Listening to Catching The Big Fish by David Lynch reminded me how important it is for creative people to experience idleness often and to guard it selfishly. In a country that values productivity above all else and rebukes idleness as laziness, this is no small feat to push toward.
The worship of productivity is nowhere more pronounced than in the startup world, a world I have been a part of for more than 10 years. Workaholism is worshipped here and the “always on” employee is favored. Too many people get caught up in the “doing” and it perplexes me to wonder why more people don’t recognize that this mindset can be a major contributing factor to a startup’s failure. Good ideas don’t come from being “on” all of the time. Good ideas come in the idleness between the doing.
Even worse than the “always on” mentality for creative thinking, is the open office environment. There’s nothing more disruptive to flow than being stuck in an office where there’s constant din, movement, and interruptions. Unless you happen to have ADD and your mind is strangely calmed in this environment. Otherwise, you are lucky if you produce anything of value at all.
Production is worthless unless it moves you toward your goal, but most people focus on the output rather than the goal. If you are tasking people to hit goals and you are still riding them constantly about their output, you are focused on production and not the goal. I’ve seen this type of mixed message play out time and time again at work, because I don’t think most people understand or value creative and strategic thinking.
Even when we are not at work, this productivity obsessiveness that has been all but embedded into our DNA will drive some to schedule their every last waking minute taking classes, keeping up with the latest trends, or frenetically trying to keep up with their personal lives. I’m going to personally raise my hand here to say that I am one of these people. I even take on unassuming things like self-improvement projects with so much gusto that a friend has to remind me that I need to take a self-care break.
Today, even our idleness has been co-opted by addictive time wasters disguised as creative tools. These sites tend to take ahold of our brain rather than release it into a flow that creativity thrives on. Our brains can only process so much at any given time and when we are constantly bombarded with information, we don’t have access to the space where we can discover and connect to the big ideas.
Because we value productivity and demonize idleness, it’s not easy for anyone to stay in this place. Idleness causes anxiety in most people and I think it’s mainly because of the negative associations that comes with inaction. Case in point, when I was looking up synonyms for idleness, these are the words I found: indolence, inertia, laziness, shiftlessness, sloth. Now, I’m not talking about the idleness that takes the form of mindless chitchat, tv watching, playing games, taking substances or the like. I’m talking about true idleness that allows for boredom, meditation, or contemplation. It can include movement, but it’s not focused on the movement. It’s focused on the easy flow of thought when you afford the mind enough space to wonder freely.
David Lynch describes this flow as tapping into the quantum field — where the big ideas live. He speaks of how the mind is expanded by the practice of meditation and you bring this expansion into your waking world. In this consciousness, you can tap into ideas which will then attract additional ideas until you’ve given birth to a truly creative product that would otherwise not have been born.
Let the doers do. The lucky ones will sometimes catch a fish in the shallow water, but the fisherman that have the patience to go deep often … they will be the fishers of men, the producers of magic.
