> -----Original Message----- > From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]On > Behalf Of Erik Reuter > Sent: Tuesday, November 26, 2002 10:41 PM
... > > I can't keep peak efficiency for creativity for more than an hour at > > most. I've lead a team under intense time pressure, implementing a > > design after the creative work was done. Yet, we couldn't work steady > > 12 hour days without causing more harm than good. > > Some people can. Those people will get more done. Seems to me that you've just shot down your proposition, since those words limit it to selected cases. Now we can agree, although I'd say it thus: for some people, dealing with some kinds of work, more hours yields more output. Generally speaking, I'll add, those are the less creative kinds of work. > I think the real trick is to stimulate as much of your mind as possible > in as many ways related to the problem as possible. There's the rub -- you never know what might be related. Pick up any book on creativity and you'll find that creative people are interested in everything. (We're into an area of my expertise here; IIRC, that very sentence appears on my web site.) Metaphor is powerful, so is letting a problem linger in the back of one's head. Big problems are rarely solved by tackling them head-on; many are serendipitous. Serendipity is not something you can force to happen, but it's not random, either. Head in an interesting direction and you're likely to find things you weren't even looking for. The word comes from a fable about the princes of Serendip (Ceylon) who never got where they were going because they were distracted by interesting and valuable things along the way. If they focused on the "problem," they would have missed a great deal. Not every task should be approached this way; sometimes focus and follow-through are far more important than creativity. Learning how to switch deliberately from one mode to the other is an extremely valuable skill. That's one of the things I help clients do. In some sense, it's *the* thing I do. Nick _______________________________________________ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
