I love the Chinese concept of yin and yang. It reminds us that all things in the universe must be in balance. Good with bad, positive with negative and productivity with creativity. What?? You heard right, productivity and creativity are at opposite ends of the spectrum. The part of your brain that handles organized productive thought is the opposite side of the one that comes up with the crazy out of the box thinking that creates revolutionary shifts.

I often hear comments like “I was on the plane and all of a sudden, I had this great idea”. People seem to be most productive when they are disconnected from the world and not working against a fixed timeline.

Productivity is a creativity killer!

A Silicon Valley startup even moved its operations (temporarily) to Hawaii to gain more creativity and come up with breakthrough ideas. 

We all have “dead time” in our lives. Time we spend waiting for the bus, subway. Waiting at a checkout counter or restaurant. Before the era of always connected smartphones, many of us used this time to think about issues that needed to be thought about. Today we spend that time trying to be more productive by responding to emails and conducting web research on the go. Smartphones are a great help but if you need creativity, you should learn to put it away once in a while and just ponder and day-dream.

There was an interested 2009 article about the benefits of ineficiency for creative thinking.

My approach

As the Chief Information Security Officer of a large multinational, my job demands efficiency and control [most of the time]. Yet to truly add value for my company, I need to come up with Big Hairy Audacious Goals that push everyone outside of their comfort zone but that deliver the real long term strategic wins.

When I want to be creative, I follow a flow:

It’s play time

I block out a 4 hour chunk to play with my ideas and often lock  myself in my office. I decide on my first main idea and then use mind mapping to develop and flow. Non-judgmental, honest and fast moving. I have tried mind mapping software but for truly creative thinking, nothing works better [for me] than an analog experience on a whiteboard.

Daydream          

Allow yourself to daydream. Whether it means starring out from a window, bouncing a ball on a nearby wall or taking a random walk, allow yourself to be “non productive”. This unproductive time has been shown to spark big-picture thinking. It allows your brain to process thousands of pieces of unrelated information and produce a masterpiece of original thought.

Some may feel like they are wasting time but this couldn’t be further from the truth. As mental activity decreases, valuable brain activity increases. This has been proven in countless research papers and is the main concept behind meditation. Give your brain a chance and it will amaze you. It will interconnect unrelated bits of information and then will bubble up wonderful ideas to your conscious mind.

Trust that it will happen and get out of the way. Allow yourself to daydream.

We are in the tail end of January and many have already given up on their new year’s resolutions. In life just like in business, too many people “fail” at accomplishing the goals they set up for themselves.

This is a great time to remember one of my favorite questions “What’s most important to you about […]”

Doing less accomplishing more

This is a simple sentence that has been used to turn around dying companies and turn around marriages. Forget about trying to accomplish 500 things simultaneously and distill your commitments to the real value-add goals.  By doing what’s really important, you do less but achieve more. That is the essence of efficient time and goal management.

By making the number of goals more achievable, you set yourself up for success. Your subconscious will be more calm and relaxed because you will be tackling something it believes is achievable (10 goals instead of 100). Not only will this seem more achievable but it also means hundreds of less important distracting activities or decisions points are eliminated, which leads to clearer decision making.

You will do less but complete a lot more value add tasks. By concentrating on the elements that deliver the biggest bang for the buck, you’ll waste less time and receive many more rewards for the tasks you do accomplish.

By doing less, you free up time (which everyone needs more of anyway). You can then decide how to effectively spend this newfound time. It can be used for relaxation, education, spending time with loved ones or accomplishing other meaningful work.

How can I be lazy today?

When planning your schedule, take a minute and ask yourself “how can I be lazier today?” What activities can you get rid of without too much impact? Most people assume everything on their calendar is critical and must get done. Is that really true? Do you have to be in every one of those meetings ? Can they be delegated or refused?

I recommend building in YOU TIME into your calendar. This is time for you to just sit down and relax. Having meditated for over 15 years, with a couple simple breaths, I can put myself in a very calm and relaxed state.

Even if you don’t meditate, take a couple of minutes to sit still on your chair, close your eyes, take a deep invigorated breath, hold it for 10 seconds then slowly exhale. As you are doing this, concentrate on the inflating and deflating of your chest. With every breath, feel the muscles in your body relaxing and releasing all of their tension. Start at the bottom of your feet and work all the way up to the top of your head. This should take no more than 10 minutes (even for a newbies) but will yield hours of benefits in increased productivity.

If thoughts crawl in while you are relaxing, just acknowledge them and tell yourself there will be plenty of time to think about it later and get back to your breathing.