Photo by Lex in the City

Interruptions are one of the pet hates of creative people. There are few things more frustrating than having your attention scrambled by an intrusion just as you are becoming pleasantly absorbed in creative flow. Whether the interruption comes in the form of a phone call, e-mail, or someone hovering over your desk and saying ‘Can I have a quick word?’ the result is annoyingly similar - your concentration is broken, your time is taken up by someone else’s needs, and it’s hard to pick up the thread of your work afterwards.

I’ve previously written about the creative problems caused by interruptions in Why you need to be organised to be creative (the first chapter of my e-book on Time Management for Creative People) and offered some tips on minimising their impact in Ring-fence your most creative time.

I was also interested to come across scientific evidence (via 43 Folders and the New York Times) that ‘Disruptions and interruptions are a bad deal from the standpoint of our ability to process information’. For example:

in a recent study, a group of Microsoft workers took, on average, 15 minutes to return to serious mental tasks, like writing reports or computer code, after responding to incoming e-mail or instant messages. They strayed off to reply to other messages or browse news, sports or entertainment Web sites. (NYT)

So there it is. Focused creative work and interruptions just don’t mix. QED.

Or so I thought until I stumbled upon a new kind of interruption, while trying to solve a different problem…

How interruptions cured my backache

I’ve written before about the difficulty I’ve had with back pain caused by too many hours hunched over the laptop. Now, as a trained Reverse Therapist I’m fully aware that the back pain is a not-so-subtle message from my body, prompting me not to spend so many hours hunched over the computer. But I’ve never been one for taking this kind of hint gracefully: ‘It’s all very well for my back to wimp out, but how else am I going to get my work done?’

Read the rest of this entry »

Having spent most of this series outlining the What and How of coaching, it’s time to consider the Why - the key benefits to a business where coaching is an integral part of managing performance and developing people’s talents.

I’ve left this till late in this guide because until we’re clear about what coaching is and how it works, it’s hard to consider its impact on an organisation. With all complex ‘people skills’, it is hard to draw a straight line between particular skills and practices and business results. This is particularly true of coaching, as it is essentially a facilitative approach. Whether managers or consultants, coaches act as catalysts for various processes within an organisation, so it’s often hard to separate the different elements that contribute to success.

However we can identify factors that coaching seeks to influence, and consider how it does this. In each case, note how the personal benefits (to both coaches and coachees) are intimately linked to the business benefits. Ideally a company should be looking for a dynamic balance between the two, especially in the context of a creative business.

Commitment

It’s impossible to create commitment - but you can encourage it by giving people an opportunity to (a) work towards goals they find personally meaningful as well as delivering business results, and (b) use their creativity and initiative to do the job in their own way. Coaching offers a wealth of options for doing both of these. In fact, the coaching approach is founded on the assumption that the coach’s role is to act as a facilitator, while the coachee has the biggest emotional investment in the goal and the responsibility for committing to action.

Creativity

Following on from Commitment, because the coach is a facilitator, asking questions, listening and giving feedback in order to stimulate the coachee’s thinking, it is a highly creative process. Not in an abstract, fuzzy way, but in challenging people to come up with ideas that are new, useful and practical - and then to put them into action and see them through. For more on coaching and creativity see How coaching creates creative flow and my next post on Why coaching is vital to creative companies.

Read the rest of this entry »

Photo by pascalgenest

Photo by givepeasachance

From the outside, the writer pottering around the house while the laptop gathers dust, and the performer shaking with fear backstage might look very different. But having personally experienced both writer’s block and stage nerves, as well as coaching many writers and performers through them, I’ve come to the conclusion that they are basically the same thing.

To see what I mean, let’s take the idea of a block literally, and look at the phenomenon of board breaking by martial artists.

To see someone break a board, brick or concrete block with bare hands or feet looks amazing, but the evidence suggests that it’s a question of technique rather than magical powers. Given the proper training, anyone can learn to do it. In the Kung Fu Science project, kung fu expert Chris Crudelli teamed up with physicist Michelle Cain to investigate the physical forces at work.

