Should creativity take effort?
We find out, with Brian Lucas, PhD and assistant professor at Cornell.
Hey everyone!
How are you doing today?
I’m really excited to introduce Brian Lucas, for this week’s interview. Brian has serious academic pedigree and I love his work, and I hope you’ll find it interesting too.
Brian Lucas is an Assistant Professor in Organizational Behavior at Cornell. He has a PhD in Management & Organizations, an MA in Social-Organizational Psychology from Columbia University, and a BA in Psychology. The reason I wanted to speak to him for Out of Hours is because he is an expert in creativity - something that can be elusive, but with a better understanding can help us live happier lives.
Creative ideas are not just moments of inspiration
Brian Lucas’ research shows that there are two ways of generating creative ideas: serendipity and hard work. He says:
“Creative ideas sometimes arrive to us in serendipitous ‘A-ha!’ moments of insight that are exciting and feel great. Sometimes they arrive to us when we simply hunker down, work through the creative problem, and produce the idea. Society places too much emphasis on the insight route and not enough on the production route.”
This leads to two biases.
People over-subscribe to the notion that they can promote creativity by waiting for ideas to come to them, and waiting for an insight to strike; for instance, by taking a walk in nature.
People undervalue the role of effort and persistence in the creative process.
Persistence is key when it comes to creativity
Brian Lucas says that people underestimate how many ideas they can generate while persisting at a creative task:
“They do this because producing ideas is effortful, and if you believe that creativity should feel like a serendipitous ‘A-ha!’ moment, then you will see that effortful feeling as a signal that you have run out of ideas.”
“In reality, creative ideas are just as likely to arrive through effortful production as through insight. Sometimes ideas will come to you via insight. It will feel serendipitous and amazing. But sometimes ideas will not. In these cases, you need to put in the effort and persistence to follow the production route. This is how creative work gets done”
Tracking creativity ironically keeps you more creative
Brian tracks his own creativity. He sets creative productivity targets, which help him recognise when he might be relying too much on the insight route, instead of the harder production route.
“I might aim to generate one new research idea each week. If a week goes by and I do not have anything written in my research notebook, I would take that as a sign that I am relying too much on the insight route (i.e. waiting for the idea to come to me). In this case, I would block off time in my schedule and use it to intentionally sit down to produce new ideas.”
If the quality starts to fall, that’s a sign that he’s relying too much on the production route.
“If a week goes by and I have a bunch of ideas written in my research notebook but none of them seem any good, I would take this as a sign that I am relying too much on the production route (i.e. forcing idea generation). In this case, I would similarly block off time in my schedule, but this time use it to engage in activities that would allow mind-wandering or allow solutions to incubate, such as a visit to a museum or a coffee chat with a friend.”
What can you learn from Brian Lucas?
Creativity takes work. It’s not all shower revelations and apples dropping from trees. It takes persistence to be creative.
There are two types of idea generation: inspiration and production. One is waiting for ideas to come to you, the other is actively working to come up with new ideas.
You can track which one you’re relying on more by tracking your ideas. If there’s not enough ideas, you might not be working hard enough. If the quality sucks, you might be relying too much on effort and not enough on insight.
Thanks so much for reading! Let me know your thoughts in the comments… what is your experience with creativity? What do you do when you’re in a creative funk?
You can also follow Brian on Twitter here. Or check out his personal website.