Why Business Owners Benefit From Taking Time for Creativity
I can’t draw. Well, I’m pretty good at stick figures, so I’ll give myself that. I do okay with paintings if I go to one of those paint ‘n sip places, but my painting doesn’t usually have a strong resemblance to the instructor’s.
Like a surprising number of financial planners I know, I enjoy writing. (I even wrote a book on productivity – more here!) That’s my creative outlet, as it is for lots of people.
You might not enjoy doing art, or needleworking, or writing, or any of that. You might feel embarrassed about the fact that you’re “not really creative”. Conversely, you might enjoy a creative hobby, but you don’t see that it has any benefit to your business.
I’m bringing this up because May 30 is National Creativity Day, and creativity is important for business owners in more ways than one. Even if you don’t enjoy creative hobbies or can’t draw or whatever, you can still be creative, so don’t worry.
What is creativity?
People who aren’t artistically inclined sometimes believe they’re not creative, because that’s the popular definition of it. Business owners who tend to think logically, and those who believe if something doesn’t outright generate money it isn’t valuable, tend to underestimate the importance of it.
Creativity is really just looking at things in a new way, taking ideas and combining them in different ways, or bringing together concepts from different fields to solve a problem. Brain teasers often require creative thinking, and can help you build that part of your thinking.
Most importantly for knowledge workers (including business owners) in the 21st century, creativity does not use the same brain regions as logical thinking does. The prefrontal cortex (PFC), which is crucial when you’re strategizing, crunching numbers, planning, and other similar tasks, is not involved in creative thinking. Being creative is something brains generally enjoy, and also gives them a break from all that PFC work, which is draining.
Creativity helps you find solutions to the problems your clients face that haven’t already been done before. If you’re a consultant who wants to develop a methodology your clients can follow (like the LaserBrainTM method), creativity helps you get there.
It does require that you set aside time away from your logical thinking tasks. You don’t always get great ideas during this time, and creativity isn’t quantifiable either. Meaning that you might feel unproductive or that the time you set aside was a waste. Sometimes one of the best ways to be creative is to just look out the window, which feels VERY unproductive in the 21st century!
But consider the nature of creativity. Think about when you get good ideas – for many people, things come to them suddenly while they’re in the shower. Your subconscious mind does a lot of heavy lifting, more than you’re aware of. (That thing is BUSY.)
So even if your staring out the window didn’t produce anything while you were doing the staring, your mind is working behind the scenes. When you’re in the shower or a similar situation where you’re not really using your prefrontal cortex, your mind can make those illogical leaps and come up with an amazing idea.
When you’re using the PFC, for the most part, you get the answers as you’re working. You crunch the numbers or create your strategy right then and there. That’s not how creativity works, so you can't expect the same results or for the results to happen in the same way.
Creativity is good for your brain…
The fact that it doesn’t involve the PFC, but still keeps your brain active, is key here. Humans just don’t get an entire day of good work and good decisions from the PFC, and it’s slow (compared to other brain functions) and takes a lot of energy.
Creativity isn’t as energy hogging, and as noted above, can work in the background while you’re doing other things too. It’s also very satisfying for the brain to see progress on a piece of art or a problem solved, so you get some happy neurotransmitter release when these things happen.
When you measure time by dollars (or vice versa), the problem is that you don’t account for externalities. When you think about a coal plant, for example, you might think about how much energy it produces per unit of coal. That can be translated into dollars, and by extension a share price.
But the coal plant is also contaminating the air around it, which sickens the people who live nearby. It may also be dumping waste into the water, whether that’s a stream or underground water table. That also sickens people and leaves behind toxic waste, which contaminates the area for decades, if not centuries. These are the externalities behind the dollars the coal plant is generating.
In an ideal world, it would also be reflected in the stock price. Unfortunately, many of these industries have privatized the profit for themselves and left the public to pay for the mess they leave behind. It’s hard to quantify how much the coal plant contributes to the poor health of those it affects, because people get sick for all kinds of reasons. But certainly the cleanup of toxic materials has a price, and that should be factored into the stock price.
Okay, off my soapbox now. But you see my point about how certain externalities aren’t easily quantifiable and measuring profit isn’t always that simple. For a computer to do its job, the only real externality is the price of the energy input from electricity.
Externalities aren’t really relevant for a computer. But a human brain? They’re extremely relevant.
I’m a consultant, and I can value my consulting time in dollars. (I price my services as packages, not by the hour, but that’s just another way of assigning dollar value.) Since I run a knowledge business, which means my brain is the major money-maker, there are a LOT of externalities to generating value for clients.
For example, there’s
All my experience, in project management, in office work, etc.
Everything I learned in school, undergraduate school, MBA
Everything I’ve read (others might gather info from podcasts and videos as well)
Plus, there’s my performance during the day when I’m partnering with my clients. For peak performance, humans including moi need to have:
Enough sleep (7-8 hours a night for the vast majority of adults)
Nutrition
Physical movement
A break after concentrated work
In order for the brain to function well, humans (including moi) also need:
Fun activities, as each person defines fun for themselves
Some socializing, though introverts need to balance this with a lot of alone time
A sense of purpose
And (nope, not done yet), creativity means that I need non-domain-specific knowledge as well. Not just reading about productivity and being effective and project management, which I use with my clients, but also about science and technology and art so that I have lots of different perspectives and ideas.
That’s a lot of externalities, most of which can’t be quantified. And yes, my services are high quality. But you can see that even if many of these aspects of productivity and high performance can’t be quantified, they're still necessary. If you don’t get enough sleep, for example, your brain doesn’t perform at peak capacity.
All these externalities are why you (literally) can’t put a price on every hour or every minute of the day. You need to spend some time resting, being with other people, and so forth for your brain to function at the level you need it to in order to serve your clients. That’s if you're a knowledge worker, which every business owner is, no matter what your actual industry is.
…Which also means creativity makes you more productive and effective
Setting aside time away from PFC activities allows your PFC to recharge, so the next day your productivity tank is full. As long as you bring the right attitude to it, creativity allows you to use your mind in an enjoyable way and potentially have something to show for it down the line.
Creativity is not goal-oriented, which is another reason business owners struggle with it. It’s OK to do things without a goal, and it’s beneficial in the sense that it helps your brain take a break from all this hard, goal-oriented doing that you’re accustomed to.
If your creativity is sometimes used in art projects, needlework, or the like, you might end up with an end product that you can use or hang in the house. But that’s not the goal of doing the art or creating the needlework.
There’s no goal to make something that looks good. You might end up with something that does, but on the other hand you might not. The point is to let your imagination lead the way, and whether or not you have the skill to bring it off is entirely beside the point.
Beginner’s mind is great to maintain, especially as you grow older and get more experience. Doing things that don’t end up amazing is an excellent way to stay humble, to admit that you don’t know everything and that there are things you’re not good at.
Which sounds horrifying at first, maybe. Ugh! Admit you don’t know something? But no one knows everything. Staying humble allows you to ask for help when you need it, instead of trying to do everything yourself.
It also allows you to listen to other people, some of whom might not even have as much experience as you do. But they might know a new approach or even spark an idea from something they said.
Recap (tl;dr):
Creativity isn’t quantifiable and may require more unstructured time than you’re used to setting aside. But the benefits not only for your brain, but for your business, are huge.
Can’t figure out how to find time for creative play? Schedule your free consultation to see how we can partner together to open up space in your day.
Photo by Nick Fewings on Unsplash