Groupthink? Unplug for Increased Creativity

Start-ups breed tunnel vision. You take a group of highly creative, diverse, motivated and ambitious people with great ideas, put them in a small space and ask them to solve the same problems, and use the same tools. Eventually, your team starts reading the same blogs, frequenting the same coffee-shops, and listening to the same music. In extreme cases, the team starts dressing alike and finishing each other’s sentences. Nico and Laurel at Findery showed up at work dressed almost exactly the same!

Groupthink brings unity, and even a kind of harmony, but it also decreases originality, dissent, and willingness to rock the boat. Startups depend on creativity, and thrive on divergent thinking. Ultimately, if the groupthink takes, root, interest will flag and productivity will decline.

There is a cure. We must leave our habits behind, break the routine, meet new people, spend time with our families, open our minds, shake things up a bit. If you, like me, work in tech, spend your work time in front of a computer and carry a smartphone when you’re away from your desk, it’s a challenge to get away from the screens. We must periodically unplug. We know that unplugging refreshes our minds, we just forget to do it. Here are four ways to get started, below.

1. Routines and Rules. Pick a part of your daily routine to be screen-free. Walk to work with your phone zipped in your bag. Eat with your family 25 days a month -- like Vinod Khosla. No phones at the table--even at a work lunch. Turn off the TV. Unscreen yourself!
2. Get in touch with your Essential Self. All of the Quantified Self technology has helped us exercise more, sleep better, and eat less. But the metering tells us only how many steps we’ve taken or what our heartrate is. Linda Stone’s concept of the Essential Self tunes you back into your mood, your feelings of joy, your sense of your own body and your own energy. Pay attention to your Essential Self and your “manifest joy--a key feature of divergent thinkers--will certainly improve.
3. Travel without going anywhere. When you’re traveling, your mind is open to new people, ideas and opportunities, and deliberately bringing this mindset to your daily life opens you up to new possibilities you hadn’t . Even when you’re in your own neighborhood you can see it through new eyes. Pretend like you are in another country, and you will probably notice new things you hadn’t noticed before.
4. Take an unplugged vacation. By now, everybody knows how important those vacations are! If you’re a startup founder or CEO or HR exec, make sure that you provide lots of vacation -- and enforce it! Make sure everyone gets some R & R -- it will make your company better. You too: Go to a place where screens are awkward and irrelevant. I’m inspired by this footbridge through the clouds in Costa Rica.

Then, when you’re back from your break--ready, refreshed, creative, free from the groupthink and outside the filter bubble you’re ready to plug back in, make things happen, see the possibilities.