Sometimes, You Should Interrupt Creatives
Here’s why.
A creative person goes to tremendous lengths to be creative. Before they come up with any ideas, they must research, daydream, scribble, sculpt, scrap...and so forth. Eventually, they stumble onto an idea they don’t hate, so they jot it down. That idea snowballs into a sentence, then a paragraph, and before they know it, they finally have enough momentum to write a full page. But then, out of nowhere, the worst possible thing that could happen, happens.
The doorbell rings.
Twice.
Now the creative must remove themselves from whatever good idea they were about to get down just to sign for a foam roller from Amazon. When they get back, they have to waste time and energy recalibrating to pick up where they left off. Knowing in the back of their mind that they’ll never get a second chance to follow wherever they were being led by their first instinct.
Sheesh.
No wonder creative people get so upset when you interrupt them.
So, why am I telling you this? Well, I want you to know that I take creativity very seriously — and I’m not suggesting that you disrupt your creatives just for the sake of it. My name is Jake Varrone. I’m a senior writer at Vivaldi Group. And despite how much I dislike being interrupted while writing, I also believe that S O M E T I M E S being interrupted is exactly what I need to produce my best work.
Before you throw a tomato at me, I’ll explain.
I think of the creative brain like a wishing well. When the well is full of water, ideas pour out of me so fluently and rapidly that my fingers can hardly keep up with my thoughts. This is one of the best feelings a human being, creative or not, can experience. It’s the same feeling surfers feel when they catch a big wave, or when basketball players catch fire from the three-point line. But sadly, and eventually, every wave crashes. Every shooter misses. And every well runs dry. When this would happen, the old me would self-destruct with questions.
“What happened to all the ideas pouring out of me?”
“What if I never think of a good idea again?”
“Do I still deserve my job?”
Before we proceed, I want to talk to the old version of me. Past Jake, there are still good ideas inside you. You WILL have more of them. And you absolutely, POSITIVELY, deserve your job. But, and I say this with love, positive affirmations will never refill your creative well. Ever.
But a tsunami will.
(Thanks for your patience, reader. Now, I’m talking to you again.)
What I mean by “tsunami” is any type of disruption to the creative process. This disruption could be as light as a stroll through a new neighborhood or as heavy as a psychedelic mushroom trip. All that matters is that the disruption is spontaneous and atypical. The tsunami is an extreme metaphor, especially when some rain would suffice — but that’s the point. The bigger the disruption, the more stimulus will refill your creative wishing well. After that, your brain will flood with all sorts of new ideas again. Just like old times.
Phew! That was a close one.
So, how can you strategically and effectively disrupt your creatives, and help them keep their wells filled to the brim with delicious, nutritious water? At Vivaldi Group, we do it with a collaborative biweekly discussion called Creative Syncopation. But before I dive into Creative Syncopation, first a bit about the word “Syncopation.”
“Syncopation, in music, is the displacement of regular accents associated with given metrical patterns, resulting in a disruption of the listener's expectations and the arousal of a desire for the reestablishment of metric normality; hence the characteristic ‘forward drive’ of highly syncopated music.”
For the non-music-theory buffs reading this article, think of “syncopation” as a way to make the rhythm of a song feel fresh and different without changing the tempo of the music. Kind of like a quick palette cleanser between meals or a splash of cold water on a hot day — but to keep the listener engaged.
With that in mind, Creative Syncopation is a biweekly gathering between all the creatives at Vivaldi. It’s our time to share whatever creative work we want. This could be work we did for a client, personal creative projects, or work from a non-Vivaldi creative that we admire. In rare cases, we’ll even share work we absolutely hate. Why? Because the idea of Creative Syncopation isn’t just to show people something you think is cool. The idea is to stimulate discussion. To disrupt ourselves with hot takes, provocative questions, and candid feedback. To poke and prod at a variety of ideas from all walks of creative life, good or bad, and flip and reverse them until we hardly recognize them anymore. Now, don’t get us wrong, not every idea we explore in Creative Syncopation is usable or practical. Again, Creative Syncopation isn’t designed to solve problems — it’s designed to keep our creative wells full of water, and help us come up with useable and practical ideas that do solve problems for our clients.
So, how can you start a Creative Syncopation for your creative team?
1. Schedule a forty-five-minute meeting in the middle of the day, every two weeks.
2. Invite team members.
3. Choose two of them to present for fifteen minutes each.
4. Leave time at the end for whole team to discuss.
Some extra ideas:
1. Have a few questions prepared to stimulate the discussion.
2. Ask everyone attending to bring one piece of work that inspires them. Choose someone at random and have them present it.
3. If you’re working in the office, hold Creative Syncopation anywhere other than the office.
4. Incorporate Stretch Briefs. These are briefs created by the Creative Director, designed to push their creatives to try things they haven’t done before. For example: Write a rap about breakfast cereal, but avoid the letter “E.”
So again, creative people go to tremendous lengths to be creative. Why? Because it’s tremendously easy to lose all the water in your wishing well and tremendously difficult to refill it again. Sometimes, the only way to do it is by disrupting yourself. And Creative Syncopation can be a great way to do that. Think of it as the one interruption that will make your creative people happy, inspired, and productive.