult choices. And perhaps deepest of all, I had to learn to forgive myself for being hurt by others.

If this idea is new to you, please sit with it. Take agency for all the experience you have. Every emotion you have, you can be responsible for. Whatever – and I mean WHATEVER anyone has done to you, you can choose how to respond and whether to be hurt. If Nelson Mandela can walk out of prison and love South Africa and the people there, then you can get off your emotional victim high horse and recognize that you have a choice in whether to be hurt or not. Do you take the high road? And when you don’t, please forgive yourself. You are doing the best you can with what you have, right now. At least that is what I keep telling myself.

One of my favorite plays is Death and the Maiden where a woman who endured torture and rape as a political prison has a surprise visitor – the torturer – in her home and at her mercy… what should she do? It can be easy to claim moral high ground until you find yourself in such a position. And the only sane way out, I think, is to forgive even yourself.

2. Progress is nonlinear. 

Oh, the plans I have made! They are small next to the gifts I have been given by allowing myself to embrace what shows up in my life. Boldly. Embracing it boldly. Looking back, the most crucial decision points were not on any plan. When Jair mentioned thrivability to me in February 2007, I wasn’t looking for it. There was no plan. I felt in the deepest parts of my being a soft flicker that said – follow this. And over time it grew louder. When I think of the most crucial people in my life, there was no plan for them or how they would fit. When I look back at the Thrivability Sketch – it started as a light nudge from two advisors. I started it with small intentions. As the first steps worked, it got bigger. By the end it had doubled in size and was much more than I had imagined it would be.

When I look back on any given day, I am ashamed at how little of the task list is completed. Even when I look at a week of working, the actions are not adding up to what I want to have happen. And yet… at the end of a month, quarter, or year, I am always astounded at what has happened. Beyond what I could have dreamed. I can’t figure out how that happens. It must be nonlinear. So now I just go with that. I set intentions and then just work with what the universe and my network bring to me.

3. There is Life after the Cleanse.

When you first go through the cleanse – the detachment from worldly positions to seek a life of meaning, it is like a giant high. Euphoric bliss, I found my version of god, and it is purging possessions! I love thee. But no one told me there was life after the purge was over. I lost 50 pounds… no really, it was more like 2 tons. I dumped a 4000 square foot house, a husband, 70% of my belongings, city life, and just about anything else that represented my old life. That was 2002-2006. I got my coach training, and immediately went about double leveling up my integrity and alignment. Talk, walk. Talk, walk. Talk, walk. I was on a super sustainability high. I was even blogging for an organic lifestyle brand. And I still felt like a green fraud for a long time, like I wasn’t “sacrificing” enough unless I was living in the woods with a knife completely off grid. Well, no thank you.

But there is life after the cleanse. At some point you stop getting rid of worldly possessions and maintain some sort of balance of inflow and outflow of goods. At some point you settle on a fair-trade organic diet some percentage of the time, but not every bite. At some point, there is no high left. It just becomes the humdrum life of the everyday. You can’t squeeze more meaning from it. Would I feel just a little bit better if I went to the farmer’s market? Only if I feel like it. It doesn’t define me. I am not THAT.

Over five years after the purge, and I have completely adjusted to my new life. I am thinking about finally getting rid of some of the books that I hang on to. I don’t need to be THAT either.  And maybe that is part of the secret to purging. Hold up an item – ask, am I this thing? If you say no, I am not this thing, then you don’t need it. Just keep what you use at least once a year and that which you ARE. Everything else is just crowding your experience of life.

When I am not defined by what I have or have given up, I have a whole new world to create in terms of what I want to be.

4. Justice – There isn’t any.

As a kid, I had a very solid notion of justice. And as I grew older, it was important to me to be part of doing justice. And somewhere along the journey, I woke up to how much that was about me and not about anyone else. The world is not a just place. It isn’t fair. My playing sheriff isn’t going to make it fair. In fact, there are usually so many forces at work, that what is really fair has a very complicated and nearly never ending cascade of actions needed to keep balancing out the fairness.

What I needed most of all was to be okay with myself. Not anyone else. Not anyone’s actions. Just me and mine. This started as a light hint – a sense that I was the only person I had to live with for the rest of my life. Just me. No one else. But it built into an awareness that I should do what I needed to create the life that I wanted. And I didn’t want a life of chasing down other people for what they did or did not do. Creating my own life was much better than trying to bring about justice from others. It may seem really selfish, and perhaps it is. But instead of spending my night worrying about how someone had wronged me, I could sleep peacefully dreaming about what I wanted to do next. My mind-time was free of the anger of being wronged. I simply started to let go.

