Gone Running: Allowing Space For The Eureka Moments

Anyone who has known me for longer than a few minutes knows that running is a major part of my life. Nearly all of my friends were developed through it. It's a stress management tool as much as a form of exercise. I've literally built vacations around running a destination marathon.

It's also one of the most effective tools I have for creative thinking and idea generation.

The mysterious appearance of ideas

One of the most counter-intuitive lessons I've learned about generating ideas is that they rarely appear when you're focused on them, and even less so when you try to force them. It's once you've stepped away from them that the pieces often come together, seemingly out of nowhere.

There's a great quote about the creative process from the CEO of advertising agency Carmichael Lynch, Mike Lescarbeau:

"Coming up with ideas is not so much a step-by-step process as it is a lonely vigil interrupted infrequently by great thoughts, whose origins are almost always a mystery."

The trouble is that the workday for modern marketers isn't really built to accommodate these interruptions of great thoughts. Our week is often a series of back-to-back meetings with little breathing room in-between, surrounded by deadlines.

Yet creative ideas need to be born and realized within this rigid structure of 30-60 min time blocks. This inflexible process, in my opinion, is the cause of so much of the formulaic marketing that is plaguing the technology sector:

1. Meetings get set up to talk about quarterly goals.
2. Meetings then follow to discuss initiatives that could deliver those goals.
3. You pick from the usual drop-down lists of assets and initiatives - white paper / webinar / event /
4. Meet once or twice to talk about the topics and themes - then commit.
5. Promote with the standard set of media - LinkedIn, Google Ads, ABM Display, Syndication, etc
6. Finalize plan and execute.
7. Rinse and repeat

Aiming higher than the requirements

You may well hit the numbers and meet the requirements within this process and many marketers do. In fact, most do and this is why it continues. But this is not how creativity happens. This does not produce great marketing that makes you feel something lasting.

Execution marketing can certainly meet requirements, but we should aim much higher than that. Marketing is storytelling. It should elicit emotion. It should bring your brand personality to life and grab attention.

At Apple, there is a design ethos that things should be made 'insanely great'. Not very good, not even great, but insanely great. And that fanatical pursuit of great results in why there's so much user satisfaction from the button clicks to the sturdy feeling of opening the box. It's intentional and it's obsessive.

William Butler Yeats had a similar feeling when it came to completing poetry:

"A poem makes a sound when it is finished like the click of the lid of a perfectly made box."

This is the standard marketers should aim for when we create marketing. And it requires much more than following the usual formula. It requires great ideas, pursued passionately. But great ideas can't be scheduled for an 11.30 am meeting. They require lots of thought, research, frustration, and most of all - space.

That's exactly when I go running.

For me, stepping away from the problem, putting on my running shoes and heading outside is what helps me to complete an idea. There are lots of scientific reasons that could explain it - increased blood flow and oxygen, dopamine levels - but some of it is just that mysterious arrival of inspiration when you're not trying to force it.

My team is all too familiar with excitedly saying "I just went for a run and I had a Eureka moment". And it really is true. I've gone out for a run, with thoughts randomly floating around, and all of a sudden I'll think "That's it. It's so obvious."

That space away after I've done all my research and thinking is sometimes the most crucial part of turning good into great.

Building space into your process

I've started to intentionally force space into my working time. Sometimes I'll have a mid-day run. Sometimes it's just walking my dog. What's important is that I leave room for inspiration and ideas between the meetings and the discussions. And I encourage my team to do the same.

It doesn't come naturally, though. Stepping away from your desk can feel like you're working less hard. Encouraging your team to be at their desk less can seem like insanity to the more type-A managers out there. But that's where creativity happens.

And that creativity is what separates that kind of marketing that is just delivering on the targets from building lasting brand value.

So my advice to marketers is to pursue great ideas. Whether you're running, walking, meditating, find your space to allow the eureka moments to come.