What can I say? It's been a while. I've been busy. I've been traveling. I'm was helping my mom with a conference. I'm just starting German classes again. I need to find a real job. I can't think of anything to write. It's the holidays! I'm graduating soon. (Eeek!)
Yeah, yeah. Excuses, excuses.
To be honest, I just didn't have it in me to write anything remarkable, or talk intelligently about ideas, or (especially) come up with ideas on my own.
Ever felt like that?
This is because creativity is a mental function that reacts negatively to stress. The more stress someone has in their life, the less likely they are to be creative.
A recent study by researchers at Ohio State University called The Effects of Auditory Stressors on Cognitive Flexibility (PDF) found that when participants were in a stressful environment, they became worse at doing mental tasks that required lateral thinking.
Although this test used a constant, annoying background noise to irritate participants, there are a lot of other factors that reduce creativity too.
For example: 3M has long been known as an innovative company, but in recent years they've lost their edge.
Why? Because a couple years ago, 3M started using Six Sigma company-wide and their tolerance for "failed inventions" plummeted.
Engineers started having to worry about every possible reason their invention could fail, and what would happen if they presented an idea that wasn't up to Six Sigma standards.
Oh, and 3M had also started trimming the fat--which meant that some engineers (who had spent years being loyal to the company and expecting the same in return) suddenly found themselves unemployed.
Small wonder that no one wanted to stick their neck out. The inventors had a lot to lose by being creative!
I'd also venture that stress from extreme busyness reduces creativity as well.
The more people have on their plate, the less they want to spend time exploring possibilities. It becomes more about getting things done than "seeing what possibilities are out there."
It's sad, but when there's stress, creativity is one of the first things to go down the tubes.
People have so many other things to worry about that they don't feel like they can spare the time to be innovative, and then (if they even bother to try) their brains are already so engaged with other things that no new ideas can find their way out.
And then, they start worrying that they can't be creative, which makes the whole situation even worse.
Interestingly, one of the best ways to get out of the creativity death spiral is to just charge straight ahead.
That's what I did here. I was so completely stuck I just wrote down everything I could about my brain being mired in the muck of a thinking block. Eventually the clogs started grinding again and it stopped being so painful to put the words together.
I was even connecting concepts again!
But the most important thing is that the rust is gone and the pressure is off. It's no longer "oh no, I really should be thinking about this--but I have so many other things to do that I really can't."
The ball has started rolling again, and it's all downhill from here.
(Hmmm... not sure that last sentence sounded right. But hopefully you get my point.) ;-)
Stay tuned. We're now back to our regularly-scheduled programming.
Hi katie, It's an excellent post. the words 'just charge ahead' really did explode in my head and i went on to add an entry to my blog which had been partly written a month ago and which i desisted from completing because i felt i was too busy, under stress and needed more time.all these are mere excuses to avoid facing the truth.
If anyone's interested in the post: http://tinyurl.com/386vo5
Posted by: Shaji.K | December 10, 2007 at 08:45 PM