Strategy. Innovation. Brand.
The Art of Bouncing Back
Never, ever, ever, ever, ever give up.
An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. We’ve all heard the phrase and we know it’s true. It’s better to prevent something bad (cancer, terrorism) than it is to try to cure it after the fact.
But life is full of risks and we can’t prevent all of them. What happens when you can’t prevent something bad from happening? How well do you bounce back? It’s a question of resilience – our ability to manage stress rather than allowing it to manage us.
We aren’t resilient by nature; it’s not an inborn trait. We learn (or don’t learn) resilience through experience and practice. I’ve been reading up on resilience in a number of different articles (click here, here, here, and here). Here are some tips.
Cognitive reappraisal – we all do dumb things or fail at certain endeavors. Failures can leave lasting scars. We think of a dumb thing we did – even long, long ago – and we conclude that we’re just not up to snuff. The next time we do something dumb, it just shows how mediocre we are. We don’t bounce back effectively because, …. well, we’re just not good enough.
But we can also revisit and reinterpret our failures. For instance, I once wanted to be a baseball player. I was a good fielder but I couldn’t hit well. Ultimately, I failed and for a while I was crushed. Looking back on it, however, I realize how lucky I was to learn the lesson early. I refocused on my studies and did reasonably well. More recently, I’ve reappraised my baseball failure. Now when I fail at something, I think, “Well, maybe it’s like baseball….” That helps me bounce back more quickly.
Make connections – all the resilience research I’ve read says it’s easier to be resilient when you have a close network of friends and family. When I’m having a bad day, I sometimes just want to withdraw. But I find that I bounce back better when I’m around other people. Build your network early; you’ll need it sooner or later.
Think positively – it may sound trite but it works. If you think of yourself positively, then a failure is the exception, not the rule. Even a very stressful event isn’t really about you. Your self-image provides a protective layer. A bad thing happened but that doesn’t make you a bad person. If you still perceive yourself positively, it’s easier to bounce back. A major blow can even provide the motivation (“I’ll show them”) to bounce back strongly.
I’ve picked up some other tips about resiliency and I’ll cover them in future posts. What I’m really looking for, however, is the link between resiliency and creativity. I’ve noticed that some of my more creative moments come soon after a setback, a failure, or just a very bad day. I think that resiliency can contribute to creativity but I don’t know quite how. If you see a link between the two, let me know your thoughts.
Are Creative People Weird?
Can’t you just focus?
I’ve always been proud of my ability to focus. In many situations, I can quickly distinguish between what’s relevant and what’s not. I can then block out irrelevant information and focus, for long periods of time, on what’s important. It’s a handy skill for a manager.
Like most skills, however, it comes at a price. First, it makes me a bit of an absent-minded professor. I may lose track of “irrelevant” details like anniversaries and birthdays. However, the more costly price may be a loss of creativity.
When I focus intently on something, I’m doing what a neuroscientist would call “cognitive inhibition.” In simple terms, I’m blocking out. I’m inhibiting information from entering my consciousness. I block out a lot of irrelevant stuff but I may also block out information that could lead to a creative solution.
We often think of creative people as being uninhibited. We use the term to describe their behavior rather than their thinking processes. They may dress unfashionably, behave eccentrically, write strident manifestos, and generally seem at odds with the mainstream culture. This is not a new phenomenon; Plato commented about the odd behavior of poets and playwrights.
We use the term uninhibited to describe behavior, but we should also apply it to thinking processes. In fact, a neuroscientist would call it “cognitive disinhibition”. Essentially, it means that we loosen the filters and allow a variety of thoughts to float to the surface. Fewer thoughts are inhibited or blocked out. Some people seem naturally to have fewer filters.
According to Shelley Carson in her article “The Unleashed Mind”, cognitive disinhibition is the basis of both eccentric behavior and of creativity. Carson defines cognitive disinhibiton as “…the failure to ignore information that is irrelevant to current goals or to survival.” Sometimes, this simply leads to bizarre thoughts and psychosis. For people with high IQs and large working memories, on the other hand, it can lead to creative eccentricity. Carson proposes a “shared vulnerability model” that underlies creativity, eccentricity, and high functioning “normal” performance.
The way we talk about creativity gives a clue to Carson’s model. When we have an “aha” moment, we often describe it as a “breakthrough”. We have literally broken through something – in this case, our cognitive inhibition. If we can lower the resistance to a breakthrough – by reducing our inhibitions – we can become more creative … and, perhaps, more eccentric.
Some moths ago, I wrote a brief article about sleep and creativity. We’re more creative when we’re sleepy. Carson’s model explains why: when we’re sleepy our cognitive inhibitions are lower. I’ve also written about caffeine and creativity. Caffeine keeps us focused. By doing so, it also reduces our creativity.
As it happens, I’m a huge consumer of caffeine. Perhaps that’s why I can focus intently on relevant information. Maybe it’s time to take a caffeine break to see if I can be more creative … and maybe a bit more eccentric.
Lighting and Creativity
I’m feeling creative.
In yesterday’s article about daydreaming and creativity, I noted that daydreaming is negatively correlated with parts of the brain that process visual stimuli. I suggested that this might relate to inattentional blindness. If you’re daydreaming, your mind wanders and you don’t consciously see things even if they’re directly in front of you. Some part of your subconscious may see the object (and direct you around it) but the object never registers in your consciousness.
