Simone Stolzoff is a journalist from San Francisco. His new book, How To Not Know, is out this week. I liked it so much, I wrote a blurb for it. Check it out :). I know you will enjoy this guest post from him as much as I enjoyed his whole book.
John Cleese, the British comedian behind Monty Python, was once asked by a company to deliver a speech about how to be more creative in the workplace. It’s a great talk, worth watching in full, but there’s one section in particular that has stuck with me.
Cleese tells the story of one of his Monty Python colleagues who seemed more talented and smarter than Cleese, but never produced particularly original scripts. After observing his colleague for some time, Cleese began to formulate an idea for
If he was faced with a problem and fairly soon saw a solution, he was inclined to take it. Even though (I think) he knew the solution was not very original.
Whereas if I was in the same situation, although I was sorely tempted to take the easy way out, and finish by 5 o’clock, I just couldn’t. I’d sit there with the problem for another hour-and-a-quarter, and by sticking at it would, in the end, almost always come up with something more original.
Cleese was more creative simply because he was willing to stick with the problem longer. Cleese’s insight is backed by research. In one of the seminal studies on creativity from the 60s, Berkeley Donald MacKinnon found that the most creative professionals were not necessarily more talented or smarter than their colleagues. They were willing to spend more time playing with the problem.
It’s a simple idea, really, but more difficult in practice. Having a problem that needs solving is uncomfortable. It requires facing uncertainty and being willing to sit in that uncomfortable not knowing. That’s why so often when I face some tension when I’m trying to find the right word or figure out what to write next, my first instinct is to reach for my phone, that old adult pacifier.
We’ve all done this before. We make a decision, not because we think it’s the best decision, but because it resolves the dissonance of not knowing. I’m here to tell you that the most innovative artists, scientists, and entrepreneurs have learned to befriend that dissonance. They’re willing to sit with that discomfort for long enough to come up with something truly original.
You may have heard of the musician Brian Eno. He has this great quote where he says, ““My interest in making music has been to create something that does not exist that I would like to listen to. I wanted to hear music that had not yet happened, by putting together things that suggested a new thing which did not yet exist.”
Brilliant aspiration. But how do you actually go about creating something truly original when so much music sounds derivative?
Eno was famous for creating what he called “Oblique Strategies” cards, which he would bring to recording sessions with musicians like David Bowie and David Byrne. Each card offered a constraint—“Destroy the most important thing,” “Work at a different speed,” “Turn it upside down”—that encourages divergent thinking and helps the team break creative blocks. In other words, the cards allowed the artists to play with the problem for longer.
I used to work at this design and innovation firm called IDEO. It was there that I learned this metaphor for innovation. Being an innovator is like sitting in a rowboat on a lake shrouded in heavy fog. You can’t see too far ahead of the boat or know exactly where you’ll end up, but your job is to have faith that you will eventually reach land. The key is to keep rowing.
But this ability to keep playing with problems is under threat. It’s never been easier to opt out. There are myriad distractions, but there are also myriad ways to create derivative work. Instead of struggling through the toil of writing, we can ask Claude. Instead of taking a creative risk on an advertising campaign or in your career, it’s so much easier to take the safe route.
But let me tell you, the long, hard way not only produces more original work. It’s also more meaningful. Even if the essay doesn’t ever get published or the project you propose is too out there to get the legal team’s sign-off, I can promise you that discovering the possibilities that lie on the other side of your discomfort, of your uncertainty, are wroth exploring in and of itself.
Creating original things is human nature manifest. We were born to create just as we were born to move our bodies and to connect with one another. But to create, you have to be willing to play with problems, especially when it doesn’t feel good to do so.