Building creativity at work - Schrodingers cat and roaming free

This morning I've been thinking about Schrodinger's cat, creativity, self-determination theory and your location – this is the type of stuff that whirls around my head in the morning. This article is a 2 min read on boosting creativity at work.

There's a pic of our old puss Tipok (rest his paws) and Sydney this morning on a beautiful summer's day to illustrate the point.

What do you do from the get go?

Like many people, one of my first instincts in the morning is to connect – usually, the first people are my partner and my dog. The second interaction is wurdle, and the third is the New York Times app. I'm trying to drop the third for lots of reasons – not because being up to date with news is bad, but because the order in which you focus your attention on stuff impacts the rest of your day.

If you first check your emails, compare yourselves to others on Instagram or read about the Ukraine war, this will affect your mood, energy levels and creativity at work.

We are subtly (and not so subtly) influenced by the world around us, and these interactions shape our moods, thoughts and biology. In Sanskrit, the word "Loka" can be translated as location – not just your physical location but the relationship you have with the people and objects in your immediate environment and your relationship with your thoughts.

For example, even deciding whether to buy a snack on an airline is influenced by the person sitting next to you – you're way more likely to buy something if the person next to you does. Or, in a work setting, your colleagues' emotions are likely to elevate or depress your mood and effectiveness. And at home, the adverts you watch online or on TV subtly influence your purchasing decisions and your sense of "enoughness" – the more adverts people are exposed to, the more materialistic they become, the less happy and less altruistic.

What are you looking at?

It's important to think about what you want to put into your field of experience first thing in the morning. Filling your brain with other people's content first thing in the morning has some significant effects:

-???????????Increased time press – you're likely to experience a temporal distortion and a deficit mentality – "there's too much to do and not enough time"

-???????????Elevated stress response

-???????????A limitation to your ability to think creatively about a workplace challenge or opportunity

Schrodinger's cat reference comes from the idea that an observation curtails another possible reality. For example, as soon as I see the world through a filter that someone else has just given me (email, news, social media, social interactions), my focus is pulled toward seeing the world from another person's perspective – this can have the effect of closing down the myriad of other possible solutions your brain can come up with when it is free to roam.

So, what can you do to be more creative at work? It's a huge challenge because the nature of many of our businesses stifles (often for very good reason) brain roaming. For example, in the mining industry, the imperative is to bring people home safely at the end of every shift. And from the start of each working day, the early group meetings take away an element of intrinsic motivation from the team – they have to be there focussed on safety and what's important for the mine's effectiveness.

What's the plan?

However, there are some important things that we can all do at the start of the working day to help build some self-determination, focus and creativity. Try the following:

-???????Ditch news watching/reading first thing in the morning

-???????If your role enables you to (not an on-call doctor, for example), check your emails after the following

-???????Spend a couple of minutes using breathwork and or take a few minutes to be in nature (even a moment looking to the far horizon out of the window

-???????Journal what's going on in your body and mind – just a minute or two helps?

-???????If your role allows you to do this - spend the first part of the day engaged in writing/collaborating with others on a project.?

-???????Cut down on the amount of passive advertising you are consuming – switch it off or mute it when you can

Your brain has 80 billion-plus neurons, each with 10,000 plus synaptic connections – an enormous creative machine enabling you to experience life through an infinite array of filters. But as soon as someone tells you the cat is dead, the cat is dead – be mindful of your Loka (your location, what you connect with and how you relate to those things).

#positiveleadership #positivepsychology #creativity