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Day 4 of 7
Importance Of Creativity: Professional Resiliency
It's Not What You Think
Most people think of drawing and painting whenever creativity is mentioned. However, creativity is being able to create alternatives and adapt to inevitable change. This skill can be helpful in work situations, relationships, or even areas for self growth you might feel stuck in.
Two important thoughts about creativity:
- When we practice self awareness we are reviewing our internal experience with our outer experience.
- When we are practicing self regulation, we are more able to stay out of fight, flight, and freeze responses (note the limited and automatic options).
Creativity requires both of these skills. Additionally, constant input limits our brains ability to create alternatives from the inside out. The idea that multitasking allows us to get more done may be alluring but often limits our ability to solve crucial problems. Mindfulness and breaks throughout the day are essential to fully take in our experience and ultimately be less reactive.
3 Pronged Development
Through these skills we can set up the environment for increased creativity and mental flexibility. We need to create this from 3 different angles:
- Limit what steals it. Reduce the input and multitasking in your life.
- Increase what encourages it. Spend time with people and activities that make you feel most like yourself.
- Do novel things. Engaging in new, and sometimes exciting activities, allows our brain to be more flexible and creative in other areas.
Resiliency Roadmap Day 4
The Myth of Multitasking
Challenge
Make a list of 3-5 moments throughout the day that you are engaged in more than 1 task at a time. Examples might be cooking or eating while watching TV, working while having a conversation with someone, and a serious culprit, texting and driving.
Pick one of these moments to separate two of these tasks that you believe will have the biggest impact. Make a plan on how to accomplish this.
TIP: It's helpful to increase your self awareness and self regulation skills during these moments. It's often due to feelings of uncomfortably that we must fill these times.
To Take a Deeper Dive
In Thinking, Fast and Slow, Daniel Kahneman explores how different types of thinking requires us to be, wait for it... different. One of his primary premises follows the laws of the nervous system in that we need to bring a variety of energy to accomplish different thinking tasks. But don't just take my word for it, Kahneman also won a Noble Prize for Behavioral Economics.