Tag: failure

5 Methods For Creatives To Overcome The Crippling Blocks To Original Ideas

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Did you know that you judge ideas more harshly when you feel uncertain?

In this article, we explore some of the crippling blocks to creativity and five methods to overcome them.

William Blake reminded us — in chilling words — that the person who does not alter their opinion in the face of new knowledge is like a “stagnant pool which breeds reptiles of the mind” — Photo by Krystian Piątek

What gets in your way?

Your fear of making mistakes or taking a risk is one of the most common emotional blocks to your creativity.

James L. Adams, the author of Conceptual Blockbusting, also lists “an inability to tolerate ambiguity and the overriding desire for order” as a block.

You can jump down this rabbit hole if you like 🐇 6 Emotional Barriers to Generating Ideas and How to Overcome Them

Here’s @JimAdamsSU again

You must usually wallow in misleading and ill-fitting data, hazy and difficult-to-test concepts, opinions, values, and other such untidy quantities.

When it comes to problem-solving, your ability to tolerate ambiguity is vital. This emergent idea space is where you make unexpected insights and new connections.

If you’re in a truly new space, you won’t always know the answer. Your team won’t either. You’re going to venture into the unknown together. Curiosity is a great way to lead that charge.

@IDEO Tim Brown 

Negative Bias Towards Creative Ideas

Your inability to tolerate ambiguity also means you don’t appreciate a new idea when you see one.

A 2011 study by Jennifer Mueller whilst at the University of Pennsylvania, points to an underlying negative bias towards new ideas when we feel uncertainty.

Our results show that regardless of how open minded people are, when they feel motivated to reduce uncertainty either because they have an immediate goal of reducing uncertainty, or feel uncertain generally, this may bring negative associations with creativity to mind which result in lower evaluations of a creative idea.

What’s Blocking Corporate Creativity?

When you attempt to reduce uncertainty, you are less receptive to promising ideas.

This negative bias compounds in scenarios that need your creativity. These scenarios are often periods of change or transition, which bring more ambiguity.

Phew, let’s rest here a while. How about some Calvin + Hobbes inspiration on getting in the creative mood?

Do some of these blocks resonate? 

🔴 Fear of making mistakes
🔴 Inability to tolerate ambiguity

Let’s have a look at some methods to help overcome these challenges.

Five methods for overcoming common blocks to creative work.

1 ⟶ Write a Catastrophic Expectations Report

Keep it all in perspective by writing a report on the worst-case scenario. What is the worst that could happen? Analyse the details.

swap your analytical capability for your fear of failure — a good trade 

2 ⟶ Create with others

Team up with trusted colleagues to create and share your ideas. Fears and uncertainty almost always reduce (or at least, fade) in a collective.

3 ⟶ Trust a process

Do you have a clear method to follow? We tend to tolerate more ambiguity when we know there are discrete phases. It is not going to be ambiguous forever.

4 ⟶ Activate feedback loops

The sooner you can jump into the iterative process of sharing, the sooner you increase your tolerance for ambiguity. Identify a trusted feedback buddy and talk about your ideas.

5 ⟶ Review Your Success Swipefile

Anchor your creative work in past success. Swipe through previous ideas, projects and periods of creativity that illustrate how you can overcome any fear or uncertainty. Bookmark those moments, note how you can reprise what worked.

Quick recap

⟶ You judge ideas more harshly when you feel uncertain
⟶ Fear of making mistakes is a common block to creativity

⚡️Write a Catastrophic Expectations Report
⚡️Create with others
⚡️Trust a process
⚡️Activate feedback loops
⚡️Review Your Success Swipefile

One final thought. This beautiful description from author @danijshapiro makes me smile, as it captures the challenge of doing, crafting and shipping creative work.

#antifragile

1*tfae5DyUyfjO i tF108Dg

Learning in Perpetual Beta

28 Days of Writing, Learning, MindsetPublished onUpdated on1 Comment on Learning in Perpetual Beta

 

For today’s post I thought I would explore a little more deeply the themes and overlapping thinking surrounding my previous post about a Mindset of Failing. In particular I’d like to unpack this concept that learning is and always should remain in perpetual beta.

It is actually a considerable challenge to get perspective on the completeness of our work with students. I am not referring to when projects end or when we have finished that piece of artwork with them – the year long (sometimes much longer) development of learning relationships is often hard to wrap ourselves around. Since leaving the classroom I have experienced quite finite projects that have a short timeline and stuff you have to get done. I still find this refreshing.

Perpetual Beta = Prototyping Disposition

vIn an earlier post this month I referred to the mindset we need to take towards the things we create and the way we learn. It is not just about junk modelling or computer aided design or 3D printing or physical building – a disposition towards prototyping means we:

  • Are committed to the expertise and ideas we might gain from others and don’t just simply rely on our own perspective.
  • Believe in the value of feedback and how critique can move our ideas forward.
  • Engineer as many opportunities for feedback as we can as, early as we can.
  • Are willing to share what we create when it is extremely, painfully incomplete.

