The Accidental Creative Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  Introduction

  PART 1 - THE DYNAMICS

  Chapter 1. - THE DYNAMICS OF CREATIVE WORK

  Chapter 2. - THE DYNAMICS OF TEAM WORK

  Chapter 3. - THE SIDE EFFECTS: DEALING WITH THE ASSASSINS OF CREATIVITY

  PART 2 - CREATIVE RHYTHM

  Chapter 4. - FOCUS: ZEROING IN ON WHAT’S CRITICAL

  Chapter 5. - RELATIONSHIPS: BEING BRILLIANT TOGETHER

  Chapter 6. - ENERGY: YOUR INVISIBLE ALLY

  Chapter 7. - STIMULI: WHAT GOES IN MUST COME OUT

  Chapter 8. - HOURS: THEY’RE THE CURRENCY OF PRODUCTIVITY

  Chapter 9 - PUTTING IT ALL TOGETHER: THE CHECKPOINTS .

  Chapter 10. - COVER BANDS DON’T CHANGE THE WORLD

  Acknowledgements

  APPENDIX

  INDEX

  PORTFOLIO / PENGUIN

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  First published in 2011 by Portfolio / Penguin,

  a member of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

  Copyright © Todd Henry, 2011 All rights reserved

  LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING IN PUBLICATION DATA

  Henry, Todd.

  The accidental creative : how to be brilliant at a moment’s notice / Todd Henry.

  p. cm.

  Includes index.

  ISBN : 978-1-101-51697-3

  1. Creative ability in business. 2. Critical thinking. 3. Teams in the workplace. 4. Success in business. I. Title.

  HD53.H46 2011

  650.1—dc22

  2011002127

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  To Ethan, Owen, and Ava, who regularly show me what creativity is all about, and to Rachel for the freedom.

  I love you all.

  INTRODUCTION

  THE ACCIDENTAL CREATIVE

  In some circles, the word “creative” has recently morphed from adjective to noun. If you are one of the millions among us who make a living with your mind, you could be tagged a “creative.” Every day, you solve problems, innovate, develop systems, design things, write, think, and strategize. You are responsible for moving big conceptual rocks, crafting systems that form the foundations for future growth—creating value that didn’t exist before you arrived on the scene.

  Maybe you didn’t set out to be a creative. In fact, perhaps you even cringe when you hear the word applied to you. Understandably, the tag “creative” sometimes conjures up images of SoHo advertising gurus flitting about in five-hundred-dollar designer jeans. You may prefer the term “strategist” or “manager,” or something else that feels more concrete. Call yourself anything you want, but if you’re responsible for solving problems, developing strategies, or otherwise straining your brain for new ideas, I’m going to call you a creative—even if you ended up being one accidentally.

  Some people deliberately choose a career that allows them to exercise their creativity on a daily basis. They make their livings designing, writing, developing ad campaigns, or doing some other kind of conceptual work. They get to do something they love, and someone gives them money for it. Speaking as one of the last group, I think it’s a pretty great deal. On our best days it seems almost unfair that we get paid to do what we do, but on our worst days our jobs feel pretty much like any other. Though creative fields may sound exotic to strangers at cocktail parties, our day-to-day work can often feel a lot like following recipes, taking familiar ingredients and mixing them together in slightly different ways.

  Whichever type you are, creative or “accidental creative,” this book will help you create faster and more effectively than you ever imagined possible.

  For the traditional creatives, such as designers, writers, visual artists, musicians, and performers, this book will help you establish enough structure in your life to get the most out of your creative process. It will also teach you how to stay engaged and prolific over the long term, which is often a problem for artists who must produce continually on demand.

  For the nontraditional creatives, such as managers, strategists, consultants, salespeople, and client service reps, this book will help you unlock your latent creative abilities. You will learn how to do what many brilliant creatives already do instinctively, and how to do it consistently. In short, you will learn how to be brilliant when it counts the most.

  There are tremendous benefits to doing creative work. You get to add unique value, carve out your own niche in the marketplace, and watch your notions and hunches go from conception to execution; could there be any type of work more gratifying? But the flip side of this is that whether you are a designer, manager, writer, consultant, or programmer, you are required to create value each and every day without reprieve. The work never ends, and as long as there is “just one more thing” to think about, finding time to rest can be difficult. Your primary tool, your mind, goes with you everywhere. If your job is to solve problems—to create—then you are always looking for new ideas. In addition, you won’t always have the option of going back to your desk to quietly brainstorm, vetting your ideas one by one. As a creative, you will regularly find yourself in situations that require you to generate brilliant ideas at a moment’s notice.