On the Kung Fu Science website, Crudelli explains the key points of the technique of breaking boards, one of which is particularly relevant to creative blocks:

Speed and Point of Focus

‘The most important thing is to make sure the hand is moving fast enough when it hits the wood. Advice often given is to imagine that what you’re hitting is actually well behind the board. This ensures the hand doesn’t slow down before the point of impact. Confidence is also important here; you have to believe that your hand is going straight through the board, or you will naturally slow down to avoid hurting yourself.’

Read the rest of this entry »

Photo by Solange Gaymard

My last post looked at 3 Reasons Why New Year’s Resolutions Fail. Now I’ll look at how you can keep yours. I’ll start by reviewing my progress on the three New Year’s Resolutions I posted on this blog last year.

1. Make my blogging more like my coaching

I had noticed that my blog was proving increasingly useful as a coaching tool, and wanted to develop my blogging style so that it was closer to my style of coaching. Part of this involved blogging more of the stories, ideas and examples I share with clients in sessions, and part of it involved developing the conversational aspect of the blog and making more use of questions.

I definitely think I’ve succeeded in the first respect, in posts such as 7 Ways to Stop Worrying When You’re Under Pressure, What Amadeus Shows Us About Creativity, my mini-series on Giving Feedback on Creative Work, and especially in my e-book about Time Management for Creative People. The fact that the e-book has been downloaded 25,000 times in a month tells me that I’m providing something valuable for my audience.

I also think I’ve made progress in developing the blog as a conversation and using questions to stimulate readers’ creativity - although I think I can do a lot more in this respect. I’ve certainly had some great conversations on this blog and elsewhere, and I’ve started to make more use of questions in posts such as What’s the Difference Between Incubation and Procrastination? and Should Artists Give the Audience What They Want?. So I’ve made a good start but think I can take this further - look out for more question-based posts this year! Read the rest of this entry »

Photo: The Temptation of St Anthony by RyanDianna

This time last year I posted my new year’s resolutions on this blog. I also promised to write about ‘Why New Year’s Resolutions Fail’. I’m pleased to say I kept all my resolutions - my next post will tell you how I did it, and how you can keep yours. I’m afraid I didn’t get round to the post about why resolutions fail - so here it is.

The following three pitfalls have been highlighted for me over and over again while coaching clients to keep their resolutions - and I can assure you I’ve made the same mistakes myself many times.

1. You focus on what you ’should’ do, not on what you want

This is an easy trap to fall into. After all, there are plenty of things we probably ’should’ do that don’t seem a lot of fun, especially at this time of year. For example:

‘I should really lose some weight’
‘I need to get fit this year’
‘I ought to give up smoking’
‘I have to do my tax return’

Have a read of that list again - how does it make you feel? Personally it gives me a feeling of mild disgust and aversion. The words ‘losing’, ‘giving up’, ‘weight’, ‘bad habits’, and ‘tax returns’ conjure up a succession of mental images that make me feel slightly depressed if I focus on them.

This is the problem with the ’should’ mindset. Logically, those are all sensible things to do - but instead of motivating you to get going, they have the opposite effect. This is partly because they are all ‘problem focused’ statements. It’s a classic case of ‘don’t think of a pink elephant’ - your brain can’t process these statements without making you think about what you don’t want. And nobody likes thinking about what they don’t want - our natural tendency is to put it to the back of our mind and forget all about it.

Another problem with these statements is the use of the words ’should’, ‘need’, ‘ought’, and ‘have to’. This kind of language dissociates you from your real reasons for wanting to do these things. It’s as if there were some kind of objective standard that you really ’should’ measure up to, or - even worse - as if someone else were telling you what to do. I don’t know about you, but I can’t stand being told what to do - if someone offers me well-meaning advice my knee-jerk reaction is to want to do the opposite. Read the rest of this entry »

Photo by judepics: Planet Greenwich (home of Wishful Thinking)

Thank you for reading Wishful Thinking in 2007. It’s been great fun writing it and connecting with so many interesting and creative people - online and in person.

Here’s my personal selection of the best of Wishful Thinking in 2007, based partly on my own judgment, partly on the amount of visitors, comments and links they attracted.

