One of the funniest writers I’ve read is Tim Dorsey, who writes novels about the only-in-Florida escapades of a lovable serial killer named Serge Storms. Yeah, you read that right; it takes a special ability to be able write something hilarious about murder and violence and depravity, but Dorsey does it beautifully, and has kept it up for 21 Serge books so far.
I mention Dorsey to make the point about creativity, and the amazing ability that some people seem to have to consistently produce high quality work. I once attended a book-signing he did here in town, and I told him that I only showed up to find out what kind of person thinks of these things.
I didn’t get an answer to my question that day, and I still wonder about it, but I also know that my question was a bit misguided. It was misguided because it assumed that creativity is a trait, one that you’re either born with, or not. By the same token, humor seems to be a trait, or the ability to deliver an inspirational speech, or so many other activities that the really good people seem to be able to magically produce. Or are they actually skills?
I don’t pretend to know the exact answer, and despite all the studies psychologists have done, I’m not sure anyone knows. It’s a little bit of the old nature v nurture or talent v deliberate practice debate. But I do believe that each of these creative activities depends on some mixture of both, and skill is no small proportion. So, no matter how much of the good stuff you’re blessed with at birth, it also depends on a lot of repetitions to produce good quality stuff.
But don’t just take my word for it. In his book, Hook ‘Em with Humor, Ricky Olson says that you have to produce a lot of jokes to find a few that are any good. Double-Nobelist Linus Pauling said: “The best way to get a good idea is to get a lot of ideas.” Lincoln and Churchill and King delivered thousands of speeches for many years before they produced the works we remember them for. As Kurt Vonnegut said, writing is “a lot like inflating a blimp with a bicycle pump. All it takes is time.” They all knew that quantity is the path to quality.
Let’s come down a few notches to ordinary individuals like you and me. In my own work, I’ve learned that you have to churn out a lot of stuff—a lot of it bad, at least at first—before you start getting better at anything. Like when I started podcasting earlier this year; I thought it would be so easy. After all, I know the material, I know how to talk, so how tough can it be? Well, my dozens of false starts and re-starts quickly showed me that wasn’t the case. I’m a lot better now…but not nearly as good as I know I can get.
But be smart about it
There’s no way to get around doing the work, but that does not mean you can’t be smart about it. Here are some suggestions:
Block off enough time. You need to go deep into your own mind to find the good stuff. When you first approach a topic, you’re going to produce the usual stale connections. That’s because “neurons that fire together wire together”, as Donald Hebb said, so you have to break through that stale crust to find new connections within your own brain, and there’s no quick way past it. For myself, I find that it takes at least a half hour of undistracted work to get into that zone.
Carry a journal. When you think deeply about something and then leave it to do something else, your subconscious still keeps working on it, so new ideas will pop up at the most random times. If you don’t write it down, it will sink back to the bottom of your mind, possibly never to be thought of again. Or if a story or quote or factoid catches your attention and you can’t think of how to use it at the time, wrap it carefully in the written word and store it away in your mental basket; it will be there when you need it.
Get feedback. If you can afford a good coach, that’s the best, because a coach has been over that territory before and can suggest shortcuts on the path to quality. But even if you don’t have a coach, the best way to get feedback is to try out your ideas with others. Find every opportunity you can to speak; or share your thoughts in a blog; or talk about your ideas with your peers. Don’t wait until it’s perfect, or it may never come out.
Remind yourself that it gets easier with time. The great thing about creativity is that it’s a self-reinforcing phenomenon. The more ideas you generate, the faster the new ideas come. Just in the mere act of writing this post, for example, I’ve already jotted down two new ideas for subsequent articles.
But you DO have to get started. If the path to quality is quantity, the sooner you get on the path, the better. The best way to be “creative” is to just start creating, and keep going.
I was chatting with a fellow consultant/coach last night about our respective approaches to coaching, and the conversation turned to strengths and weaknesses.
He spent 17 years flying fighter jets in the Marines before joining the business world, and he told me that his approach was initially shaped by that experience. The military focuses on identifying and eliminating weaknesses, and there are two good reasons for this. The most obvious is that a weakness can quickly kill you or the people under your command. But it’s also important that people operate to at least a basic uniform (no pun intended) standard, so that everyone knows what to expect from each other and so that “parts” can be easily interchangeable. (In the interest of accuracy, we didn’t actually discuss the second point; it’s something I thought of while writing this post.)
But when he went to business school, he told me, he was told that focusing on eliminating weaknesses limits a person to mediocrity at best. They told him that if you truly want to achieve your full potential, you need to focus on your strengths. And when he began his first civilian position at Amazon, they told him to figure out what his “superpower” was and focus on that. Use your superpower to differentiate yourself and put your best self into your work.
