The giant, exhausted, elephant in the room

There's a giant, exhausted, elephant in the room. It's shaped like a commercial creative, and it's absolutely fried.

I've been very lucky. My most permanent role at 20something saw me in a place that treated people like decent human beings. Human beings who need sleep, a life, and exercise, and who need to manage their stress and mental health.?

It was a collective belief that not only did we all need this (we being everyone, not just the 'creative' department...) but that it was critical to the company's product.

Speaking and listening to friends in the industry, it appears this is one of the exceptions and not the rule. It's almost like the entire commercial creative industry has forgotten lesson one of day one at art/ ad/ business school.

'Inputs = outputs'

In computer programming they call it GIGO, 'garbage in, garbage out'. I have a clear memory of lesson one, of day one at ad school, with Mr. Gyles Lingwood .

The message was unequivocally clear:

'If you want to be interesting, be interested. If you want exceptional outputs, you need exceptional inputs.'

Of course, this means quality creative inspiration and stimulation. But even as greasy eighteen-year-olds, we understood our lecturer's extrapolation of that same point.

Creative people are 'machines' that 'manufacture' ideas. But they're also people.

What fuels us is our life experiences - information, inspiration, and influence. (And of course, a bit of jeopardy - a delivery, a deadline.)

But what about the power supply??

That's what I've listed above. Sleep. A life. A visit to a gallery, perhaps? The ability to eat actual food, and not in front of a laptop. Some exercise. Relationships with other humans, both romantic and platonic.?

When we compromise the power supply, we compromise everything. Many creatives I speak to sound like they're land-locked, and at risk of invasion from all sides.?Their company has turned the 'jeopardy' dial to the max. The demand goes a bit like this:

'We need you to deliver more work, and significantly better work, probs a Gran Prix contender, with;

-less time

-less sleep

-less energy

-less enthusiasm

-less happiness

-a higher diet ratio of instant noodles and egg and cress sandwiches to real food

Apparently, there's a talent problem in our industry.

I recently read about a systematic review of 27 studies. It explored the relationship between creative activities and improvements in mental health. There was a significant positive relationship. No surprises there, then. But somehow, I don't feel the above scenario is going to achieve the same. (Despite creative companies dishing out copious 'creative activities'.)

But there's also another side to that coin. Higher levels of mental well-being predict increased levels of future creative activity. (So, we might assume lower levels predict decreased levels of future creative activity.)

Steven Kotler shares all the nerdy details in 'The Art of Impossible'

There's a quote below. But the short version is;

If you want max creative output... you have to help people down-regulate their amygdala and their executive attention network. That means they can't be in a state of fear or exhaustion, or constantly worrying about being judged.

That doesn't sound like most creative environments I'm hearing about. They sound like places where leaders are making clients promises they can't keep, for work their company can't deliver. (Or at least in timelines they can't deliver it within, without their people consistently working late nights and weekends.)

Creativity, identity, and well-being are mutually reinforcing and inextricably linked. So, to look after creativity, we need to look after the people who look after creativity.?

Some people will read this and see nothing but the ramblings of disillusionment. But not only is that the opposite of the case, this is also about something so much bigger.

We're in the wake of AI, and it's following the explosion of the creator economy. Our USP as an industry is true lateral, divergent, and counter-intuitive thinking, crafted to within an inch of its life. That requires well-oiled creative machines.

So, if you're not doing the above, you're sprinting toward extinction.

‘In flow, the three major brain networks that underpin the creative process all work together in an unusual way. The executive network is online but not completely. The part that generates task-specific laser focus is hyperactive; everything else is shut down. This means you can focus on your creative problem, but the inner critic remains silent. Concurrently, the salience network is both hyperactive and incredibly sensitive. It’s tuned into both internal signals being generated by the default mode network and external signals that demand executive attention. Lastly, the default mode network is wide awake and tweaked. The anterior cingulate cortex is hyperactive, the amygdala is mostly offline—meaning our ability to do pattern recognition and remote association is jacked up, but the brain’s normal bias for negative information is down low. In other words, flow is the brain on creative overdrive. It mimics all the inventiveness that comes with being four years old, just, you know, without the downside of having a four-year-old brain.’?

- 'The Art of Impossible' by Steven Kotler.