So when I got divorced, we didn’t fight over money. I didn’t worry about it being a “fair” or “just” division. Instead I focused on what would allow the kids to know they were loved and what was going to foster a healthy relationship with my ex. What did I want to go to bed at night thinking about? The toaster oven? No. I still have random moments where I think,  “what was I doing giving him so much of what we built together?” but those moments pass quickly. I can buy the stuff, if I need to. I can’t buy peace of mind or relationships.

Maybe justice is what we can give ourselves if we want to love our own life. This isn’t just “turn the other cheek” – it is turn the other cheek and forget-about-it rolled up together. I am trying to give myself the gift of that mind-time freedom to go about my life starting right now with what I have right here.

Next

I wish someone would tell me what is coming down the pipeline next. What deeply held belief or assumption is going to get deposed next? And how is that going to feel? And what will it then get for me? If you know, please share.

 

 

Asking Questions

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We must be careful about asking old modernism questions of the new era. The answers do not compute. This includes things like “why isn’t there a static finite answer to questions about what makes us thrive?” or “why aren’t women successful in traditional male fields **using masculine terms of success**?”

Why can’t we answer with a finite static answer the question of how to thrive? Because the answer changes over time. The system is adaptive. And the answers have to evolve as the systems evolve. What we have learned from Kuhn’s Scientific Revolutions is that even when we think we have figured things out, we haven’t. We continue to evolve how we believe the universe works. So if we **know** that the answers will evolve – in fact, when that is the most stable thing we can know, then we can embrace that evolution and stop the hubris fantasy of having come up with some finite and static answer that will be true for all time. Instead, we can embrace the answer that seems best right now and continue to seek ever more refined answers. It is the questions we can get attached to, rather than the answers we get now.

This is especially true of questions like, “what does thriving look like?” or “what does it take to thrive?” We have learned that our best efforts to address problems for society in the last 100 years may have improved things on the factors we were trying to improve (think child mortality, disease rates, poverty) but there are unintended side effects. Each effort to make the system better can result in new problems that we find just as pressing as the ones we were solving (overpopulation, for example). Thus, there is no solid or static recipe at the intervention and tactic level. Instead, we need to keep pressing on in our quest to answer how humanity can thrive without killing off the ecosystems on which it depends.

Similarly, in my research on creativity and innovation, I keep seeing the outcome of civil rights and affirmative action in terms of women and other minorities performing on masculine terms of success. It looks like a form of covering to me. For example, women are seen as achieving equal levels of creativity by achieving equal levels of awards, press mentions, etc. However, this is judging women on masculine terms, obscuring what it is even is to succeed in more feminine terms. Feminine terms of success might be better found in growth of community, number of enduring relationships, quality of relationships, network support, peer appreciation and cooperation, etc. Look for where there is cooperation rather than (or in addition to) competition.

The other crucial place I see this misguided judgment of the new by terms of the old is in leadership within generations. Older generations keep bemoaning the lack of leadership from the younger generations, when in fact it is that they can’t perceive what leadership even looks like for the younger generations.They continue to look for it as command-and-control models. And forget, the younger generations saw JFK and Martin Luther King get shot. Younger generations believe in starfish leadership by catalysts rather than spider models of top down leaders. (See starfish and spider.)

*Note I see this in my own work, as my older gen nonprofit partner in philanthropy keeps wanting me to study under a nonprofit leader and points me to old model sustainability people. It was a pleasure this week to point her to my honorable mention on the EnrichList where I am placed next to some of her own heroes. It is as if my work on thrivability since 2007 seems nearly invisible to her, because it doesn’t exist in her world the way other organizations do… the network and visibility of the work doesn’t register as significant on her measures (dollars in the org, donors, placement at old model conferences, etc.). Instead, the measures of network reach, meme spread and adoption, dispersion across multiple sectors and networks, and such measures matter most to me. Success with the term thrivability has always meant, to me, “how many people are turned on by it and shift their way of seeing and being in the world because of it” and not how much money moves through the organization or wether the old guard adopts it. It is about awakening and activating people, then trusting them to do what will lead to more of our collective thriving.

These mismatched conversations have us talking past each other, the new world inexpressible to the old. And the old world, nonsensical to the new.