  This is no easy feat. If you want to deliver the right idea at the right moment, you must begin the process far upstream from when you need that idea. You need to build practices into your life that will help you focus your creative energy. There is a persistent myth in the workplace that creativity is a mystical and elusive force that sits s
omewhere between prayer and the U.S. tax code on the ambiguity scale. But the reality is that you can unquestionably increase your capacity to experience regular flashes of creative insight—“creative accidents”—bring the best of who you are to your work, and execute more effectively, all by building purposeful practices into your life to help you do so. These practices will help you stay engaged and productive over the long term without experiencing the rampant burnout that often plagues creative workers.

  In other words, purposeful preparation and training using the tools in this book will directly increase your capacity to do brilliant work, day after day, year after year.

  If you want to deliver the right idea at the right moment, you must begin the process far upstream from when you need that idea.

  Why am I so sure it works? I’ve spent years working with traditionally “creative” workers (designers, writers, musicians, filmmakers) and traditionally “noncreative” workers (salespeople, real estate agents, accountants), helping them develop their creative strength and stamina. In addition to this work with my company, Accidental Creative, and my experience as a leader of creative teams, I’ve also conducted countless interviews with creative thinkers, productivity experts, and organizational leaders, such as David Allen (Getting Things Done); Seth Godin (Linchpin, Tribes, Purple Cow); riCardo Crespo (Senior Vice President, Global Creative Chief, Twentieth Century Fox FCP); Richard Westendorf (Executive Creative Director, Landor Associates); Scott Belsky (CEO of Behance and author of Making Ideas Happen); Tony Schwartz (The Way We’re Working Isn’t Working, The Power of Full Engagement); and Keith Ferrazzi (Never Eat Alone, Who’s Got Your Back); among others.

  Astonishingly, I’ve found little difference among the pressures experienced by these diverse groups of people. They each use a different set of specific skills in their work, of course. While a designer will solve a problem visually, a manager may solve it by developing a new process. But they’re both employing the same creative tools and wrestling with many of the same obstacles. The good news is that, regardless of role, you can improve your ability to generate good ideas consistently if you are willing to be a little more purposeful in how you approach the creative process. It won’t be easy, but in the end your work will be more satisfying, more productive, and more fun.

  HOW TO READ THIS BOOK

  This book is divided into two sections. Chapters 1 through 3 deal with many of the pressures faced by creatives in the workplace, and why doing brilliant work day after day can be so challenging. Chapters 4 through 10 offer some practices that you can implement to help you experience higher levels of creative insight on a daily basis. While you may be tempted to skip ahead to the latter portion of the book, I would recommend that you begin with the first chapters. Some dynamics that affect the everyday experiences of the creative are painfully felt but are seldom diagnosed, and can have a dramatic effect on your ability to do your best work.

  Anyone can improve his ability to generate good ideas consistently if willing to be a little more purposeful in how to approach the creative process.

  Before you dive in, however, there are a few critical ideas to digest:It’s not what you know that matters, it’s what you do. Regardless of what others may promise, there are no quick fixes or easy steps to supercharge your creativity. You will unleash your latent creative ability through regular, purposeful practice of the principles in this book. There are most certainly insights and “aha!” moments to be found in these pages, but knowledge alone won’t do the job any more than knowing the fundamentals of how to exercise will keep you physically healthy. You must be purposeful and intentional. The results are worth it.

  You own your growth. Regardless of your circumstances, you are the ultimate owner of your own creative growth. It’s not your manager’s responsibility, or your HR director’s, or your mother’s—it’s yours. Many people waste years of their life pointing fingers at other people for their own problems. No doubt there are some very unhealthy organizations and managers out there, but at the end of the day, playing the victim is a loser’s game. Own your growth.

  It’s going to take time, and short-term results may vary. As with anything worthwhile, restructuring your life to work in concert with the dynamics of the creative process will take time and dedication. In addition, there will always be circumstances beyond your control that affect your engagement from time to time. Because of this, the results of implementing these practices may vary during a specific period. Your eye should be on increased performance over time, not on snapshot productivity. Don’t lose heart. Stay engaged.