Now there’s evidence that not seeing may enhance your creativity. An article in The Journal of Environmental Psychology (“Freedom from constraints: Darkness and dim illumination promote creativity“) reports on six different experiments on the relationship between physical environment and creativity. The research found “…that darkness elicits a feeling of being free from constraints and triggers a risky, explorative processing style.” (See additional commentary here and here)
The study focused on 114 German undergraduate students who were asked to solve several creative insight problems under different lighting conditions. The upshot: students in dimly lit rooms solved more problems than those in brightly lit rooms. They also reported that they felt fewer constraints on their thinking. The research also suggested that mental priming could effectively imitate a dim environment. In other words, you don’t have to be in a dark room; you just have to think about being in a dark room.
The researchers also note that creativity involves at least two processes: 1) creating or generating ideas; 2) analyzing and implementing those ideas. A dimly lit room seems to facilitate the first process but not the second. In the authors’ words: “Creativity may begin in the dark but it shouldn’t end there”.
Inventing Tradition
That shirt is illegal!
When I was a Boy Scout – many years ago – I learned the proper way to handle and display the American flag. The basic idea was simple: the flag is a symbol and an inspiration.
This simple idea led to numerous rules:
- You should raise the flag at dawn and lower it at sunset. Never fly the flag after dark. How could it be inspirational if you can’t see it?
- There’s a very specific way to fold the flag. Don’t lower the flag unless someone is present who knows how to fold it. When folding, don’t allow the flag to touch the ground lest it get dirty.
- Never disrespect the flag. Among other things, don’t make clothes or jewelry out of the flag. That would convert a symbol into mere merchandise.
In fact, we still have a Flag Code which says, among other things, that, “The flag should never be used as wearing apparel, bedding, or drapery.” In 1968, Abbie Hoffman (pictured), an antiwar protester, was arrested for wearing a shirt made from an American flag. Such behavior was not only disrespectful; it was also illegal.
Today, of course, we have new “traditions” regarding the flag. Everyone seems to want to show it at all times. We make jewelry and clothing from it. We fly it day and night. While on the campaign trail in 2008, Barack Obama was criticized for not wearing an American flag pin on his lapel. From Abbie Hoffman to Barack Obama, we essentially reversed our “traditional” view of how to treat the flag respectfully.
We invent new traditions all the time. While many traditions seem to be “the way we’ve always done it”, many are quite recent. As Eric Hobsbawm and Terence Ranger point out in The Invention of Tradition, we tend to invent new traditions, “…more frequently when a rapid transformation of society weakens or destroys the social patterns for which ‘old’ traditions had been designed….”
Hobsbawm and Ranger write that we invent some new traditions by “grafting on old ones” and others by reaching back into “well-supplied warehouses of official ritual [and] symbolism…” and giving new meaning to old symbols. Apparently, this is what happened to the Scottish kilt, tartans, and bagpipe.: “This apparatus, to which we ascribe great antiquity, is in fact largely modern. … Indeed, the whole concept of a distinct Highland culture and tradition is a retrospective invention.”
Why do we invent new traditions when we already have perfectly good ones? We may want to preserve an older, supposedly “purer” set of beliefs and loyalties. Or we may want to draw together in the face of a common opponent. (The Highlands “tradition” was invented in opposition to England). We may want to divide people between true believers and those who may be untrustworthy. Sometimes, we simply want to slow down the pace of change.
We need to remember to question our traditions. If we simply accept them as they are, then we lose perspective and see an invented history rather than an accurate one. We see only what we’re intended to see. This applies to organizations as much as to cultures and societies. The next time you hear, we’ve always done it this way, just say, “Is that really true? Let’s find out.”
Gaming the Tripwire
We need to make a decision.
When you make a decision, you create a certain amount of inertia. Let’s say your company decides to pursue Option X. Just by making the decision, you’ve created a vested interest group – people who benefit from continued investment in Option X. They will lobby for Option X even if turns out to be a bad decision. They may also lobby against review processes that could reverse the decision.
To ensure that you review decisions adequately, Chip and Dan Heath recommend the use of tripwires. The tripwire sets conditions that require you to review your decision.
David Lee Roth, lead singer of Van Halen, used a particularly ingenious tripwire to determine if a venue had fulfilled its contractual obligations. As the Heaths point out, Van Halen’s “production design was astonishingly complex.” Lots of things could go wrong and, if they did, band members might be injured. Given the complexity, how could the band quickly tell if all the contractual obligations had been fulfilled?
Roth came up with a simple solution: in the midst of a complicated contract, Roth inserted a demand: a large bowl of M&Ms would be on hand with all the brown M&Ms removed. This was Van Halen’s tripwire. If the bowl of M&Ms was properly prepared, the band knew that the local managers had read the contract closely and had (most likely) done everything right. On the other hand, if a brown M&M appeared … well, it was time to throw a fit and double check everything. A brown M&M indicated that a critical decision needed to be made – should the show go on?
Tripwires are good ideas but they can be gamed. At my college, for instance, all male students had to take two years of military science (ROTC). We marched around in uniforms and learned the proper care and feeding of an M1 rifle.
Every month, officers from the local base inspected us. They paid particular attention to the cleanliness of our rifles. There was one part of the rifle – just below the barrel – that was especially hard to clean. We noticed that the officers always focused on that part of the rifle. If it was clean, they assumed that the rest of the rifle was also clean; there was no need to look further. It was a tripwire.
As soon as we cadets realized this, we cleaned only that part of the rifle. In fact, we had contests to see how dirty we could make the rest of the rifle without being found out. We learned that we could pass inspection with filthy rifles as long as that one small section was clean. We delighted in fooling our officers.
Tripwires are great ideas. They remind you that all decisions are temporary and need to be reviewed from time to time. They set conditions that trigger such reviews. But they’re not foolproof. If the people who support the decision figure out the tripwire, they may well try to game it. It’s up to you to figure out how the game works.
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