Time to Write: Why You Should Be Unreasonable

March 13th, 2008 | Creativity

Jurgen at Time to Write has written a brief review of Paul Lemberg’s Be Unreasonable that can be found here. Something he wrote really stood out to me:

While people believe that systems are the death knell for creativity, the opposite is true. Systemized companies standardize the routine, relieving people’s minds of trying to figure it out each and every day. Instead of focusing on the commonplace, people’s minds are free to consider the extraordinary. Creativity soars.

I think I’ve said it elsewhere, but the fact is that creativity needs structure. Think about how your mind works when you are brainstorming: it jumps from idea to idea, but the best brainstorming happens when you have a mechanism (white boards, outlining programs, notepad) for capturing an idea before you jump to the next.

The word “brainstorm” actually conjures up the wrong metaphor. The process is more like a tornado than a storm. The central idea serves as the vortex that all the other conjured ideas are brought to, and as the tornado picks up steam, more ideas are brought into it. Lastly, the results from a really good braintornado can be quite dramatic…novels can be written from the process, months worth of blog posts scheduled, or entire ways of thinking and organized can be developed (or destroyed for a better system).

But it’s a lot harder to say braintornado than brain storm, so I doubt we’ll see any change in the term any time soon.

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8 comments ↓

#1 Quiet Rebel Writer on 03.14.08 at 4:57 pm

Charlie -
You’ve got a great point here. I consider myself very creative, but also very anal. I regularly submit my creativity to my systems of organization, because if I don’t, if I don’t make lists and outlines and next steps and all that great GTD stuff, I feel out of control. That’s not conducive to creativity - that’s stifling. Structure allows my creativity to flourish and flow.

Thanks for a great post!

Quiet Rebel Writer’s last blog post..Marketing Rant: Cheapening the Craft

#2 Charles Gilkey on 03.15.08 at 10:06 am

@ QRW: Thanks for the comment. Few things are more frustrating than having the ideas flowing but no way to capture them; whatever you do come up is usually lost, and you begin to try to fight the ideas so that you don’t lose them, and hence they never come.

#3 Bloggrrl on 03.15.08 at 10:51 am

This is interesting. I’m not sure if I agree or not, but I’m going to be examining my circumstances and looking for differences. Thanks for pointing out this point of view.

Bloggrrl’s last blog post..A House, A Contest, Some Pictures

#4 Nick on 03.19.08 at 6:25 am