I hope you (re)discover something to inspire you. Have a great New Year, see you on the other side…

January

How to Maintain Your Enthusiasm When Things Get Tough

7 Ways to Stop Worrying When You’re Under Pressure

February

7 Ways to Tap into Enthusiasm

Interview with David Amor, Creative Director, Relentless Software

March

David Armano on Management

An Introduction to Business Coaching

April

Chris Ritke Interviews Me at 49Sparks.com

The Manager as Coach

May

A Blog Is for Life, Not Just for Christmas - British Library Talk

Getting in Touch with Creativity - Roger von Oech’s Ball of Whacks

Brian Eno - 77 Million Paintings Read the rest of this entry »

John tells us not to worry. If he can do it, so can we.

Last night I had the pleasure of meeting jellyellie, who at 17 is already a best-selling author and in-demand public speaker and consultant. She’s been described by the Guardian as ‘The voice of the MSN generation’.

When she was 15 she wrote a book, How Teenagers Think - An Insider’s Guide to Living with a Teenager, which is an Amazon top 40 best-seller. It’s one of those ideas that seem obvious when you think about it - an explanation of the teenage mindset for troubled parents. But even if I’d thought of it when I was 15 (which I obviously didn’t) I would never have been together and articulate enough to actually write the book, get it published and promote it. One more example of ideas being nothing without execution.

From a quick glance through, it looks like an essential book for parents of teenagers, and an entertaining read for anyone with a sense of humour and an interest in different cultures.

Well done Ellie.

Idealog’s weekly newsletter points us to an intriguing animation under the title The Right Brain vs Left Brain. Apparently if you look at the spinning dancer, it will show you whether you use the right brain more than the left. If you see the dancer spinning clockwise, you are right brain dominant. It also lists the usual functions attributed to each hemisphere:

LEFT BRAIN FUNCTIONS
uses logic
detail oriented
facts rule
words and language
present and past
math and science
can comprehend
knowing
acknowledges
order/pattern perception
knows object name
reality based
forms strategies
practical
safe

RIGHT BRAIN FUNCTIONS
uses feeling
“big picture” oriented
imagination rules
symbols and images
present and future
philosophy & religion
can “get it” (i.e. meaning)
believes
appreciates
spatial perception
knows object function
fantasy based
presents possibilities
impetuous
risk taking

Have a look at the animation and take the test before you read any further.

Read the rest of this entry »

Giving feedback on creative work is a tricky challenge, for two main reasons:

1. Artists and creatives identify very closely with their work
   When a creative worker puts a piece of work in front of you, it is as though they were putting a piece of themselves there to be judged - because of this, it is almost inevitable that they take criticism personally.
2. The value of creative work is largely subjective
   We all know this from arguments with friends about music and films - one person’s masterpiece is utter rubbish to someone else. Shakespeare, Welles and Picasso are only ‘great’ because there is a current consensus of opinion that makes them so, and fashions can change. So it’s very difficult to make a final judgement with absolute certainty, no matter how strongly you feel about it.

But feedback is vital to producing outstanding work. Without some sense of how one’s work appears to others, it’s very hard to decide how to develop it. For Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, feedback is an essential ingredient in the experience of creative flow - when we sense that we are creating something valuable, it increases our pleasure and absorption in the work.

So feedback is essential, but how should we approach it? Specifically:

• How can we give genuinely constructive feedback on a piece of creative work, even if we aren’t experts in the medium?
• When we’re on the receiving end, how can we make the most of the feedback we receive from others - or at least develop a thicker skin?

‘Too many notes’ - the Emperor from ‘Amadeus’ shows us how not to do it

My favourite example of how not to give feedback on creative work is the Emperor Josef II of Austria, as he appears in Amadeus - a film I’ve previously written about as a parable of creativity.

The Emperor is not stupid, nor is he a philistine. He comes across as an intelligent and honest man trying to do his best for his subjects. And he aspires to culture, as an amateur musician and a lover and patron of music. The ‘musical King’ surrounds himself with composers and music scholars, patronises the opera, concert halls and music schools, and commissions exciting new works from established composers and rising stars.

And yet, as Salieri points out, “actually the man had no ear at all”. This is partly a deficiency of talent - regardless of the approach he took to musical studies, the Emperor would never be in danger of rivaling Mozart or Salieri. But it is also a deficiency of circumstance. Because of his position, the assembled musical experts around him are afraid to tell him where he’s going wrong, or even how bad his playing is. Read the rest of this entry »