By: Kirby G Mack (Vice President of Digital Media)
The comfort zone. What is it? It’s a zone in which we feel we have the most control. It’s confidence. It’s experience.
But it’s also stalled success. It’s monotonous. It’s boring and it has you stuck.
As people, we like to stay inside our comfort zone because anything outside of it terrifies us. We get nervous, clammy. Our palms start to sweat, knees weak, Mom’s spaghetti. Our minds draw a blank. We’d much rather stay right here where we feel safe.
But staying in your comfort zone is the worst thing you can do for your own personal growth and creativity. Here are some ways for you to step outside of your comfort zone and fuel creativity.
Task Swapping
Far be it from me to ask you, the reader, your age, but if you’re here you’re likely aware of one of the biggest bands of the 80s, The Talking Heads. And if you know of The Heads, then you absolutely know of one of their biggest songs, “This Must Be The Place (Naïve Melody).”
But what you probably don’t know is how one of their greatest songs came to be. The parenthetical title, “Naive Melody,” derives from the fact that the members of The Talking Heads switched instruments when they composed it. The bass player ended up on rhythm guitar, the keyboard player played keyboard bass, and frontman David Byrne was no longer leading the charge. Instead, he found himself standing behind the Prophet-5 synthesizer–an instrument he really knew nothing about. But he knew the foundation of music and was able to string together a riff that would then go on to be the melody of this massive hit.
You see, the bandmates took themselves out of their comfort zone. They changed their landscape, their perspective. And instead of the bass player fixating on what else she could create from the same four strings she’d been playing her whole life, she found herself with a brand-new world of options. Task swapping has been proven to fuel creativity and take you in a direction you never thought you would or even could go.
Task swapping has also been a proven method for certain systems and processes to become better and more efficient. As a leader, you should not be scared to switch things up to gain new perspectives from your team. You’d be surprised what new ideas or proficiencies you’ll uncover by asking your team to get comfortable being uncomfortable. Every time I train a new employee and I show them our processes, I emphatically state, “Now, what I am about to show you may not be the right way to do this. And if you have a better idea, please bring it to me. This is just what I know and what works for me but that doesn’t make it the best.” Just because they haven’t done it before, doesn’t mean they can’t add value. Many times, Mike Schaffman, Simplicity Lone Beacon’s VP of Sales simply questions my process. “I’m no designer,” (No duh…) he says, “But why is this like this, but this is like that?” and his perspective changes my process for the better.
Why? Because I am in “go” mode. A creator of habit. I’ve done what works before and what works now and, most importantly, what is comfortable. So I can’t see the problems with it.
Task Switching
According to a study from Columbia Business School, switching roles and tasks allows us to overcome cognitive fixation. “By forcing individuals to temporarily put tasks aside, a continual-switch approach may elevate their creative performance by alleviating their tendency to cognitively “fixate” on ineffective ideas or problem-solving strategies.” (https://sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S074959781630108X)
Contrary to the historical popular position, task switching has been shown to increase creativity by reducing cognitive fixation. And it does so in two ways:
- It improves the ability to generate multiple ideas, heading in diverse directions.
- It improves the ability to identify the unique or best solution to the problem.
Researchers suggest that when people are asked to perform creative tasks, they box themselves in without realizing it. They basically walk themselves into quicksand, and they don’t see it until it’s too late. They get stuck and can’t come up with a solution, but that doesn’t stop them from trying to work through it, and in the end it’s just a lot of wasted time. The task consumes them. They’re done. This can be very frustrating and taxing on the brain and your confidence.
Meanwhile, those who stopped and turned their attention to a new task were forced to clear their brains of information and focus on something different. When they returned to the first task, they were able to view the challenge from a fresh perspective and attack it from different angles, which in turn helped them finally solve the problems they were facing.
Step Away
Perhaps you’re unable to switch tasks or you find that changing your focus hinders your problem-solving skills. Then consider this: step away altogether and take a break. Get out of the office. Find inspiration everywhere. Sometimes all you need is a hard reset.
Famously Steve Jobs hated the first iterations of the Macintosh computer. With all their education and experience, his engineers were just not getting it. Frustrated, Steve left the office and went for a walk through Macy’s, of all places. There he found a Cuisine Art food processor. After purchasing that processor, he took it back to his engineers, sat it in front of them, and said, “It’s supposed to look like this.” That’s how the look of the McIntosh computer was born.
Photo Credit: National Museum of American History/Apple
Haven’t you noticed that your best ideas come when you are in the shower or during your work commute? This isn’t a coincidence. Do you know how many unwritten movie scripts I’ve come up with just driving my kid to school?
So next time you find yourself staring at a flashing cursor on a blank Word doc or an empty artboard/canvas, try to move on to a new task to give your brain a rest or walk away and let your subconscious do some of the work for once.
The Beginner’s Mind
Both task swapping and task switching can draw a relation to what the Buddhists call “The Beginner’s Mind.” The idea of “The Beginner’s Mind” is to let go of any learned ideas and concepts about what you know so that you can approach the situation from a new perspective. It happens all the time. Successful writers never capture the originality and that lighting-in-a-bottle of their first novel. Picasso once said that he drew better when he was 10 years old than he ever did at the height of his career. This is what John Cleese says: “…the psychological equivalent of the Law of Diminishing Returns.”
“The Beginner’s Mind” refers to having an attitude of openness, eagerness, and lack of preconceptions, even at an advanced level, just as a beginner would. It’s telling you to toss out what you know. Forget that “go to” or proven method. Sure, you know what you are about to turn in will be “OK” because it’s similar to approved work in the past. But is it your best effort for this? We all find ourselves gravitating towards what has worked for us. But just because we’ve had success in the past, it doesn’t mean we need to stop being creative. I find myself often doing something just to get my flowers on the project the first time I turn it in, rather than having to do iteration after iteration. Oftentimes we let our ego or praises get in the way. We think that if we don’t nail it this time or the first time, our reputation will be damaged. And this train of thought is way more damaging than a couple more revisions.
Name one M. Night Shyamalan movie where he didn’t attempt to recapture the success and feeling of his original blockbuster, The Sixth Sense–where he didn’t try to go with what worked for him and hit the big plot twist at the end. Can you name one? Was that movie a smash? Do people still talk about it today? Nope.
So instead of trying to recapture any original success we have, we should try to reset our thinking and begin again from the untainted mind of a beginner. Remember how exciting it was to start your first project? How the world was full of endless opportunities and outcomes? Reach for that moment again. The worst thing anyone can say to your idea is no. And that doesn’t make it wrong or bad. No is just a two-letter word. And oftentimes they are almost always wrong. There are no mistakes when you are being creative. Approach your idea like the 10-year-old Picasso version of yourself. Please realize we ALL suffer from imposter syndrome at times, regardless of the false bravado some of us exude. Present company included. But whether it’s a no to your idea, a no to your direction, or no to your ask, at the end of the day it’s just two letters. And by tomorrow, that no could be a yes.
Now, the fear of that “no” doesn’t mean you should stop. If anything, you should keep going. Keep evolving. Keep playing. Keep changing and, most importantly, step outside of your comfort zone. Embrace the unknown. Anytime you find yourself in “coast mode” or doing something you’ve done hundreds or even thousands of times, just because you know it will pass, it may be time for you to swap, switch, walk away, or forget. You have no idea what ideas are waiting to be discovered if only you’d just step outside.
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