Efficiency, the Enemy of Creativity
I recently came across a great article on creativity from Patrick Leoncini that I wanted to share. In case you don’t know, Patrick is an incredible author and a great speaker on the subject of leadership and business. His books include: The Five Dysfunctions of a Team, Silos Politics and Turfwars, The Three Big Questions for a Frantic Family, and Death by Meeting.
I highly recommend subscribing to his free email newsletter called Pat’s Point of View. You can sign up on The Table Group’s homepage.
Pat’s most recent POV is titled “The Enemy of Innovation and Creativity”. He argues (successfully, in my opinion) that the business world spends so much time trying to improve efficiency, that creativity and innovation get squelched. The creative process, by definition, is woefully inefficient. You end up wasting a lot of time when you’re trying to create something. But he points out that some inefficiency is necessary in order to successfully innovate.
Go read the article, then come back.
A few quotes that I want to point out:
“I’ve become convinced that the only way to be really creative and innovative in life is to be joyfully inefficient.”
“Few people have the self-esteem and courage to continue being inefficient when others are calling them out as being flaky, irresponsible and unreasonable.”
“If we’re serious about innovation, we have to celebrate—yes, celebrate—the inefficiency of the people who we rely on for new ideas, even if it means they are late for meetings, they waste a little time or money and they leave the lights on when they go home. “
Interestingly… when I first read the article, my first thought was to my own songwriting endeavors. Not my daily job.
I focus so much energy on trying to be efficient with my time, trying to learn to play new songs, and trying to organize schedules and setlists for the band at church, that I leave myself very little time (if any) to just plink around with my mandolin or guitar and create something new. It’s almost like I need to schedule some “free time” just to mess around with no purpose.
Interestingly, most of the songs that I’ve written have come out of a time like that. I’ll accidentally play a chord progession that I like, and then lyrics pop into my head while playing the accidental chords over and over.
So I’m trying to make time for me to be creative musically. And I’m trying to encourage the “flaky artists” that I know to keep being “flaky artists”, and not worry about the details. Let someone else handle them.
How about you? Do you set aside time to be inefficiently creative? Or does it just come naturally?
I think this is one of the main reasons I have avoided having “a job” for 5+ years. Being freelance lets you structure your time better—the work gets done faster, and then you can spend the rest of the time more creatively, even if it’s just staring out the window waiting for ideas to come.
Good points. Reminds me of the rumors I’ve heard of Google. They require “goof-off” days where a person isn’t supposed to do any actual work. Supposed to help them innovate, finding solutions and ideas from seemingly unrelated subjects.
Stumbling towards awesomeness!
I hear that 3M does something similar. They supposedly allow employees to spend 10% of their time on whatever they want in order to encourage innovation.