Psychology
Creativity at Knifepoint
The battle between Creativity and Deadline
“Creativity doesn’t wait for that perfect moment. It fashions its own perfect moments out of ordinary ones” — Bruce Garrabandt
Creativity is known for creating its own perfect moments, but have you ever considered what happens when the pressure of deadlines is applied to creative minds?
Before diving into this discussion, let me introduce myself first. Hello! My name is Creativity and I am well known for fashionably stealing the thunder with my innovative thoughts. Let me tell you a secret, here in this story, I am the protagonist (as I embody main character energy, duh!). And well, I believe that Deadline is the villain in my life.
To understand why deadline is the villain of this story, you will first have to comprehend the concept of my origin. According to researchers and psychologists, I am the product of the establishment of numerous associations in the brain, followed by the selection of associations that may be particularly fascinating and beneficial. Imagine that the brain is a huge box of cognitive space in which multiple balls of thoughts are dancing around until they collide in interesting ways. Consider a specific example in which the balls in this situation collide since they ordinarily wouldn’t be near one another, increasing the overall originality of the solution. This special case scenario is none other than me, Creativity. Did I tell you that one of the most esteemed scientists of all time — Albert Einstein — called me ‘Combinatorial Play’? Fancy right? (I told you — main character vibes).
Research suggests that the success of combinatorial process depends both on having sufficient time to let the balls juggle around, i.e. to explore concepts and learn things that somehow might be useful, and having sufficient time to devote to the actual juggling. Now you tell me, how am I supposed to originate looking all fancy if I don’t have the time to get ready? That is what Deadline does to me. It steals my freedom of having the leisure to juggle and forces me to originate in a hurry, hence hindering my complete potential.
All my life, I have had several arguments with my arch nemesis — Deadline. He said, “You are nothing without me as I act as the driving force for most of the outcomes, thereby leading to your existence. For example, this human here eavesdropping on our conversion is the same human who wouldn’t even start their assignment till the due date is really close. Do you think they will take the time to learn new concepts unless I am hovering over their head? It is me who helps you exist in this world.”
I can see why you might agree with Deadline. You may think that Deadline is a management technique that will spur people on to great leaps of insight. Over time this might have also led you to believe that your creative juices flow mostly under tight deadlines. But is that really true?
The answer to that question is no. No, you are not most creative when you are working under tight deadlines. The truth is that whenever I get held at knifepoint, it usually leads to me either getting injured or killed. Although deadlines and time constraints may motivate people to work harder and accomplish more — and even inspire them to feel more creative — they actually make people think less creatively overall. Don’t believe me, right? Well, let me prove it to you.
In a study conducted by American researchers, 222 employees were asked to document their opinions and experiences about their everyday work life till the end of their ongoing project.
Most of the entries indicated that the time pressure was initially low and kept increasing as time progressed. It was also observed that the quality of output by the employees was better when the time pressure was comparatively less.
“I told my supervisor that the hours I am working are completely unacceptable and that I planned to leave the company if this continued to be the norm on projects here. All afternoon I felt physically drained, as if I were running on low blood sugar. I feel physically exhausted again right now — lack of mental clarity, lack of motivation about the project.”
Such were most of the entries of the employees who were expected to use creative thinking for projects. Words like ‘mental exhaustion’, ‘frustration’, ‘burnt out’, ‘fragmented’, etc. became quite frequent in their diary entries as the project timeline moved forward and the pressure kept increasing. Lack of mental clarity and motivation were recurrent outcomes of extreme time-pressure where quality results were expected, prompting towards lower quality payoff.
If Deadline and Time-pressure are my enemies, then Motivation is my true friend. My existence without my friend barely makes any sense. Extreme time pressure and impractical deadlines slowly kills Motivation which indirectly leads towards the end of me (Creativity).
I agree that Deadline is necessary to get things going smoothly, but as they say, too much of anything is good for nothing. Based on the study, Creativity v/s Time-pressure gives four distinct outcomes. Consider Creativity to be the Y-axis plotted against Time-pressure as the X-axis. Analogous to the four quadrants of a graph, the four cases would be:
- High likelihood of creative thinking, high time-pressure
- High likelihood of creative thinking, low time-pressure
- Low likelihood of creative thinking, low time-pressure
- Low likelihood of creative thinking, high time-pressure
All four cases of outcomes prevail, but the majority of the outcomes either lie in the second or the fourth quadrant.
Well, these are just mere facts. I also happened to eavesdrop on some humans complaining about how they got used to utilizing their cognitive skills only when the time-pressure is extreme and are now finding it difficult to catch up to the level of creativity they used to showcase earlier in their work. Sad, right? Well, what can I say, don’t complain later saying I didn’t warn you.
I did my part of explaining my PoV; the rest is upto you now. Be the judge and decide whose side you are on. Till then, I am off getting my beauty sleep. Ciao adios!
Creativity dramatically exits.
