Has the Internet paralysed your creativity?

I just read some people's notes on Mental Detox Week, most notably, Iain's. Having been pretty much on beaches for 3 months and reading a lot of books about Zen, I have been thinking about this subject a little bit.

I honestly doubt that anyone who uses Facebook, Twitter and IM can do any real creative work at their desk, unless they have elaborate self control strategies.

Let me clarify what I mean by this.

The 2 types of creative process

Synthesis
We might say there are two types of creative work that go on. The first people call synthesis, and it happens whan the brain is in a conscious, thinking mode. For example you have these conversations:

Hey, did you hear about that artist/blogger/kid on YouTube who did XYZ? Why don't we do that, but in some different way using A instead of B, in this new context?

And it turns out to be a great fresh idea for brand PQR.

There is nothing wrong with this, and the reason it works well these days, is because the Internet has given us such a big pool of XYZ, that we can mix it around at quite a superficial level, and it never seems to get played out or tired. People who are good at remembering lots of different things they've seen, or searching for interesting things, will be very good creatives.

Sub-conscious
The other type of creativity, is what Iain called focus. It's definitely a deeper mode of thinking, and here's how it relates to Zen (when did I become such a twat!!!):

No new ideas come from the conscious mind... it can only synthesize images it has already seen. True creativity comes from a state of no-mind, where your thoughts cannot block the unlimited creative potential of your inner being.
Eckharte Toll - The Power of Now

This "state of no-mind" is a state of flow, or being in the zone. The place Ronnie O'Sullivan is when he's doing a 147 or when an artist is working creatively and doesn't have any conscious thoughts. Now, I don't agree about the "no new ideas" thing - it's too tough to argue that anything is a new "idea" rather than a synthesis, but we instinctively know that to create work that's a cut above, we need more of this type of creativity.

When seeking answers, one must quiet the soul in order to hear them.
Ace Ventura 2: When Nature Calls


Strategies for upping your creative potential

During when I worked at glue, it was just as Facebook status updates became widely used, as well as most people using MSN messenger. At this point I entirely gave up doing any planning thinking work at my desk - I used a pad and pen somewhere quiet, and used my computer to type them up/draw them into PowerPoint. This had the added advantage of making me appear more creative.

If I had an agency, and it had planners or creatives (or similar roles), I would probably insist that they spend at least a third of the time away from their desks. Or something. Anyway I don't have an agency, and if I did it would have animals in it, and not be profitable. But regardless, here is one more smart strategy from Paul Graham:

I now leave wifi turned off on my main computer except when I need to transfer a file or edit a web page, and I have a separate laptop on the other side of the room that I use to check mail or browse the web. My rule is that I can spend as much time online as I want, as long as I do it on that computer.

He sees this as a strategy of first recognising the problem of wasting loads of time on the Internet:

When I have to sit on the other side of the room to check email or browse the web, I become much more aware of it. Sufficiently aware, in my case at least, that it's hard to spend more than about an hour a day online.

My other thought is about research - doing it first, not as-you-go-along, and doing it properly, with paper, pens and printing things, and annotations. This is so that the stuff can sink into your head, and you can have a flash of inspiration in the shower, or so that you can work on it later away from your computer. I have seen so many junior people in agencies asked to do some research, and come back with just a list of hyperlinks! Bad intern - no job for you.

Jokes aside, I think this is a serious problem for any creative agency right now. What HR or personal strategies are people taking to deal with it? Any good software strategies?

why ad agencies are rubbish at HR and talent

apparently one of the worst jobs ever

This is something I've been thinking about a lot recently, as I've just left a really good job in a great agency to try going freelance.

Iain's written a nice post about how it's hard to get and retain motivated, creative, multi-skilled people, because, put simply, if they're that good, they'll go do their own thing.

I then read this awfully arrogant article, by a freelance computer programmer, on Reddit:


Working a real job is a win if you're lazy, greedy, or unmotivated. If you're average, you fit right in. And if you're above average, the basic terms of employment and premise of the arrangement is against your interests.


So in the face of this attitude (which I don't agree with), how can you retain smart, entrepreneurial people?


This is a prime example of how advertising agencies totally fail to walk their own talk.


You get the best people by making your work environment so unbelievably, jaw-droppingly cool, that it's legendary to work there.


You get the best financial and care packages for your staff - healthcare, profit shares, all that kind of normal stuff. You also need the best working processes that give your staff freedom to work effectively on interesting stuff.

Those are hygiene factors - all your competitors will start to offer the same anyway.


Then, the real work starts. You have to now make sure that your workplace is the arguably coolest place to work in the whole world. You have to add little flashes of cool to every single touchpoint with your employees - you know, the kind of the thing we tell our client brands to do to their consumers.

Ad agencies are still totally stuck in the 80s when it comes to all this stuff. Think of all the agencies you've been to with massive plush meeting rooms, but with their creatives sat 9-6 in call centre conditions just upstairs. All the while we're telling clients that consumers have all the power now, and it's about real values and authenticity.

The sad thing is that business knows this already - Google's market is the most creative and talent-driven business in the world today, and their office is a total geek's dream.


link to video of Google offices on YouTube

It really annoys me when top creative agencies do things like rewarding employees with iPods to keep them motivated - how unimaginative is that? Would you dare suggest such a mundane promotion for your clients?

Photo from Monky

"You're very creative. Have an iPod."

Some numbered points:

1. People will do irrational things if they're in love. You tell your clients this is true for consumers of their FMCG brands, so believe it's true for your employees and your agency. People will pay £3 quid for fruit in a bottle, and they'll stay in jobs where they could be paid a few more grand elsewhere.

2. It's hard work, and there's no one-size-fits-all solution - building a GooglePlex wouldn't be right for keeping talent at JWT. You need to understand your agency brand, understand your staff and have creative ideas which resonate deeply within both.

3. It's not going to be cheap, but it will work out in the long run, and being creative can achieve better results than unimaginative spending.

4. People follow other people - especially the active ones who create the agency culture. So you have to put extravagant effort into keeping these people. For example, when a very "on-culture" person has leaves an agency, the sense of loss is huge compared to the job-importance of that person. I remember feeling like this when Cookie left my old agency, and I didn't even know him that well then.

If you look at that list - it's all painfully obvious stuff that we present to clients again and again, but somehow we think it doesn't apply to the people we employ.

This would be a good time to name drop Work Club, where my friend Charlotte has just joined. They also believe that agency HR practices are in need of a shake up, and have a number of neat innovations, like planner-creative teams, and giving people a lot of freedom and flexibility in the way they work.

Anyone else seen any good workplace HR innovations?