“I don’t think that anything that doesn’t involve a risk is worth doing. There needs to be some element of danger, some element of me completely failing, for the thing to be worthwhile. When you succeed against that, it feels so much better.” ~Gordon Sumner (Sting)
As the winter grey settles on Seattle, or rather—settles on me…
I contemplate ways to stay energized and motivated to keep moving forward, stay agile, and not become too “sterile” in my thoughts and actions this winter. This quote from Sting gave me a very important reminder about what’s important with creativity, growth, moving forward and yes—taking risks.
In retrospect, I look back at moments as a college teacher and trainer, and cannot help but wonder how impossible it can be to try and put the creative design process on a “schedule.” From my perspective, it seems like fact-finding and analysis lend themselves better to scheduled periods of time, but creative insight and vision is less prone to happen when you want it to. Sure, it can happen at the right time, but often it happens at the “wrong time,” when you are trying to take a shower, go for a run, listen to someone trying to speak to you, or when you are trying to eat dinner.
The whole process of design involves what I might call, “multi-tiered thinking.” It involves objective analysis and fact-finding, and it also involves the seemingly ambiguous, grey area of creativity and unique insights. These insights can sometimes feel like they come out of nowhere when working on client problems. That said, by applying some “focused chaos,” in your design thinking, unique client truths can often emerge.
It considers the What (client project needing a solution), the Why (and why the product or service is important to the client and the stakeholders, advancing their business and values) and the How (i.e. Research & Development, knowing the customer, and visually supporting the establishment of current and future needs).
About The How: Creativity… lies in “The Gap.”
Creativity: partially happens through enlightened trial-and-error (also known as risk-taking) as you navigate the options in the great unknown.
For the sake of a new viewpoint, let’s call the great unknown “The Gap.” When we create anything, an important dependency I see is the intricate relationship between that which we desire to create, and the emptiness it must inevitably come from. Sometimes viewed as a very “spiritual place,” the emptiness is also an orientation towards being open minded, flexible, and… silent.
Shhh…
Forcing creativity upon a schedule is sometimes a challenge, but it seems to like somewhere between silence of thought, and distraction (going into other actions that inspire thought in a more spontaneous way).
Let’s shift gears slightly then, and get a little philosophical for a minute. Contemplate this:
What would a drum beat sound like, if the sticks never left the drum—or remained suspended in the air?
Not quite the same as the “tree falling in the forest not making noise question,” but I suspect the sticks need to be suspended in the air at some point, or else it would be one big cacophony of nonsense! A critical piece of this equation is suspending your judgment, and letting “new ideas” take hold: letting the sound resonate in the silence, and considering new and more “risky” solutions. Mind you, they may not always end up in the final solution, but you can’t argue that they at least give you something to build on, right?
It’s the figure AND the ground, the background AND the foreground, the curious interplay and juxtaposition of the elements in which these “Yin-Yang qualities” allow for creation to occur. We need to experience the space before and after the note. This allows for the recognition of the sound.
Wayne Dyer has written a lot about The Gap, check out his work and how he talks about The Gap and forms of meditation.
In conclusion, I challenge you to remember three things:
1. Practice ways to create silence (i.e. meditation as an example) and clear your thoughts to allow room for creation.
2. Keep body and mind flexible. Like Sting, connecting body and mind can keep you more agile, adaptable and able to navigate change more easily.
3. Remember it’s a process. Schedule as much as needed, but leave time for spontaneous ideation. Navigating design, creativity and ideation can be fun, and you can move through it with ease, but that does not mean it’s always easy. Engaging the challenges of a problem with the curiosity to use discipline and spontaneity can go a long way…
If nothing else, remember that what IS in your design, will usually—if not always—be just as important as what IS NOT in your solution.
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