  This is about more than just your work life. It’s more and more difficult in today’s world to segment your life into buckets like “work,” “home,” “relationships,” “hobbies,” and so on. Every area of your life affects every other, and a lack of engagement in one area will quickly infect the rest. As you implement these practices, you will find that your newfound creative energy will infiltrate not just your work life, but all other areas of your life as well. A rising tide raises all boats.

  I believe that your best work is ahead of you. Remember: No one lies on his deathbed wishing he’d had the time to reply to one more e-mail, but a great many people express regrets about not having treated life with more purpose. By applying the principles and practices in this book, you will be poised to get moving on things that previously seemed unattainable.

  Now let’s get started.

  PART 1

  THE DYNAMICS

  1.

  THE DYNAMICS OF CREATIVE WORK

  Creative work comes with a unique set of pressures.

  We’re compensated for the ideas we generate, the value we create, and the problems we solve, and though we may be good at what we do, many of us may feel at least a little out of touch with the mysterious process by which any of this happens. On some days, ideas spring forth effortlessly, and we feel poised to attack any problem that comes our way. On others, we struggle with a single obstacle without any significant momentum. It can be frustrating to be held responsible for something we have so little control over, especially in the marketplace, where our career success is directly tied to our ability to generate great ideas consistently.

  Many of us assume that our creative process is beyond our ability to influence, and we pay attention to it only when it isn’t working properly. For the most part, we go about our daily tasks and everything just “works.” Until it doesn’t. We treat our creative process like a household appliance. It’s just expected to work quietly in the background, and we lose sight of how much we depend on it until the day we’re stuck with dirty socks.

  Adding to this lack of understanding is the rapidly accelerating pace of work. Each day we are faced with escalating expectations and a continual squeeze to do more with less. We are asked to produce ever-increasing amounts of brilliance in ever-shrinking amounts of time. There is an unspoken (or spoken!) expectation that we’ll be accessible 24/7, and as a result we frequently feel like we’re “always on.” And because each new project starts with a blank slate, we feel like we have to prove ourselves again and again. No matter how successful we’ve been in the past, each new project elicits the question: “Do I still have it in me?”

  LIFE IN THE “CREATE ON DEMAND” WORLD

  A few years ago my company, Accidental Creative, coined a term to describe this workplace dynamic: “create on demand.” You go to work each day tasked with (1) inventing brilliant solutions that (2) meet specific objectives by (3) defined deadlines. If you do this successfully you get to keep your job. If you don’t, you get to work on your résumé. The moment you exchange your creative efforts for money, you enter a world where you will have to be brilliant at a moment’s notice. (No pressure, right?)

  No matter whether you are leading a team, developing marketing strategies, running a small business, or writing copy, when you are compensated for creating value with your mind, the pressure to perform is palpable. Because brilliant ideas seem to be a free and
renewable resource, it’s easy for you (and your boss) to believe that you can incrementally ratchet up your productivity without experiencing side effects. But this understanding of the economics of creating is not only false, it can also be damaging both to your ability to do your best work now and to your long-term sustainability as a creative. To attempt to be perpetually brilliant and increasingly productive, without changing the basic habits and structure of your life to accommodate that undertaking, is a futile effort.

  The always-on manner with which many creatives approach their work is arrhythmic, but the creative process is naturally rhythmic. There are peaks and troughs of productivity, an ebb and flow to idea generation. Working harder and staring more intently at the problem to achieve better ideas is like trying to control the weather by staring at the clouds. Rather, you need to incorporate practices that instill a sense of structure, rhythm, and purpose into your life. You need to create space for your creative process to thrive rather than expect it to operate in the cracks of your frenetic schedule. This will not only help you generate better ideas now, but it will also ensure that you are acting on the things that matter most instead of drifting through your days.

  Many young creatives I’ve worked with have looked at me skeptically, and even angrily, when I talk about being more purposeful about where they spend their time and energy. To them, creativity flows freely from a spigot; they can work fifteen-hour days with little reprieve and no apparent side effects. But eventually this kind of behavior catches up to you. When you violate the natural rhythms of the creative process, you may initially produce a very high volume of work, but you will eventually find that you’re not producing your best work. Instead, you may find that you are trending toward mediocrity, and that great ideas are no longer coming with the frequency you’d prefer. This is a very unsatisfying way to live and to work, and feels a lot more like surviving than thriving.