There’s a definite appeal to that idea; the economic theory of comparative advantage probably applies to individuals as it does to nations. Even if you’re better than everyone else at everything, the system produces more value when each participant does what they do best.
I’ve covered this topic at length already, so I won’t repeat all my arguments, but let me share quickly the example I told him about. I was asked to work with the CFO of a large private company to improve his communication skills. He was extremely competent in his job, but he had one weakness that was limiting him in his current position: he was a weak presenter, and the reason this mattered is that in his current position he had to present monthly to the Board of Directors. Despite his unquestioned knowledge, they didn’t have faith in him because he was rambling and hesitant.
If he had tried to pump up his “superpower” of detailed knowledge, he would have only become more wordy and made matters worse. Fortunately for him, someone pointed out the weakness and got him professional help. Those are actually easy issues to fix, and he saw almost immediate improvement. More importantly, the board saw immediate improvement.
So, I guess the lesson is that you should definitely develop your superpower, but beware of kryptonite!
I almost never post anything on weekends but today is an exception, and I’ll tell you why.
When the alarm (i.e. my dog Winnie) went off at 6 this morning, my wife woke up long enough to urge me to go back to sleep after I had let her out. I told her I had stuff to do, and she said, “But it’s a Saturday”.
Of course it’s a Saturday, and a perfect excuse to sleep in. But the reason I didn’t go back to sleep is that I’m nursing an infant habit. I’ve decided to write for at least a half hour every morning—before I do anything else. I let the dog out, I make coffee, and then I sit down with my notebook, start the timer on my watch, and write steadily for at least a half hour.
That habit is only six days old, and like any newborn it requires constant and consistent care. You wouldn’t bring a new baby home and then take the weekend off, would you?
There are a lot of opinions out there about how long it takes to establish a habit, so I don’t know how many consecutive days I need to keep up this routine until it develops the ability to walk on its own and care for itself. But I know myself: I get these bright ideas, pursue them avidly for a bit, and then quietly let them lapse, so this time I’m not taking any chances. That’s why today is just like any other day, and this is one baby I will gladly wake up for!
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The title for this podcast came from an article in last week’s New York Times about Katie Ledecky, who is one of the dominant swimmers of our times. Ledecky gets a ton of fan mail and requests for advice from young swimmers and their parents, and in reply to a parent who asked her for advice for her 11-year-old daughter who couldn’t seem to catch up to her peers no matter how hard she tried, Ledecky wrote:
“Embrace the chase of those ahead of you. The times will come and you will have fun getting there.”
Embrace the chase. The phrase struck me the minute I read it, but a week later I can tell that it must have crawled around in my subconscious, making connections to a few other ideas I’ve picked up through the years. I’d like to share three ideas from a couple of my favorite books that elaborate on the statement and may just encourage you to embrace the chase yourself.
First point: Your Mindset is Hugely Important
The first point is taken from one of my favorite books, Mindset, by Carol Dweck, who tells us that people generally fit into one of two opposing mindsets when it comes to their beliefs about personal ability. Those with a fixed mindset believe that people are born with a given level of intelligence and ability which will determine their relative capability to succeed in various fields. Those with a growth mindset believe that ability is within our personal control and is determined by effort, learning and hard work.
The distinction is not merely academic. As Dweck’s research shows, “…a simple belief about yourself…guides a large part of your life. In fact, it permeates every part of your life.” In one experiment, kids were given a fairly challenging set of questions from an IQ test. Half were then praised for being smart (let’s call them the FMers), and half were praised for working hard (GMers). In the next step, they were given a much more challenging set of questions. Those who were praised for being smart did not enjoy themselves as much as those praised for working hard. In subsequent tests, the FMers’ performance declined while the GMers’ performance improved. As a final step, they were asked to write about their experience for the next class, and Dweck found that almost 40% of the FMers lied about their performance! It was more important to them to be seen as talented than to put in the work.
So, as you can see there are definite advantages to having a growth mindset, and mindset can be learned. Later, Dweck shows how a growth mindset can be taught to kids and adults, and that’s important because A tremendous amount of scientific evidence has been gathered to show that many of the qualities we consider to be innate and genetically determined are substantially within our control. Studies of identical twins raised apart show that environment can cause a swing in IQ between 12 to 18 points, which could be the difference between a career as a professional or a more modest position.
Anders Ericsson has showed us how “natural genius” can be produced with lots and lots of deliberate practice. When you realize this powerful truth, suddenly you see your own limits in a different light. The evidence shows that most are self-inflicted. There is no need to accept natural limits, and certainly no excuse at all for anyone in a position to influence impressionable young minds, to allow this pernicious belief to take root in their minds.
