Creativity Under the Gun

Few people would dispute that deadlines makes things get done faster, but do they make us more creative? Certainly we do have our moments of brilliance under pressure: during the Apollo 13 disaster in 1970, NASA ground crews had mere hours to engineer a makeshift carbon dioxide scrubber to replace the one aboard the damaged spacecraft. Their high stakes, "under the gun" creativity saved the three astronauts, but is it the way we usually work?

That's exactly the question that a group of Harvard researchers asked when they set out to study the creative processes of 177 employees on 22 project teams back in 2001. In doing so, they collected 9,000 diary entries that link workplace environment, time pressure, and creative output. The research project, summarized in a very accessible HBR article here and a longer working paper here, provides fascinating insight into when being "under the gun" makes us more creative, and when it doesn't.

A couple big takeaways. First, time pressure does NOT improve creativity. In fact, people were 45% less likely to think creatively on the days that they rated as the most hectic. Second, and somewhat amazingly, the impact of high pressure days persisted, depressing creative output for two full days afterward. We thus seem to be subject to "creative hangovers" brought on by exhaustion and cognitive paralysis.

Finally, the authors did find some cases where time pressure dramatically improved creative output - the "Apollo 13 moments." By delving into the qualitative diary entries, they were able to identify a common set of conditions across all of these instances. In particular, workers:

1. Were protected from distractions and were able to focus on one activity,
2. Believed that their work was important and challenging, and
3. Were tasked with both identifying problems and exploring solutions.

Together, these conditions convey a sense of "meaningful urgency" rather than Calvin's "last minute panic". The study thus suggests that while we'd do well to avoid high pressure deadlines whenever possible, there are still ways to be creative even if we find ourselves under the gun. Check out the HBR article here and the longer working paper here.

Elizabeth Gilbert on the Daemons Within

Those of us who study innovation tend to believe that individual creativity is a skill; certain people may have greater initial aptitudes, but anyone might be able to learn and hone their creative process. Not only does this viewpoint give scholars like me a fair amount of job security, but it also offers a fundamentally optimistic take on the ownership and agency that individuals have in their creative lives. In a 2009 TED Talk, author Elizabeth Gilbert explores an unanticipated dark side effect of this perspective. If artists are fundamentally in control of their creative lives, how are they to deal with the "utter maddening capriciousness" of the creative process? And is it a coincidence that have creativity and anguish become so indelibly linked in our minds?

She's speaking after the knockout success of her own "Eat, Pray, Love", and speaks candidly about her personal fears that her best work is now behind her. She also discusses the strategies she uses to overcome these fears, drawing in particular on the ancient Greek and Roman ideas that creative brilliance was due to divine spirits (Daemons, in the Greek) that attended to and inspired artists' work. Without giving away everything I'll share the key lines:

"So the dancer [who had inspired such beauty the night before] wakes up and discovers that it's Tuesday at 11am and he's no longer a glimpse of god; he's just an aging mortal with really bad knees, and maybe he's never going to ascend that high again…what is he then to do with the rest of his life? This is hard. This is one of the most painful reconciliations to make in a creative life.

"But maybe it doesn't have to be quite so full of anguish if you never happened to believe in the first place that the most extraordinary aspects of your being came from you, but [instead] you just believed that they were on loan to you from some unimaginable source for some exquisite portion of your life to be passed along when you're finished to somebody else."

The message to artists is thus "don't be afraid - just show up and do your job." Work hard, be ready to capture brilliance should it come, and when it does - or doesn't - it isn't all on you. Watch the talk here.

Left Brain, Right Brain

One of the consistent themes in research on creativity is that it ISN'T all about the "right brain". While the unstructured and unexpected are at the heart of the creative process, realization of useful creative output requires structure, discipline, and execution. This series of ads done for Mercedes-Benz in 2011 (Shalmor Avnon Amichay/Y&R Interactive Tel Aviv, Israel) highlights the contrast beautifully.