Want to Be Successful? Become Lazy. Become Creative.

Times have changed. These are the three words I find refuge in whenever I am having a conversation with my mother and she says her own three words: “In my day…” I decided to write this article after one of such conversations with her about how to be successful in the 21st century.

You see, the skills that are required of us in 2018 are quite different from those required in 1918. In those days of laborious physical work, one needed to be able to boast of physical strength and one’s ability to endure doing physically strenuous work for long periods of time. However, in today’s knowledge economy, what sets one apart is one’s ability to creatively solve complex problems and generate novel ideas that are intrinsically disruptive. Therefore, to be successful in the 21st century, creativity is the skill to die for—not literally. But then there’s a plot twist: contrary to popular opinion, creativity is developed through laziness not hard work.

What is creativity in the first place? How does it contribute to our success? How can we develop our creativity? Read on.

Creativity is a skill that threads through almost everything we do today. It is the ability to leverage one’s imagination to explore new levels of thinking.

The writer at her desk, staring blankly at her screen trying to come up with words for her next article needs creativity. The marketer who is looking for innovative ways to attract new customers needs it. The engineer needs it to design an innovative product that directly solves a problem and meets a signifiant need. The banker who is looking to create customised financial products for her client to ensure maximum satisfaction needs it too.

In the 21st century, you cannot be successful without being creative.

Creativity, unlike most other skills, is not developed during the times we are working rather the times when we are not. One may argue that practice makes perfect and it is only when creativity is continuously put to work that we enhance our creativity. To that, I would respond that the ‘creative’ work we engage in does not enhance our creativity; it only gives us a space to apply it.

In those moments of laziness when we let our minds wander through windows of thoughtless staring, intentional reflection, and daydreaming, we tend to feel a sting of guilt because we are not being ‘productive’. We chastise ourselves when we see others burying themselves in work while we cuddle up in our sofas, when we watch TV, take aimless walks, go to see a movie, or even take a bath. But according to recent research, children and adults who indulge in such lazy activities and mind-wandering tend to possess more developed executive functions such as planning and [creative] problem-solving than their workaholic counterparts.

“I always have my best thoughts on the toilet.” – Charlie Day (actor, screenwriter, producer, comedian, and musician )

But what role does creativity play in the success of an organisation?

A few months ago, I read an article by Siyana Sokolova on LinkedIn where she wrote: “creativity and innovation within well-run companies have always been recognised as a sure path to success. Stimulating creativity and exploring completely new and unknown before territories lead as result to increasing the productivity of the organisation.”

How does laziness come into the equation?

We all know the story of Google and how much pampering their employees enjoy: free food, laundry services, gym and, of course, nap pods! Everything that the typical organisation would consider a distraction that diminishes the productivity of its employees can be found at Google’s offices. However, these perks that may appear to encourage laziness has resulted in an increased productivity of Google’s employees and, as a result, grown the bottomline of the company.

So what does Google seem to know about laziness, creativity, and success that other companies don’t?

Like many companies today, Google is aware that it is operating in a knowledge economy where the determining factor of the success of any company is in the new things it can introduce into the market. It understands the need for “new ways of thinking.” Like every other business, to succeed, it needs to not only outdo its competitors, but also outdo itself in order to perform better every day and meet the ever-changing needs of the market. Therefore, to create anything new it needs to remain a creative organisation. It is this focus on creativity that sets Google and other similar companies apart from their peers.

They stay creative by, first, hiring creative people. They then take it to the next level by leveraging the power of lazy activities like napping, gaming, sliding down multi-coloured slides, et cetera to develop the creativity of their employees. It should therefore be no surprise that Google (or rather, Alphabet, its parent company) is one of the most valuable companies in the world today!

What happens if we don’t embrace lazy activities and, as a result, develop our creativity? Short answer: we never become successful. Here’s why:

When we run away from being lazy from time to time, we miss out on the opportunity to rest. Hence overworking ourselves to dangerous points of exhaustion as we never get to pause and recharge. We never get a chance to synthesise and let our learnings and experiences sink in. We become like an engine that burns itself out by staying on full throttle and never going off. We rob ourselves of the energy, the drive, and the motivation we need to create new ideas. We never get the opportunity to unplug and just have fun.

I think my nursery school teacher knew this too when she usually said:

“All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.”

No, the idea is not to sit down, fold arms, doing absolutely nothing and expecting success to gravitate towards us. No. The idea is to embrace moments of inactivity as a crucial part of our creative development and not eschew them because they make us feel unproductive. The same way we let our muscles rest after periods of intense physical activity to allow them repair and develop, we also need to let our minds rest, relax, and lazy around for our creativity to blossom.

So let’s go out more, go shopping, stroll aimlessly, meditate, stare into space, take midday naps, enjoy our sofas, binge on movies, go out dancing, scroll through our phone mindlessly, read novels back-to-back, whatever! Revel in the lazy time you have; it may just be the secret behind your creativity that everyone seems to be talking about. This is the same creativity that will set you apart and position you for lasting success in an ever-changing world.

TL;DR: Indulging in lazy activities boosts our creativity, the #1 skill we need to become successful in the 21st century. So don’t run away from lazy time. Rather, embrace it; create it. It will lead you to success.

#StudentVoices #CampusEditor #Creativity #Growth #Business