Five Ways of Elevating Your Innate Creativity for Higher Value

by Tom "Bald Dog" Varjan, Organisational Provocateur

In spite of the fact that we all know that as service professionals, one of our biggest assets (one of our “deliverables”) is our creativity, it stuns me when I see what so many professionals do on a daily basis to kill their creativity. No, they don’t mean to do it deliberately, but they do it anyway. I suppose they do it because they don’t fully understand where creativity comes from, what nurtures it and what destroys it. So, let’s shed some light on this creativity stuff.

When I start with a new client, I almost always ask three vital questions:

Most people answer a resounding “no” to each of these questions. When I ask them why, they say the same bullshit “I’m too busy”. It amazes me that people are busy reading their emails and other minutiae, but are unwilling to invest in the only “tool” service professionals really need for their trades: Themselves. And we all know the result.

The chronically underslept and stressed out caffeine junkie waddles his fat arse into the nearest McDonald’s, fuels up on some junk that would have raised some eyebrows even in a concentration camp, and then – after a cigarette or two - goes off to do some client work. Now – high on caffeine and some fiendish animal hormones from the McDonald’s junk food, and smelling like vacuum cleaner’s armpits from cigarettes - our consultant is really ready to provide “exceptional value” to his client. At least he can fart up the boardroom from the gas in the food, and when the caffeine wears out, he is ready to fall asleep.

Now tell me if you will, what is the use of hiring physically, emotionally and mentally wrecked consultants? What value can they offer to their clients?

What is the logic in pursuing all sorts of credentials and certification programmes if you don’t pay due attention to maintaining yourself as a person. In a professional service business you are selling yourself as a person. How much attraction do you think a sleepy, stressed out caffeine and cigarette junkie can create. Not a sausage. Even if s/he has credentials coming out of his/her ears.

Let’s remember the goose that lays the golden egg in Andersen’s tale. Sadly so many people are sacrificing the welfare of the goose for one sumptuous feast. And what is that feast. It is chronic busy-ness responding to constantly occurring and re-occurring urgencies. Rushing from client to client just like a demented bee rushes from flower to flower from which other bees have already scooped up the goodies. I sometimes go to networking events and I hear people cancel their attendance because of a sudden client demand. These are the poor sad sods who would jump out of bed in the middle of making love just to run and serve their clients at a moment's notice. Remember, we are living in a society in which it is impressive to be busy.

How many times has it happened to you that your breakfast/lunch/meeting partner received a phone call from someone and you were instantly put on the back burner? It seems that telephone calls from unknown entities are more important than uninterrupted face-to-face discussions.

Creativity requires some key ingredients that are related to the three questions we discussed at the beginning of this article. Creativity is basically the function of the connections between brain cells. The more connections you have, the more creative you are. Let’s not complicate it any further.

To increase the number of connections between brain cells, the brain needs more blood, oxygen and endorphins. Can you now see the importance of exercise? When you are underslept and stressed out, the primitive part of the brain – the reptilian brain – senses a lack of physical security. If you don’t have physical security, it affects the mammalian brain that needs emotional security. You need both physical and emotional security to enable the two hemispheres or the neo cortex to operate together, enabling you to practise whole-brain thinking.

1. Make a Habit Of Responding to the Current Moment

The more of your attention you spend on thinking about the future, the less you can focus on the present. That is not a good idea. What is the point in wasting your energy on something that is some time away and is the function of what you are doing today. There is no point in hoping for more clients tomorrow if you don’t focus some of your energy to acquiring clients today.

And hope can hardly called a management strategy. Your mind cannot operate in a time that hasn’t arrived yet. Living and working creatively means that you are responding to what happens today. But in order to respond today’s stimuli at your best, your focus must be 100% directed at today. If you are scattered between yesterday and tomorrow, then what have you got left for today? Probably not much. Yes, you can run around all day reacting to urgent stuff, chatting on your mobile phone or pecking away on the screen of your Palm, but all that busy-ness won’t make a dickybird of a difference.

Yes, prepare for the future as best as you can, but don’t worry about it because all that worry can only hold you back from doing your best in the present. Actually by focusing 100% of your attention on your todays, you make your tomorrows as good as they can be. But don’t try to control your tomorrows today. You see, there is no point in wrestling with a pig. The pig gets frustrated and you get dirty. And for what? For believing that your can control your tomorrows. You can only control them when they become today.

Or as Nicole Kidman put it to Tom Cruise in the movie Days of Thunder, “Control is an illusion, you infantile egomaniac. Nobody controls anything.”

Slow down, look, see and be aware of the today. That is where the seeds of tomorrow are planted.

2. Worry Before You Act, But Once You Start Acting Stop Worrying

It is perfectly all right to worry about consequences in the planning session. You want to measure up pros and cons to make certain you make the right decision. But after reaching your decision, detach yourself from the outcome and focus on taking consistent action and the selected direction. Can you imagine an Olympic runner in the finals constantly worrying about whether or not she is running in the correct direction? The direction must be decided before the starting pistol sounds. After that it is just running. The direction is given.

