Making Ideas Happen (13 page)

Unfortunately, perspiration is not glamorous. Endless late nights, multiple redrafts, and countless meetings consume the majority of your time—al with the intention of breathing life into your projects. Passion for your work wil also play an important role. Passion yields tolerance—tolerance for al of the frustration and hardship that come your way as you seek to make your ideas happen.

In order to channel your ability to focus—and perspire—for extended periods of time, you wil likely need to develop a consistent work schedule. Structuring time spent executing ideas is a best practice of admired creative leaders across industries. It is the only way to keep up with the continuous stream of Action Steps and al ocate sufficient time for deep thought.

It is worth taking a few moments to look at the work routines of some especial y prolific writers of our time. Writing is a particularly labor-intensive exercise that cal s for pure discipline and perspiration. You can have al the ideas in the world in your head—or at your fingertips—but you stil need to write them down, word by word.

In July 2007, Mason Currey, a New York-based writer and editor, embarked on a project to better understand how a writer’s daily routine contributes to the ability to focus and execute. The project took shape through a blog, Daily Routines, that is scheduled to be published in book form by Knopf in 2011.

Currey chronicled the schedules that particularly productive writers—as wel as statesmen, scientists, and artists—have prescribed for themselves in the past. For a year and a half, Currey’s Web site had only a few dozen readers, who were mostly friends and coworkers. Then, in December 2008, the online publication Slate.com linked to the blog and Currey started receiving tens of thousands of hits per day.

Aside from Currey’s own story of perspiration yielding a positive outcome, the interview excerpts and articles cataloged on Daily Routines offer insight into how developing a consistent daily regimen for execution can help us make ideas happen.

It was on Daily Routines that I discovered this interview with Michael Lewis, author of the bestsel ing books
Moneyball
and
Liar’s Poker
, from Robert Boynton’s
The New
New Journalism: Conversations with America’s Best Nonfiction Writers on Their Craft.

HOW DO YOU BEGIN WRITING?

Fitful y. I’l write something, but it won’t be the beginning or the middle or the end—I’m just getting an idea out on the page. Then, as the words accumulate, I start thinking about how they need to be organized.

IS THERE ANY TIME OF DAY YOU LIKE TO WRITE?

I’ve always written best very early in the morning and very late at night. I write very little in the middle of the day. If I do any work in the middle of the day, it is editing what I’ve written that morning.

WHAT WOULD YOUR IDEAL WRITING DAY LOOK LIKE?

Left to my own devices, with no family, I’d start writing at seven P.M. and stop at four A.M. That is the way I used to write. I liked to get ahead of everybody. I’d think to myself, “I’m starting tomorrow’s workday, tonight!” Late nights are wonderful y tranquil.

No phone cal s, no interruptions. I like the feeling of knowing that nobody is trying to reach me.

IS THERE ANYWHERE YOU NEED TO BE IN ORDER TO WRITE?

No, I’ve written in every conceivable circumstance. I like writing in my office, which is an old redwood cabin about a hundred yards from my house in Berkeley. It has a kitchen, a little bedroom, a bathroom, and a living room, which I use as a study. But I’ve written in awful enough situations that I know that the quality of the prose doesn’t depend on the circumstance in which it is composed. I don’t believe the muse visits you. I believe that you visit the muse. If you wait for that “perfect moment” you’re not going to be very productive.

Contrary to Michael Lewis, bestsel ing novelist John Grisham has a more prescribed routine—and it was even more so when he was practicing law and writing at the same time.

When he first started writing, Grisham explained in an interview with the
San
Francisco Chronicle
, he had “these little rituals that were sil y and brutal but very important”: “The alarm clock would go off at five, and I’d jump in the shower. My office was five minutes away. And I had to be at my desk, at my office, with the first cup of coffee, a legal pad, and write the first word at 5:30, five days a week.”

Grisham’s goal: to write a page every day. Sometimes that would take ten minutes, sometimes an hour; often he would write for two hours before he had to turn to his job as a lawyer, which he never especial y enjoyed. Working in the Mississippi legislature, Grisham experienced “enormous amounts of wasted time” that would give him the opportunity to write.

As you glimpse these wel -known writers’ routines, you get a sense of the important role structure plays in creative pursuits. While each person’s schedule is different, the purpose of keeping a schedule is the same for everyone. Living by your own creative tendencies, rationalizations, and emotional whims wil not suffice. Sheer perspiration wil come only from organizing your energy and holding yourself accountable with some sort of routine.

Reconsider Your Work Space

How you arrange your work space is a very personal choice, especial y as you embark on creative projects. Your surroundings affect your ability to focus, and perhaps your propensity to think creatively. But the characteristics of a space that make us more productive—or more creative—can seem elusive. Some teams insist on open loft-type spaces that are shared by al team members. Other companies adopt a more traditional setup of personal cubicles or offices that provide more privacy for employees. While there are no set-in-stone best practices for the ideal work space, there are some helpful principles worth considering.

Different types of spaces support different types of activity. For example, in one recent study by Joan Meyers-Levy, a professor of marketing at the University of Minnesota, it was found that ceiling height affected how people processed information. In the study, Meyers-Levy assigned one hundred participants to one of two rooms—the first had an eight-foot ceiling, and the other had a ten-foot ceiling. Al of the people were then asked to perform the same task, which involved grouping items into categories of their choice.

Those in the room with higher ceilings came up with a more abstract set of categories, while those in the smal er room proposed more concrete categories. “You’re focusing on the specific details in the lower-ceiling condition,” Meyers-Levy explained in
Scientific
American Mind
.

Smal er, more confined spaces may help us focus more intently while wide-open spaces with higher ceilings foster a more unencumbered way of thinking. According to Meyers-Levy, “It very much depends on what kind of task you’re doing . . . if you’re in the operating room, maybe a low ceiling is better. You want the surgeon getting the details right.”

