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From: The Idea Accelerator: How to solve problems faster using Speed Thinking by Dr Ken Hudson
It’s like everything that’s going on around us can be imagined as 360° - a whole world of perception, conception, experience, emotion, input, colour and … everything. And it’s not stretching the idea too far to propose that we’re only ever aware of a slice of this. Let’s say we can define that slice by an angle - say, the one that connects A with B this way:
Now let’s imagine we can increase this angle. However we imagine this happening (perhaps by learning something, having an eye-opening experience, challenging ourselves to step outside the conventional), a relatively small increment back in the centre, at the ‘me’ point, can incrementally increase the degree of consciousness of the ‘not me’, the ‘out there’, of which we previously were unaware, like this:
We’ve been talking about hard work, persistence and disciplined habits. We’ve been talking about how to fill your time, but what about leaving some empty?
It’s not just a matter of health, though that is important.
It’s not just a matter of effectiveness, though of course the 80-20 rule suggests that more work does not yield proportionally greater returns.
It’s about creating some genuine space for your mind to do its most wonderful work - to meander without purpose, to play without limits, to revel in the possibility of right now. When did you last feel like that?
“It is the perennial debate… between the beliefs that all creative acts are born of (a) some transcendent, inexplicable Dionysian act of inspiration… or (b) hard work… I come down on the side of hard work… Creativity is a habit, and the best creativity is the result of good work habits.”
What is your creative ambition?
What are the vital steps to achieve it?
How do you begin your day?
What are your habits?
Twyla Tharp in The Creative Habit: Learn It And Use It For Life
In A Whole New Mind, Daniel Pink lists Play as one of the key competencies we will need to thrive in the emerging conceptual age. Pink quotes Pat Kane, author of the Play Ethic, “Play will be to the 21st century what work was to the last 300 years of industrial society — our dominant way of knowing, doing and creating value”(p185).
At the 2008 Serious Play conference, designer Tim Brown talked about the powerful relationship between creative thinking and play — with examples you can try at home. See it on TED. (If you haven’t discovered TED yet, be warned - it’s addictive!)