Second Point: Your Mindset Affects the Type of Goals you Seek
Your mindset influences the type of goals you set for yourself. There are two general types of goals that people set for themselves, performance goals and learning goals. Performance goals are about reaching a set target, which is frequently related to how you compare to others. Learning goals focus on learning, getting better and comparing yourself to yourself.
In one study, researchers tested 167 medical device salespeople involved in a 90-day sales campaign for a particular device. It cost about $5,000, and salespeople were offered a $300 bonus for each device they sold. The nice thing about this study is that it was real-world, with actual dollars at stake and precisely measurable results.[1]
Before the campaign was announced, the salespeople were given a questionnaire to determine whether they were performance-oriented or learning-oriented. Basically, they were asked to indicate their level of agreement with statements such as, “It is important for me to learn from each selling experience I have,” or “I feel very good when I know I have outperformed other salespeople in my company.” In addition, the researchers also asked participants questions about their personal sales targets, how much effort they planned to put into the campaign (they still had to sell everything else), and how much planning they would do.
The study found that “a learning goal orientation had a positive relationship with sales performance” which is the academic way of saying the learning-oriented salespeople kicked ass.
Based on that study, plus some additional research[2] and my own 20 years’ experience in sales training and consulting, I’ve listed seven ways that the proper mindset and goal orientation make you more successful in any pursuit:
- You set higher goals for yourself.
- You try harder and spend more time.
- You are more willing to try difficult things and take risks.
- You stick with it longer in the face of failure and frustration.
- You are more optimistic.
- You are more willing to seek and accept feedback and coaching.
- You enjoy yourself more.
Third Point: A challenge mindset is better for you
The difference between a problem and a challenge is not merely semantic. The key point is that there is a difference between a problem and a challenge, and how you view a situation can make a big difference in your results and your personal growth and even your physical health.
- A problem is an obstacle; a challenge is a path.
- A problem can scare you; a challenge will excite you.
- A problem is an inconvenience; a challenge is a gift.
- A problem is a threat, a challenge is an opportunity.
- A problem is zero-sum; a challenge is positive-sum.
Those all may sound like just typical motivational mumbo-jumbo, so let me bring in some of the science and the philosophy…
We’ve all been conditioned to believe that stress is bad for us, but did you know there is more than one possible response to stress? We’ve been taught that stress is caused by the activation of the fight or flight response in our minds and bodies. That response is a natural reaction to threat, which prepares our minds and bodies for superior performance, but it evolved many millennia ago in a far different environment than our modern world. So, according to the mismatch theory, our stone-age brains respond to modern circumstances in ways that can hamper performance and over time can severely damage our health.
That makes sense if fight or flight is our only option, but psychologist Kelly McGonigal explains that there are actually three different possible responses to stressful situations. Besides the familiar threat response, we can have a challenge response or a tend-and-befriend response. Although both possible responses are equally important to well-being, my focus in this podcast is on the challenge response.
The difference between the threat response and the challenge response lies in our estimation of our ability to meet the situation that faces us. When we’re fearing for our life, our body does the sensible thing: it goes into defensive mode and sends out hormones that cause a lot of changes; one of the most important is that it constricts blood vessels around our heart, because it might reduce blood loss in the event of severe injury. When we’re not in fear, different hormones cause the blood vessels to relax, which allows for greater blood flow and more energy to rise to the challenge and drives better performance, not to mention being better for us in the long run.
Evoking the challenge response does not reduce stress, but it does make the stress work in our favor. In studies, it has been shown that simply informing people that stress can help them perform better, can lead to improved performance on standardized tests, for example. One reason may be that the threat response narrows our attention and places greater focus on signs that things are going badly, but the challenge response opens our attention to more positive possibilities and opportunities. In numerous studies, those primed to generating a challenge response through prior education led to better performance. Even better, the benefits tend to last far beyond the initial priming.
So, how do you generate the challenge response? The most obvious first step is to avoid the threat response by creating the conditions so that you are not actually in danger. If you are well prepared for a presentation, you should take comfort in the fact that you are equipped to handle any difficult questions that might come up. (Or as I tell my students, if you’re nervous because you haven’t prepared well, you deserve to be!)
You can also activate the challenge response by viewing the stressful situation as an opportunity for learning and growth. Finally, you can activate the challenge response by taking Katie Ledecky’s advice to heart, and EMBRACE THE CHASE!
Please note: If you’ve enjoyed this podcast and want to see a video version of these ideas, I’ve posted four videos:
Embrace the Chase Part 1: Mindset
Embrace the Chase Part 2: Goals
Embrace the Chase Part 3: Challenge
Embrace the Chase Part 4: Talent
[1] VandeWalle, Brown, Cron, Slocum: “The Influence of Goal Orientation and Self-Regulation Tactics on Sales Performance: A Longitudinal Field Test.” Journal of Applied Psychology, 1999.
Succeed, by Heidi Grant Halvorson
