Creative tension
Mixing certainty, uncertainty, focus and wandering to best effect
It’s an exciting time at Headland. We're moving into a shiny new office, and we all get to sit on the same floor for the first time in a long time. This is bad for my step count (no more regular jaunts up and down the stairs), but it's perfect for increasing chance interactions and chats by the coffee machine.
We’re all working from home this week to help facilitate the move, which, particularly given the five-year anniversary of lockdown one, has prompted much reminiscing about that strange, fever-dream time.
I’ve written before that one of the most challenging aspects of the enforced working from home period was keeping my creative muscles active. Something about sitting in the same room, day in and day out, and the strange, liminal nature of time seemed to make ideas hard to come by.
While a lack of energy from being around other people certainly contributed to this creative atrophy, there was also something about the monotony and repetitiveness of lockdown work days that seemed to hamper the imagination.
With the benefit of hindsight, I can also say that a lack of uncertainty about my days contributed to my feeling creatively stuck.
Now, there was obviously a massive amount of uncertainty swirling around society at that time, but the days lacked some of those smaller, random moments that provided energy and spark.
Writing on her blog A Working Library recently, Mandy Brown highlights that (via Ursula Le Guin, “uncertainty is…the only thing that makes life possible”.
“Without [uncertainty], we would move like automatons through predetermined paths, unspirited, unaware, unliving. Our awareness of life, of its great variety and beauty and possibility, emerges out of uncertainty. Awareness, that sense of being awake to the world, is necessary only because we live in uncertainty. If we knew what was to come, we would have no need for sensemaking, no need to be alert to what’s around us, no need to ever open our eyes and ears and arms to each other.”
That sense of “being awake to the world” is vital to any creative endeavour. In his book The Creative Act, Rick Rubin encourages us to be aware of our surroundings and to channel some of the energy in the world into our creative endeavours. And that’s the same whether you’re writing a song or developing tactical PR ideas.
All ideas come from somewhere. Being alive to what’s happening in the world is a crucial way of generating fresh, exciting and relevant thinking. And sometimes what’s happening in the world can feel strange, challenging and downright baffling.
But often, these “unforeseen circumstances” provide constraints that can benefit the creative process. We need constraints when we’re coming up with ideas. Anyone who’s sat in a brainstorm with no brief and been asked to come up with something knows how painful that feels.
Sometimes, those constraints can feel limiting, being too certain and prescribed. But often, finding an answer within those constraints can generate the most rewarding work.
James Caig shared this example from Nick Park on LinkedIn recently, highlighting how Gromit’s final form in his first feature couldn’t have been more different from how he imagined:
The certainty of Nick Park’s original sketches clashed with the uncertainty of how he would animate those sketches in clay. The tension between the two generated the perfect answer.
In any creative process, generating the right amount of tension is one of the crucial factors. Popular culture loves the idea of the creative duo popularised by Lennon and McCartney. We also love the caricature of those partnerships - Lennon, the embittered cynic combining with the earnest optimism of McCartney. Or the glamour of Brett Anderson combining with the serious chops of Bernard Butler. Or Morrissey and Marr, or Pete and Carl from The Libertines.
But we also know that all those relationships turned sour at some point (some revived, others not). The alchemy couldn’t be sustained, and the tension became overtightened before snapping like a taut guitar string.
The tension is necessary, but getting the balance right is an inexact science.
And it’s not just in creative partnerships that we need to get the tension just right. Recent research shows that it’s also necessary to balance the different areas of the brain to generate fresh, creative ideas.
In a post titled Creative Thinking and the Balanced Brain,
highlights recent research which indicates that “the creative brain is a balanced brain”. That balance comes from two different areas of our brain - the Executive Attention Network (when we’re concentrating on a complex problem) and the Imagination Network (when we’re letting our minds wander into daydreams and reverie).Studies show that the ability to switch between those two modes of thinking “was significantly and positively associated with the performance of later creative ability”. As Kaufman says:
“This suggests that generating creative ideas requires an optimal balance between imagination and controlled attention.”
You might also characterise this balance between focus and daydreaming as the balance between certainty and uncertainty.
As anyone who’s sat down with a creative or strategic problem and a blank sheet of paper knows, there’s a great deal of uncertainty at the beginning. It can be hard to know when to start, and you can feel listless and lost in letting the mind wander.
But science tells us this step is crucial in unlocking great ideas and getting to the point where you find focus. That’s often when you’ve discovered a great campaign idea or tactic and have to think through how it would actually work. Writing it out or describing it to someone else requires focus and certainty.
And you’ll definitely be switching between the two modes, as you wonder exactly, “How could we take over a town with Walker’s crisps?” or “What would a Haribo x Crocs collaboration look like?”.
However, both modes of thinking are equally crucial to the process. Creativity and creative thinking can often be misinterpreted as not being “proper work”. The typical stereotype of an agency creative is that they spend all day playing table tennis and five minutes coming up with ideas.
Anyone who’s ever worked with effective creatives knows that balance is crucial - the wandering (both figurative and literal), the inspiration-gathering happening alongside bursts of focus and intense output. The work aspect of creative thinking is often underplayed and undervalued, but now we have neuroscience to prove its importance.
So, if you’re feeling lost and uncertain about a brief, or equally if you’re feeling trapped by routine and process, the trick is to switch it all up, to force your brain to switch between your modes. Get outside or get involved to unlock uncertainty. Find your flow, and dial up your focus to bring more certainty to proceedings. But always ensure your environment is conducive to finding that elusive balance that can produce the most effective results.