Pulling Out of a Creative Nosedive
Somewhere along the way I got it into my head that the job of a test pilot was to come as close as possible to crashing their aircraft without dying.
I imagined on the morning of their test they’d suit up and think, “Today I’m gonna go up there in the wild blue yonder, purposefully put this blimp into a nosedive, and hope I can figure out how to right the situation before I hit the ground.”
This intense style of risk management appealed to me as a young creative. I’d book a job I wasn’t qualified for and gleefully throw my life into a nosedive. Sweating furiously, I’d try to figure out whatever technology or skill was needed to pull the project up into a stable flight plan. And in the process obliterating my sleep schedule, my diet, and my relationships.
“You see,” I’d say to the people in my life, “if I don’t figure out how to build this webpage using CSS instead of tables then this project and everyone associated with it will be spread across the ground in mangled, smoking pieces.” They’d nod and smile. And inch out of the room when I wasn’t looking.
Thing is, the system worked. I managed to make creative bets just enough outside of my comfort zone to grow my skills. And, I had enough mental and physical fitness to survive the stress I was putting on myself. Until, six years into the practice, I ran out of sky.
I was taking on larger, more complex jobs which required collaboration. I found most folks don’t like working under the fantasized pressure of certain imminent death. And those who do are a bit cracked in the noggin.
Instead of cutting my losses and moving to a more thoughtful approach to working: I doubled down.
I formed a strategy of working up my collaborators into an excited froth. I’d say, “The way to think about this project is: we’re all jumping off a cliff together but we’re clever enough to invent wings on the way down!” They’d say, “Hell yeah!” and throw themselves headlong off the cliff. Half of them would hit the ground and the rest of us would manage — through luck and willpower — to invent some approximation of wings.
The work got done, but the psychic gambling was producing diminishing returns. The fun of the dive found itself replaced by anxiety and fear. Starting projects became an exercise in predicting the pain of failing. “So, let me get this straight…,” I’d ask myself, “you want the team to jump off a cliff and what you’re offering is a small dopamine hit from redesigning an account form?”
I decided to listen to the persistent voice in my head, the one repeating the refrain, “There has to be a less crashy way to do this creativity thing!”.
Over the past fourish years I’ve been overhauling my creative process and leadership style to be more sustainable. Getting mindful about what I’m asking of myself and those I collaborate with. The results are encouraging and I hope to share some of my findings in future posts. For now, I try to limit myself to only occasionally nosediving a project.
See ya on the ground, bozos.
