Interview with Denise Jacobs
The creativity evangelist tells all about banishing her inner critic, travelling the world and why creativity is in our DNA
Forget nightmare clients and firebreathing bosses, when it comes to creativity, there’s no scarier critic than yourself. Denise Jacobs was all too familiar with that inner-detractor, only to overcome it during her time working on her 2010 release The CSS Detective Guide.
“I finally had a moment when I was doing the site for the book where I was basically doing criticism-free creating,” Jacobs recalls. “And it was the most amazing feeling; I can’t begin to tell you how amazing it feels.” Eager to share the benefits of her discovery, Jacobs decided to become a creativity evangelist, sharing her process with others.
“This is the reason I started doing web design, why I make anything, ” she enthuses. “It’s a feeling that I want other people to feel. I want them to feel this criticism-free creative process. I thought if I could help other people feel like this more often than not, then that’s what I want to do with my life.”
Having started off in the industry as a CSS specialist, Jacobs’ epiphany understandably took a little while to gain momentum. Inspired by Aarron Walter’s transition from findability expert to emotional design guru, Jacobs began to shift her speaking topics to fit into her new way of thinking.
“The irony is that my creativity talks seemed to resonate with people more than the CSS stuff, ” she recalls. “At the Øredev developer conference in Sweden, I gave my ‘Art of Disciplined Creativity’ talk, and the room was packed: people were lined up against the walls and sitting in the aisles. The CSS talk I did there had a good number of people, but nothing like the creativity talk. And that’s when I thought ‘this is what I’m supposed to be doing!’”
And she did. In 2014 she founded creativity and innovation collective The Creative Dose, and now spends her time delivering talks and training to teams across the world, teaching methods to generate ideas through creative collaboration, improve communication, and to promote sustainable productivity.
Awesome Science
But banishing your inner critic is easier said than done; it takes patience and hard work. The key to success, according to Jacobs, is to figure out where this criticism stems from and more importantly, what triggers it.
“Does it show up as compulsive busyness, does it show up as perfectionism or procrastination, or both?” she asks. “It really helps people anatomise their inner critic and then give techniques, especially for perfectionism and procrastination because I think that’s what affects people the most. It’s so you can get to the point where you’re actually creating something without your inner critic yapping in your ear the whole time and bogging the process down.”
When asked whether the more traditional web professionals can stomach her somewhat philosophical approach to working, she says it’s all down to making it as technical as possible, putting it in a context that’s closer to the comfort zone of her techy audience.
“I think it would be very easy for people to dismiss what I’m talking about if they thought it was too ‘airy fairy’ and having to deal with your feelings, stuff like that, ” she considers.
“But when you start talking about the neuroscience of creativity and you explain how your brain actually goes into a different state when you’re being creative, people start to realise that it’s something we’re wired to do. Besides, everybody loves science. Science is awesome.”
When it comes to training others, Jacobs takes her inspiration from the approach of Buddhist monks: reaching a meditative state by controlling your brain. Much like running a marathon, she says everyone has the capacity to reach this state, it’s all a matter of the right training. You teach yourself to be more creative by instilling a certain set of practices.
While this training is a solo endeavour, Jacobs recognises the importance of human interaction. “Some of the most creative times are when you’re interacting with people and you’re sharing ideas — you’re allowing yourself to be influenced by others, ” she explains. “I really like to talk about
creative collaboration and the innovation that comes from that.”
Make the change
Although being a creativity evangelist is Jacobs’ main focus, she is also
incredibly passionate about diversity in the web industry. She’s the
founder of Rawk the Web, and initiative that aims to provide resources and inspiration to increase the numbers, and visibility, of minorities in the tech industry. But, as Jacobs explains, the onus is not solely on people of colour and women to make the change.
“Everybody needs to play their part and everyone benefits from it,” she urges. “The more diversity you have, the more innovation you have and the better chance you have to have better products and services on the market. Diversity is actually a competitive advantage.”
“If you need someone to mentor you, to hold your hand, whatever, get that and go! Don’t play small because somebody else thinks you’re supposed to play small. I think the thing is that on a philosophical level, we only have a certain amount of time on the planet, and we actually don’t know what amount of time that is. Dilly-dallying with little stuff when you want something bigger is a waste of time. It’s a revolution but also an evolution.”
Transformation
You could say that Jacobs is in the business of transforming lives. As well as mentoring others through Rawk the Web, she’s also launched an initiative dedicated to leveraging the power of creativity to transform lives and communities: Creativity (R)Evolution.
She says the effects of creativity itself have the power to ripple out beyond the confines of everyday life. “When we do something creative, it’s transformative. It wakes us up, it energises us, rejuvenates us and feed our souls,” she enthuses.
“Creativity is a necessity. It’s something we’re born with naturally as children and it gets kicked out of us. It allows people to get permission to experience more joy and to do more work that is satisfying and really feeds their souls, ” she continues. “Once you start doing that more, it gives other people permission to do that, and then it kind of spreads around and really changes things. Design changes things.”
On the road
When we conduct the interview, Jacobs has just returned from an intensive speaking tour — something which, due to her growing popularity, seems to be a fairly common occurance these days. “It is starting to feel like a lot of travel, ” she admits. “I am actually getting to the point where I’m feeling a little … I won’t say burnt out per se, but definitely road-weary.”
When asked how she keeps up the enthusiasm through this demanding schedule, she says it’s simply the thought of others discovering the positive effects of her creative approach.
“I get to the event and once I’m about to go on, I am so excited about sharing this content with people, and I’m so excited about being able to spark ideas, to touch people, to inspire people, motivate people. To turn them on to something they hadn’t thought about or remind them of something they already knew but forgot. That really feeds me,” she smiles.
Whilst time spent on the road is usually made up of speaking events, workshops and consulting engagements, earlier this year Jacobs found time to travel to South Africa, Zimbabwe and Zambia. “It was this great opportunity to go out and do something new and reconnect with my chosen family,” she says. The trip also helped her get away from it all, something she considers incredibly important to creating great work.
But what also struck Jacobs was the lack of creativity in these places — a realisation that surprised her, given the reputation for handmade products many of these areas have. “You go to these markets in Africa there’s seemingly acres of what seems like exactly the same crafts. I was really struck. How did they get the message that what they needed to do was the same? Where’s the uniqueness?”
Book worm
As we continue to talk, it becomes clear that Jacobs isn’t a person who does things by halves. Her latest book, Banish Your Inner Critic, is due to be released in the first half of 2017, and her timetable for the rest of the year is already filling up.
As well as her hectic speaking schedule and taking charge of three different initiatives, Jacobs hopes to release three more books soon. “One of them is called Hacking the Creative Brain, which focuses on the neuroscience of creativity. Then there’s The Creativity Imperative, and that is kind of an executive-level type of book that talks about the how creativity relates to a company’s bottom line,” she lists. “The last one is The Brain Unchained, which I’ll be turning into an illustrated story.”
Whilst this impressive reel of releases could lead you to believe Jacobs is in fact superwoman, she’s keen for others to know she has her off days, too.
“When I was writing my first book, I had two days of crying because I
was so freaked out by the prospect of writing a book. I had to pick myself up and say ‘OK, you know what? This book is my book. I got the deal. I am supposed to do this, so buck up’, ” she admits.
Her parting advice? “Fire your inner critic, get rid of the evil voices in your head. It’s about being inspired, being clear, telling everyone what you want to do and taking advantage of opportunities when they present themselves.”
Words by Sammy Maine. Photography by Scott Redinger-Libolt
This article originally appeared in issue 273 (November 2015) of net magazine.
