Artist Dates to Unlock Problems
Today, I went on an Artist date. An Artist date is a solo adventure you embark on once a week to unlock your creativity and open your sense of possibility. It’s play! It’s been surprisingly hard to prioritise. It feels like a disruption in my consciousness- going from an analytical and task-driven state of mind to being open and adventurous with no agenda.
I feel far more comfortable in the analytical task-driven state. I feel productive, like I’m accomplishing something. I also feel worn out and burnt out from that state of mind- the constant hustle and to do lists, going from one problem to another, constantly switching contexts, with no pause.
In my own life, I’ve found that I solve problems better when I engage the creative part of my brain as much as the analytical. These two mental skills serve distinct and complementary functions. What’s challenging is finding the balance between the two.
I often forget to create space for creativity and inspiration. It feels frivolous somehow, irrelevant to productivity. It also feels confronting. When you create space, all the things you’ve been distracting yourself from have the chance to emerge and demand your attention.
I’ve been staying with the practice though. As I relax into the present moment, the first thing that happens is I notice more of my surroundings. I notice the intricacies of nature; I notice how freeing it feels to just be in the now. I notice what a relief it is to give myself a true mental break, away from the constant churning of problems. Then I start to have fun and slowly start to feel inspired.
So much of our professional lives rely on solving complex problems that don’t have obvious solutions. Our workdays are packed with meetings and emails, giving us very little space to consider complex problems.
Image courtesy of TXM Lean Solutions.
Our analytical minds are great at solving simple or complicated challenges. They’re great at taking information, assessing all the options and finding the right path using a data driven approach.
Complex problems require a different approach. When we’re dealing with complex problems, there are no obvious right answers, no best practices to rely on. What works best is testing and learning and adapting. We need to consider the different risks and impacts and come up with the experiments that are safe to try.
To solve these challenges we need to sit with a problem, to turn it around and examine it from new angles. It’s important to incubate in the background. It’s why so many of us have good ideas in the shower.
It’s especially troubling to see how little space we create for senior leaders. These are often the people in the organisation solving the biggest and most complex challenges. They’re juggling what’s right for people and the work and the customers. They’re grappling with uncertainty and making strategic bets that entail significant risk. Yet when we look at their calendars, they’re in back to back meetings, mode switching constantly. It’s exhausting and it doesn’t set us up for success.
To be successful in leading the challenges of our complex world, we need to rethink our approach to the challenges we face. I’ve seen leaders experiment with a meeting free day for one or half a day a week to deliberately create space. This takes ruthless discipline. Complex problems may not always feel urgent and taking time to ponder can feel frivolous. But when we do, there’s a potent space we can open into where new and creative possibilities come alive. That’s the gift of a complex challenge, it pushes us to reimagine what’s possible.
This is not a new idea by any stretch. The creatives of our world will attest to that. For example, Bill Gates is famous for his Think Week- one week out of the year where he retreats alone to have creative space.
We may not all want to start with a week alone in the woods, unplugged from the world. Our role may not require us to be quite that creative either. But we can start small- by scheduling time to think and by choosing settings that inspire us to think in new ways.
The biggest problems we face require us to reimagine the world and generate new possibilities and experiments. Enabling the conditions for our creative problem solving to be unleashed is a big part of the future of work. How can we start living into that now?
My artist date was an adventure through the park, taking photographs of things that inspired me. Here’s one of my favourite pictures from that adventure.
I was skeptical about how photography would help me in my work but I gave it a shot and as I was walking around taking photos, I found the inspiration for this post.
