Iterate

Gym for the Mind

Whatever the profession, hitting a plateau isn’t fun. Interestingly, athletes have a remedy for this unpleasant state — they call it “shocking the system”. For them a state of plateau occurs because muscle groups adapt to a specific training stimulus when its type, volume and/or intensity does not change over time. So to counter that, they continuously vary their training routines and periods of recovery. Effect: body gets shocked every 4 to 5 weeks and has to start adapting all over again (i.e., build more muscle tissue).

What if we apply this technique to the domain of creativity? Could it be that varying between different types of creative work (e.g., writing × design × photography) could improve the fitness of our minds more than focusing on just one area (e.g., only writing)? My guess is yes. That’s what we do during our early years at school after all: switch from one subject to the next. Until we get to higher education that is, where we are told to become experts in one thing, keep our mouths shut and start paying taxes finally. Hmmm maybe that’s part of the reason why quite a bit of influential people in our history didn’t do so well at school? Because if anybody, those guys definitely did not stick to one discipline (think here Leonardo da Vinci, Steve Jobs, Richard Branson, Isaac Newton, and Pablo Picasso). Again, this could be just a coincidence. Or could it?

The “But Sentence"

We all know the "but sentence", the lousy attempt at feedback that ends up being more annoying than it actually is helping. Like getting a chocolate bar that’s full of salty filling inside — it teases you with a tasty treat only to disappoint you in the end, leaving a bad taste afterwards too. Never mind that chocolate bars with salty filling don't exist (maybe that's why), the "but sentence" is hardly a wining formula for giving feedback. Yet few things in life are perfect and there is often room for improvement, so banishing “but” altogether isn’t probably a good idea either. How about flipping the “but sentence” around then, such that we would mention the negative bit up front and follow up with the positive stuff? For example, instead of saying “I like your presentation but you could have used less slides” we could say “You could have used less slides but I like your presentation”. Doesn't that sound better? It could be that simple — the "but sentence” goes first, and all the goodness follows afterwards. The end result of this chop and change could be that those on the receiving end get to keep their egos warm and cosy plus the added bonus of knowing what they could do better next time. More importantly, you could get your point across.

Simplify