Slow rhymes with flow: An ode to slow creativity.

Do you want to drive a car designed in a hurry? Read a book written in a hurry? Eat a fruit injected with chemicals to accelerate ripening?

None of these sound appealing to me. And I would not want to offer people my rushed work, either.

In a society based on hurry, taking time to do our best work is not easy. However, slow creativity as I see it fits with the philosophy of slow movements.

The slow living movements - slow food, slow travel, slow books, slow school, slow cities - are focused not on slowness as a virtue in itself, but on mindfulness, intentionality, and lower stress that come with it.

There is something else that requires slowing down, mindfulness, and intentionality - and this something else is creativity essential. It even rhymes with slow - flow. Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (1990) defined flow as “a state in which people are so involved in an activity that nothing else seems to matter; the experience is so enjoyable that people will continue to do it even at great cost, for the sheer sake of doing it."

Flow brings out our most creative, most productive selves. That creativity and productivity involve not worrying and performing activities because they are intrinsically rewarding.

Unfortunately, for all the talk about the importance of creativity in our work, we often ignore what is required to support and sustain it - whether as individuals or as organizations.

Forget "spurring." Consider nurturing.

Even in talking about creativity, we use language that causes worry and harms intrinsic motivation, the language of pushing and hurrying. The very phrasing makes me anxious: “Accelerate creativity,” “drive originality,” “spur innovation.”

"Spur?" Ouch and ouch!

As horrible as it sounds, I've tried to spur myself many times. I have friends who talk about writing an article in two hours. Me? Two weeks if I am lucky.

Why. Can't. I. Do. It. Faster!!!??

Well, I can, actually, but unless it is poetry, I don't particularly like what I can write in two hours, and I don't want people to read what I myself don't like. But comparisons with the others' speed still make me feel inferior. Which is, on examination, completely irrational considering how much research I use to support my writing - but such examination itself requires slowing down.

Well, I slowed down and did some examination. Last months' article on workplace moral injury was conceived six months before it was published. The same is true for the earlier neurodiversity in leadership article - about six months from conception, and about two weeks of active writing and re-writing. This autism discrimination in the workplace article took about 10 weeks of writing and re-writing. Could I have written them faster - yes. Is the first draft the same quality as the finished product? No.

Next time I am about to beat myself up for being slow, I am going to take a deep breath and remember that slow rhymes with "flow."

Slow... Flow... Grow...

Nurturing our creativity with the focus on doing our best work, mindful walks, good research, and enough sleep works much better than trying to "spur" it with negative self-talk and comparisons.

Happy (slow) creating.

References:

Csikszentmihalyi, M. (1990).?Flow: The psychology of optimal experience.