Hold Space

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Recently a friend commented on how crucial holding space is. It needs unpacking. What do we mean when we talk about holding space – both interpersonally and in groups?

A room holds space. A circle of chairs holds space. My arms around you hold space for you.

The foundation of a house holds space for the house to be built. It touches the ground. It makes the house stronger and more resilient. But you don’t go looking at the foundation unless you are buying the house or it seems to have trouble.

Holding space seems invisible. It is hard to see, but you can sense it is there. When it isn’t there or isn’t strong, the lack of it is very noticeable.

As a facilitator, holding space for a group of people to do something together involves:

  • creating physical space that is conducive to the task.
    • What do people need to do with their bodies?
    • What relationship do their bodies need to have to each other?
    • Is there light, fresh air, refreshments to keep bodies fueled?
  • creating emotional space that enables action on the task at hand.
    • How do people feel welcomed and invited to engage?
    • Is the emotional desire to get what matters done greater than the emotional desire to rest, resist, or sabotage?
    • Are there clear boundaries for good behavior? Who enforces boundaries and how?
    • Does each participant feel respected and appreciated – valued for their time, skill, and experience?
  • creating intellectual space that sparks wisdom and creativity.
    • How do people know they can safely contribute wild ideas?
    • How is the critical (refining) phase made distinct from the generating phase?
    • How do people know they can move beyond impressing each other to doing something together?
    • What helps contributors feel like they are a part of something larger than themselves?

 

In one on one dynamics, holding space for an individual to do something transformative, vulnerable, or bold mostly involves:

  • creating physical and intellectual space
    • Same questions as a group for both, plus
      Does the individual feel safe – physically, from distractions, eavesdropping, etc?
  • creating emotional space
    • Can they have their experience of their emotions without having to defend, justify, or argue them? (even if that is painful to the listener)
    • Can they explore a thought or feeling without being interrupted or distracted?
    • Do they feel a respected? Experience engaged neutral listening?

Holding space for someone is not about responding to the emotions or words and gestures. It is about observing the emotions with the individual. Being beside them in the experience they are having, not as a respondent (even if it is about you), but as a companion in the experience.

And this can make holding space for someone really really hard for us. We have to move out of ourselves and into a space of an objective compassionate observer.

When you make a chair or a house, there is a tangible visibility to the work. You can see it happening, measure it, check against specs, and watch it function over time.

When you are holding space, there is a very intangible and invisible quality to the work. Conspicuousness in holding space shows a lack of grace. You can’t see the “magic” of it. You can’t touch it. When space is well help, people feel at ease, as if they can be themselves. At the highest level, it can be about stepping deeply into another person to experience with them what they notice and feel, which requires an incredible amount of vulnerability on their part.

And this is magnificent gift, when space is well held people can bring forth their best self.

Adventures in New Giving

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I am super excited to see Adventures in New Giving http://www.adventuresinnewgiving.com/. And perhaps a bit jealous. If I could focus the time and energy, I think Nathaniel is doing what I would do. (see his video here: http://vimeo.com/37718193 ) For years, I have lived a double life working in traditional progressive philanthropy to pay rent while working on bootstrappy social enterprise as a passion. In my consulting work within traditional philanthropy, we talked about the democratization of philanthropy. However, I did not see much of it in practice.
That seems to have come from somewhere else. Tech start-ups culture maybe? Socent pragmatism? Microfinancing brought home? Whatever the path, it has been interesting to watch the birth of efforts like kickstarter and startsomegood.

It seems aligned, naturally, somehow with the collaborative consumption “Mesh” culture.  All of which seem part of a larger movement toward network production. So I am super excited to see Nathaniel capture the stories of this practical democratization of philanthropy.

I am also curious to see how this will hybridize with traditional philanthropy. I have visions of foundations and philanthropists using crowdfunding as part of their due diligence. Something of an early market testing and reliability assessment before or as part of larger funding efforts. Picture a foundation giving a matching grant – matched via startsomegood. This could be really a good time saver for family foundations with intentions to give and little time for sorting through applications.

I can’t wait to see what Nathaniel does with Adventures in New Giving.

I can’t wait to see how we all play together in evolving new giving.

To help fund our awareness of ourselves in this evolution, pitch in at

http://startsomegood.com/Venture/adventures_in_new_giving/Campaigns/Show/adventures_in_new_giving