Meyers-Levy is careful to suggest that the actual dimensions of space are not necessarily the main determinant. “We think you can get these effects just by manipulating the perception of space,” she explained. Nevertheless, her findings suggest that, when we are conducting research or trying to focus on our Action Steps, we should sequester ourselves to smal er, more confined environments. But, when brainstorming or beginning a creative project, we should try to work in a more open space.

Other factors—like the brightness, noise level, and décor—are also likely to impact your tendencies, but on a more personal level. If you pay attention to how your productivity changes in variable work conditions, you can start to move around and change your work space depending on the projects or tasks at hand.

Be sure to preserve the sanctity of your work spaces. In an attempt to limit the spur-of-the-moment meetings that are likely to happen in an open work environment, you might want to treat your col eagues as if their desk areas had an imaginary door. While it is tempting to have an open environment with constant back-and-forth, sometimes the state of creative flow needs to be respected and preserved. Our chief designer at Behance, Matias Corea, supports the notion of an open work environment, but when he needs to focus on something, he uses headphones to send a signal that he doesn’t want to be interrupted.

Your work space is your zone for both creative thought and execution. As such, the ideal conditions (and restrictions) for your space wil constantly change. Develop an awareness of your tendencies in varying conditions, and use this knowledge to better manage your energy as you make progress on projects.

Reduce Your Amount of “Insecurity Work”

As you introduce your ideas to the world, you are bound to become anxious about what the world thinks. You wil want to frequently observe the progress you are making and confirm the status of everything you’ve created. This is a normal tendency, even though the root of it is often an unfounded insecurity—a fear that you’ve overlooked something or wil ultimately fail. While we al have different insecurities, most of us share a common approach to dealing with them: we seek information to make our anxiety go away. For some, this amounts to countless hours spent reviewing traffic reports for Web sites, scrutinizing bank balances and every transaction in your business, reviewing Twitter search feeds for your business, getting daily e-mails with every piece of data you can imagine—the list goes on. Basking in the data makes us feel better.

I cal these daily (and in some cases hourly) habits “Insecurity Work.” It’s the stuff you do that has no intended outcome, does not move the bal forward in any way, and is quick enough that you can do it multiple times a day without realizing how much time is being wasted. While al of these actions are important once in a while, there is no rational reason to perform them so often.

Insecurity Work is a trap that plagues many creative leaders. Your constant need for assurance becomes a shackle on your productivity. Work you can do that advances your projects is replaced by work that merely quel s your anxiety. New technology and ubiquitous online access have made it even worse. Information that could make you feel more at ease is always at your fingertips, and therefore, you always have a desire to access it—again and again. Why? Because, deep down, we are always wondering what we are missing.

To cure ourselves of the addiction to Insecurity Work, we must employ a combination of awareness, self-discipline, and delegation tactics.

The first step is to recognize what you do in your everyday life that is, in fact, Insecurity Work. Whether it is checking the same search terms again and again or constantly watching your e-mail in-box as if it were a boiling pot of water, pay attention to where your focus wanders when you’re distracted from the project at hand. By consciously labeling your Insecurity Work as such, you wil become self-aware.

The second step is to establish some guidelines and rituals for yourself. Al ow yourself a thirty-minute period at the end of every day (or, if you dare, every week) during which you can go through the list of things you’re curious about. Perhaps make al of these things bookmarks in a browser that you don’t normal y use—and open it only when al owed! Weaning yourself off Insecurity Work is akin to reducing your reliance on an addictive substance. You may find yourself craving the data (and self-assurance) that you are missing. And so, you wil want to wean yourself slowly.

The third step, if applicable to you, is to delegate the task of checking on this data to a less insecure col eague who can review it with moderation. The col eague should be told to review the data regularly and—when necessary—tel you when something is wrong.

The purpose of reducing your Insecurity Work is to free up your mind, energy, and time for generating and taking action on your ideas. Insecurity Work threatens to weigh you down and prevents you from escaping the never-ending ticker of what the world thinks.

To envision what wil be, you must remove yourself from the constant concern for what already is.

THE FORCES OF COMMUNITY

YOUR CAPACITY TO
organize and execute is only the first of three ingredients in the pursuit of making ideas happen. The humbling truth is that ideas are not made to happen through solitary genius or ingenuity. As our exploration of the forces of community wil il ustrate, other people always play a role in pushing your ideas forward.

It is no surprise that ideas gain new dimensions when other people get involved.

Concepts are more quickly refined, holes in logic more quickly exposed. As you engage others in your projects, you become accountable for being productive and fol owing through. The forces of community help you capitalize on feedback, stay nimble, and share the burden of execution.

Your success wil depend on how wel you harness the efforts of others. As you wil see in the chapters ahead, you must be proactive in identifying who your community includes, and how to engage diverse groups of people with different perspectives. With thoughtful stewardship, your community wil become the ultimate platform for your ideas.

HARNESSING THE FORCES AROUND YOU

YOUR COMMUNITY IS
al around you—your team, mentors, clients or customers, col aborators, and of course your family and friends. Your community wil seldom understand your idea in the beginning, but it wil help make it real in the end. Every idea has constituents—members of your community who hold a stake. It is your job to engage and make use of your idea’s constituents.

Those with a track record for gaining traction around their ideas are especial y good at harnessing the forces of community. However, there is a common hesitation to embrace such forces. The creative process can feel tainted once you introduce the opinions and influence of others. Artists are famous for their spiteful relationships with critics, some going so far as to insist that they don’t create their work for anyone in particular—as if the enjoyment of their work by others is simply a by-product of their bril iance. Similarly, entrepreneurs often struggle to incorporate feedback and build lasting partnerships in their endeavors.