When a piece of software is being developed it has various stages it goes through, depending on the scale of the product of course. Beta is a time for testing, as defined below:

Beta, named after the second letter of the Greek alphabet, is the software development phase following alpha. It generally begins when the software is feature complete. Software in the beta phase will generally have many more bugs in it than completed software, as well as speed/performance issues and may still cause crashes or data loss. The focus of beta testing is reducing impacts to users, often incorporating usability testing. The process of delivering a beta version to the users is called beta release and this is typically the first time that the software is available outside of the organization that developed it.

Perpetual beta is when this state is extended, sometimes indefinitely, a web service or software product remains in constant development with feedback and testing driving new feature releases. A product remains in perpetual beta.

What does learning in perpetual beta mean?

The links here with the way we think about learning and feedback in particular are quite strong. In my post about the Mindset of Failing I pondered on the mental resilience of tennis players compared to other athletes. Losing points is regular and failing is part of the back and forth of a tennis match, very different to other sports. The post was commented on by Pam Hernandez who remarked that:

This made me think about how we traditionally provide feedback on student learning which is not unlike the analogy to football. I’m thinking American football in this case and getting an A on assignment is much like scoring a touchdown. It’s not uncommon to see teachers use sports analogies and comment “Homerun” or “Touchdown” on good work. I like the idea of rewarding effort along the way and making it okay to make mistakes along the way and be rewarded for the learning. It’s a different mindset for parents, teachers and students. (Pam Hernandez)

And it is here that we have the biggest opportunity to shift the way people are thinking about failure and failing. It is no small feat mind you. There are cultural and ethical stances people have that influence their perception of mistakes and failure in learning. We need to help the whole learning community appreciate this positive prototyping disposition. Learning in perpetual beta is all about continuous improvement with an emphasis on engineering as many opportunities for feedback as we can.

Take a look through some of these other posts from my this blog about assessment and feedback and plan to take some action:

Pic: failure is cool by Steffi Reichert

The Mindset of Failing

28 Days of Writing, MindsetPublished onUpdated on8 Comments on The Mindset of Failing

Failing at tennis - ading to a growth mindset

Learning about sport when I was young mainly involved cricket and football, I never really experienced tennis. My son has been playing since he was about 4 and this season has been enjoying playing as part of a local team in a Junior Competition every Saturday. I think he is experiencing what failing feels like through his time playing tennis.

I have been getting to know what it is like being a tennis Dad this season and watching a lot of tennis, naturally. One thing you notice with this sport compared to football is the number of small victories and failures there are. It is much more about the cumulative effort, gradually building up points, overcoming the failures you experience.

If you play tennis you will know that failure and winning/losing points is an integral part of this sport. This is different to the experience of football I had growing up, where the end result was the only thing that mattered, there were not many measures of progress. Sure you could tell which team was dominating play, but it was not as clear as you win a point or you lose a point.

I have always found it fascinating that in tennis you could be one point from defeat and yet still come back to win a match. My son starting his match today losing 3 early games and before long he was losing 4-2, but he suddenly woke up and won the remaining 4 on the bounce to win 6-4.

Do multiple small setbacks during tennis create a more resilient approach? I wonder if the mindset of a tennis player sees failing and losing differently to a football player?

The Done Manifesto

Assessment, LeadershipPublished on1 Comment on The Done Manifesto

Bre Pattis from MakerBot and Kio Stark gave themselves 20 minutes to capture everything they knew about bringing a creative vision to life – the result is The Done Manifesto – 13 Rules for Realising Your Creative Vision (Beautifully illustrated by James Provost)

“These maxims are really a super concise and clear way of restating one of the founding tenets of so-called design thinking: The idea of creating prototypes as soon as you can, and failing as fast as possible so you can evolve your way to something great. ”

My favourite of the statements has to be this one:

10. Failure counts as done. So do mistakes.

This type of outlook on the creative process is pretty commonplace for start-ups and other such industries, but failure is rarely fully embraced in a school or education environment. In my opinion if we were to consider the curriculum design as a start-up industry – not the whole school – just the creative process of designing engaging, enriching, meaningful experiences for children – then it has to rank as one of the most creative industries of them all.

I always enjoyed seeing roughly where we were heading and immersing myself in better understanding the topic, research and the options for learning that was available. Creating implementations of a standard curriculum is a hugely creative process. All too often the workshop classroom is all about getting it right, rather than getting it wrong.

I think this is misguided and developing an ethos of mistake leadership in our classes is key to creating meaningful experiences for children in school.

“So do mistakes.”

Done Manifesto by James Provost
Done Manifesto by James Provost