Debunking Myth #3: You don’t have the time to think laterally or test new creative tools.
"The creative process requires time for the unconscious to work." - Rollo May
One of the most painful paradoxes in the creative business is that creativity demands things that business hates. One such requirement is time. Ask any creative guru and they will have some version of the sentiment that we must not force, hurry or manipulate the world. True creativity arrives when it’s good and ready. Why, then, do we, in the creative profession, spend so much of our time in the act of ‘busywork' in order to massage great genius into existence?
In some cases, the time constraint can be quite helpful, especially for famous procrastinators who need threats to set loose their creative juices. But the idea that business demands graft, or that ‘being slammed’ is the right mode is easy to debunk. “We’re just so busy with pitches.” Not only are these self-defeating excuses, they are probably the biggest enemies of creativity and growth.
The holy grail for creativity and creatives is to be able to live within a world obsessed with multitasking, life hacking and time crunching but to still find space for deep reflection, mindless daydreaming and even sheer idleness. By idleness, I’m referring to the way Bertrand Russell encouraged us to stop ‘working’ so much and start to cultivate a habit of developing, what he called ‘useless ideas’. In short, Russell knew a century ago that those who just ‘work’ cannot think, dream and imagine.
So, what does this mean for the creative process? Assuming we can live with such an oxymoronic phrase, there is a world in which the creators cohabit happily with the process-hungry ‘slammed-with-pitchers.’ And Sympler has made that world for our clients. In fact, not only have we managed to reconcile the busy with the creative, but saying ‘yes’ precisely when you are at your most busy and stressed is actually one of the best moments to engage us.
That’s because we enable creativity, bigger thinking, and deeper reflection by re-styling the process of data and insights collection into the first phase of creativity. Every decision we make in insight gathering is a creative one, so we condition ourselves to play, reflect and rotate from the very moment a brief arrives. Here are three examples:
- In recruiting participants for interviews - why talk to buyers when recent rejectors might dish more dirt? It’s akin to talking to an ex-partner about a character who will unearth far more colorful language than a vaguely disinterested friend - who will be full of cliches and platitudes.
- In our choice of questions in our interviews - don’t ask for answers. Instead challenge participants to debate or to visualize ideas, write poetry or argue on behalf of their enemies.
- In the way we analyze consumer responses - treat every statement like a lie that’s covering up a big secret that the participants really don’t want you to know. This gives you an instant set of pre-prompts for your AI analysis too.
Each of these examples acts as a trigger for our brains, and truly animates the strategic and creative process. While these enable reflection, pause and the flipping of assumptions for the creatives, they also have a remarkable knack of satisfying the busy-workers, as they bake that reflection and deep thinking into the gathering of insight. They do this all without removing one of the key ingredients of creativity: Play. Because if you begin your ‘work’ with a relentless urge to play, the creative breakthroughs we require will be far easier to ignite.
