#3: Creativity is the ratio of stimulation to spacing out
Or, I have never weighed my own head
Hello, I’m Emily, an organisational designer for social change, coach and chronic illness advocate. Read more about me and this newsletter here.
Thinking
Have you ever been bored enough to weigh your own head? Chris Duffy has:
Mollie and I have made some quarantine discoveries of our own. They haven’t been quite as profound, but one day we did get so bored that we weighed our heads. As of last month, my head weighs 9.8 lbs but Mollie's weighs only 7.4 lbs.
Reading Chris’ newsletter yesterday morning made me realise that I’m never bored. If I was stuck in a room with zero stimuli, then certainly, I would get bored. My cousin once got stuck in his bathroom for eight hours without a phone or a book, a story that horrified me so much that I still remember every detail.
All of humanity's problems stem from man's inability to sit quietly in a room alone — Blaise Pascal
I do experience boredom-adjacent things, like the standard-issue existential ennui. And don’t get me wrong, I am now quite curious about how much my head weighs. But will I ever be bored enough to find out, unless forced to sit quietly in a room alone? I doubt it.
We hear that boredom is essential to creativity. Does my lack of boredom mean I’m not a creative person? It is true that one of the reasons I don’t get bored is that most of the time that I’m awake and not working, I am stuffing my head full of other people's creativity through articles, podcasts, books and TV shows (ok, and Twitter). But we also hear that creativity relies on combining existing ideas in new ways. So boredom is good, but stimulation is also good? I am confused.
Then I read this more nuanced piece from the BBC about the relationship between creativity and boredom:
““My take is that the state that is really good for the creative process is not boredom exactly, but what I would call spacing out,” he says. “That is, doing something familiar with a kind of diffused focus that allows your mind to wander elsewhere.””
I have experienced greater creativity over the past three months, a time in which I’ve been living in Devon and walking the cliffs every day (leaving my phone at home) and encouraging mind-wandering by making my phone less interesting. I really have had more ideas and a stronger impetus to make them happen (like actually publishing This Might Resonate every fortnight).
Perhaps, then, creativity blooms not from boredom, but from finding your ideal personal ratio of stimulation to spacing out.
Writing
Reading
This very funny piece by Joel Golby about laziness and the suckiness of work: “I am convinced that organization cannot be taught to the chaotic by the already organized, only by the naturally chaotic: yes.”
Daisy Onubogu’s great analysis of how the incentives in the VC system create its lack of diversity: “VCs don’t need to find the intrinsically best — best is not necessary for being or building the most saleable commodity in the financial market. You need solid fundamentals (which can be constructed from decent potential +capital); and you need great signals”
This lovely essay by Heather Hogan about getting Long Covid, getting married and the impact of chronic illness on relationships
I will read anything by or about adrienne maree brown, including this profile. “I'm also very explicit about the fact that a lot of what I do is magic, so it's not useful to try to teach it as if it's not magic. I think for a long time I was trying to do that, like, “Here's how you make an agenda,” but you can't really put magic on an agenda. Instead, one might say, “Here's how you can arrange an agenda so that magic can happen.”
In organisations, “we can’t predict when our change efforts will release energy”, John Cutler writes. I once did some research into how a government department created policy and where there was potential for a more user-centred approach. The response to my recommendations was mostly (and I paraphrase): “Thanks, we hate it??”. Nine months later they based some of their new strategy on the research and set up a user-centred policy design team. My project released its energy nine months after completion, one small thread in a tapestry of factors that led to big changes. Complexity, emergence and non-linearity are helpful ways to understand this phenomenon, brilliantly summarised by Sonja Blignaut
Eating
Spaghetti with walnut, basil and avocado pesto
A mustardy celeriac remoulade which I ate with baked salmon and then steak. To go with the steak, I made deep-fried shallot rings from Claire Thomson’s Home Cookery Year. I also made her Cauliflower Korma recipe
Roasted roots hash with poached eggs
A distracted kale stir fry that I cooked and ate while on a Zoom call (undignified).
Appreciating
Ronan’s review of This Might Resonate.
