Planning vs. Creativity

For years I was a planner; planning is my natural tendency, but my work also required orderly thinking and the ability to manage and design processes. It was important for me to know that I was going to end at point X and to know all of the steps along the way. Then I began to read Julia Cameron’s The Artist’s Way. As I read this book and others I began to broaden my definition of creativity and to understand how the need to plan every detail got in the way of my creativity on two levels.

A breakthrough came when I had the notion for the Creative Leadership Workshop. I had this cool idea for a 12 week workshop for students modeled on The Artist’s Way, but with a different purpose. I wanted to find a way to combine what I was learning about creativity with leadership. It was early August and classes started in just a couple of weeks, so I could work on it during the fall semester and offer the sessions in the spring.

And that’s when I had the truly radical idea that instead of waiting I could do it now! Of course, the planner part of me kicked in with all the reasons that it wouldn’t work to do it this semester, but for once I ignored them. I sketched out the basic ideas and went back to the office ready to try it. So I invited a group of students to participate and 20 of them were brave or crazy enough to give it try. When we started, I had an outline of what we would do though I had no idea which things would work and which were too crazy. The workshop turned out to be an incredible experience and the list of things we all learned is much too long to share here, but part of the reason it worked so well was because there was room for new ideas as we went along. It’s also true that my idea of success was much too limited for what really happened.

So that was the first level of learning – it’s possible for things to work without a plan. Having the outline but not the plan allowed for more learning than I could have imagined.

The second level came when I offered the workshop again. I’ve offered the full workshop three other times, once for staff and twice more for students. The staff group was a great event, but the second and third sessions of the student version were never as amazing as the first. I think it was because I now had a lesson plan; I was reaching for a specific result now. I had told the first group that we were making it up together and that they were part of the creative process so they approached it in that way. It was a truly participative experience. Not having a complete plan allowed others the freedom to be creative too.

Creativity – it takes an odd mix of planning, freedom, openness to other’s ideas and to the possibilities of the moment. So what event might you chose not to plan?

Lists, lists, lists.

So, what’s on your list? I know you have one. We all do. Some of us are list-makers; we like everything written down so we don’t forget something. Even more we like the feeling of accomplishment when we check something off or draw a line through it. (There are even a few of us who upon completing a task that wasn’t on the list will add it after the fact just for the pleasure of marking it done!)

Ok, you’re not that crazy. In fact, you don’t like to write down a list, too stressful to see it all in one place or maybe too confining. But admit it, even if you aren’t a list-maker, you have a list. It may be things you’d like to do sometime in this lifetime. It might be your New Year’s resolutions. It might be a ‘should’ list of things you ought to do someday like clean out the garage. It doesn’t matter what form it takes, we all have lists of some sort or another even if we call it our kid’s social calendar. From mid-November through the start of the year, those lists can be particularly full and crazy-making.

My original ideas was to write something about planning as a leadership skill, as a way to make things a little less hectic. It’s true that planning can help, but the reality is that no matter how well we plan, some days it doesn’t help. Whether it’s someone else’s poor planning, a traffic snarl, or the slow cashier, there are things outside our control, beyond the reach of our wonderful plans and it can all go awry.

Therefore, instead of talking about planning, here’s a reminder from Leadership Yoga – it’s not so much what we do as how we do it. I had a list for today and I’m off schedule. I could choose to rush through things feeling frazzled – that’s the way to a cut finger while slicing vegetables. Or I could choose to chop vegetables with my full attention, carefully, easily, enjoying the smells and colors and textures. Full disclosure here, after chopping two onions had me in tears, I asked my husband for help – also an important lesson in getting things done. After the onions, he kept on with the celery while I peeled carrots and it turned in to the fun of cooking together. If I’d been feeling harried and sorry for myself I would have missed out on that moment.

So, the next time your list is overwhelming, or you’re feeling frazzled, quit worrying about getting it all done and start paying attention to how you’re doing the one task in front of you. Take a deep yoga breath and let it out fully and see what there is to enjoy in the task, even if it’s just that when you’re done you can cross it off the list.

Enjoy!

Gage