The problem is that so many service professionals are so busy running, that they never take time to select the best direction, and they try both to run and reassess their directions at the same time. That causes stress and undermines their creativity, and they do both in a half-arsed manner. They will end up barely trotting in a direction they are not 100% certain about.

Yes, it is important to check your direction in advance and worry about what happens if it is not the right one, but once you commit yourself to moving forward then stop worrying about the consequences and get moving. Look at it as a military general would. You assess the pros and cons of each strategy, but after picking your battle just start shooting. Once you are in the process, any emotional attachment to the outcome can only hinder your creativity.

This is one of the reasons why commission-based sales people can never perform at their true potential. They are emotionally attached to the outcome, that is, making the sale.

Far too often creativity is undermined when people try to play a great game and watch the score board at the same time. Just imagine boxers. They know that their victory or defeat depends on how many punches they can initiate and actually land on their opponents. And actually there are judges who are counting these punches. But the boxers themselves don’t count. They are too busy fighting at their ABSOLUTE BEST.

We have only 100% of our attention and energy, and the more we waste on looking at the score board, the less we have left to play the game. And to play a great creative and valuable game, we must focus 100% on the game itself not what we might win or lose.

Using William James’ words, “When once a decision is reached and execution is the order of the day, dismiss absolutely all responsibility and care about the outcome. Unclamp, in a word, your intellectual and practical machinery, and let it run free.”

3. Multitasking Is A Lunacy Leading To Doing Many Things in a Half-Arsed Way

I think it is more important to do fewer things in a full-arsed (I love inventing new words) way

This idea also applies to multitasking. Have you seen job ads like “Fast-paced environment demands multitasking.” This one sentence tells me to keep away from such a place because creativity is dead there.

Again, you can have only 100% of your attention. If you split it up by multitasking, then something must give. This must explain to us why a high performer like Tiger Woods doesn’t eat on the green or Michael Jordan doesn’t pose for the cameras while playing. They are playing 100%.

I truly believe that multitasking is just a great way of hiding mediocre performance. Yes, you may say that using only 50% of your attention and focus you are already a better graphics designer or webdesigner than me. I buy that. The reason for that is that I focus 0% of my attention to web design or graphics design.

But using 50% of your attention and focus, are you a better graphics designer than the real whole 100% you? Due to this multitasking rubbish some many people operate at a fraction of their potential.

And if you still maintain that you are good at multitasking, try to make love and conduct a teleseminar at the same time.

4. Relax During Your Work

I don’t know if you have noticed it but we are inherently more creative when we are relaxed. By being relaxed I mean to be physically and emotionally relaxed and mentally alert. We have already discussed how different – the old - parts of the brain help or hinder creativity, so it is vitally important that we provide the best working conditions for the brain. Many people complain that they don’t have time to exercise in the morning because they are so busy. That is great, but busy doing what? Pumping in more unproductive hours? That 1-1.5 hours every morning in the gym makes it possible for you to overdose your brain on oxygen, blood and endorphins, and you can be much more creative and productive during the day.

Have you ever been so busy driving that you failed to stop for getting some fuel? This is the same scenario.

Instead of working in bursts, it is important that you work throughout the day at a constant pace. That also includes regular breaks. For instance, do you know that our attention span starts dropping drastically after about 45-50 minutes of doing the same work?

At this point you have two options:

1. You keep working without a break, pumping in more time at suboptimal effectiveness level

2. You take a short break that requires the attention of the opposite brain hemisphere.

For instance, if you work with numbers (left brain activity), then during your break listen to some music and sing along. That will engage your creative right brain and relaxes your analytical left brain.

After five minutes you can get back to your work and your attention level will be up to 100%, and you will. Now you are ready for the next 45 segment.

One idea I have found useful is listening to baroque music. According to the experts, the basic frequency of baroque music is in synch with the brain, and promotes creativity.

5. If You Can’t Decide It, Sleep It Out

There are many people ranging from Churchill through Sir Walter Scott to Thomas Edison who solved their unresolved problems by sleeping or napping on them. When you are sleeping, all the outside disturbances are cut out. There is no conscious interference that could limit your thinking.

When we attack our conscious minds with specific problems and then we go to sleep, it seems that the stuff from the conscious mind goes into the subconscious.

There is one more thing happening during sleep. During the day, due to various stimuli, the chemistry of the body and the brain get all messed up. Sleep is the process that reinstates this chemical equilibrium, making certain that we have the right amount of all those fiendish chemicals and they are in the right place. For instance stress makes the body predominantly acidic, which is a brilliant breeding ground for cancel cells.

I have seen the video of an experiment in which a walnut-sized cancer cell was placed into an acidic environment and another cell into an alkaline environment. In the acidic environment the cancel cell blew up to the size of a grapefruit. In the alkaline environment the cancer cell shrunk to the size of a pea.

So, even if that smaller cancer cell ends up inside the body, it is easier to chop that off than chopping off a large cell (with an arm, leg or a lunge).

What can you do to make sure that you get all the sleep you need?

How can you create a habit of having a balanced (protein, carbohydrates and fat) breakfast every morning? Well, and other meals too?