Reflective exercise: creative accidents and creative dreams? In his book Accidental Creative: How to Be Brilliant at a Moment's Notice, Henry (2011) sets out a series of practices (tools) that are intended to help people harness their creativity at work. He argues that whilst creative ideas appear to be 'accidental' and random they emerge from the convergence of a series of factors. He explains that: If you want to deliver the right idea at the right moment, you must begin the process far upstream from when you need that idea. You need to build practices into your life that will help you focus your creative energy. There is a persistent myth in the workplace that creativity is a mystical and elusive force... But the reality is that you can unquestionably increase your capacity to experience regular flashes of creative insight - 'creative accidents' - bring the best of who you are to your work, and execute more effectively, all by building purposeful practices into your life to help you do so. These practices will help you stay engaged and productive over the long term without experiencing the rampant burnout that often plagues creative workers. (Ibid.: 3) In order to increase the likelihood of creative accidents occurring, Henry argues that it is important to manage the tensions between the day-to-day pressures of the job that require us to meet deadlines and stay on budget, and the need to ensure that there is space to explore wider options in thinking innovatively. He promotes the benefits of regular interaction with a circle of people who have very different goals, ideas and experiences to broaden views and to cross-fertilize ideas. As such, he is critical of the social web when used simply to link with others who share similar interests as this will not stimulate wider thinking. However, if social networking is used to extend and diversify ideas then this is seen as a good thing provided it does not absorb too much attention and time. According to Henry (ibid.), managing time, focusing attention and building diverse sets of relationships can all be used to stimulate creative thinking and to ensure that space and energy are given over to harnessing creativity at work (Schawbel, 2011). He identifies three strategies that can be utilized to support this creative process, namely: Clarification: clarify in some detail, the nature of the creative problem that you are trying to resolve. Once the problem is clearly specified it is easier to focus on how to solve that problem. Assessment: in assessing the range of multiple activities and tasks involved, it is important to refine a list of the three most important creative problems to solve (the 'Big 3'), so that these can remain at the forefront of your thinking. Structure: work should be structured to ensure that similar types of task are dealt with together (space for conceptual thinking and blocks of time for more mundane and processing type tasks); in other words, not to simultaneously work on concrete and conceptual tasks but create space to focus on tasks that align (such as e-mails and correspondence). On his website www.accidentalcreative.com Henry offers other suggestions for thinking creatively and tackling issues (for example, 'How to diffuse a bad idea' or '25 questions to ask when you're stuck'). The essential message is to structure work to allow time to think over the 'big' creative problems you want to solve and to make sure that you engage in doing things and meeting with people that provide new stimuli and ways of viewing the world. Speaking to people with different perspectives, experiencing new cultures, food and music, are all seen to contribute to the creative process. In a YouTube video on creativity, John Cleese also highlights the importance of creating boundaries of time and space for the creative mode of thinking - moving beyond the cognitive to the social arenas for creativity. He maintains that, in order to be creative, it is important to create clearly defined blocks of time (with a beginning and end point) as well as a place where interruptions can be avoided. This 'oasis' needs to be managed within the frenzy of daily tasks and deadlines. He describes how in the past, when he has got stuck in the writing of comedy sketches, he has gone to bed only to find that in the morning the solution to the problem is immediately at hand. For Cleese, the creative problem-solving process continues as we sleep and he is therefore a strong advocate of the benefits of 'sleeping on a problem' to find creative solutions (see YouTube on: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0yyUhlaSJ28). There is plenty of anecdotal evidence on the link between dreams and creativity but the scholarly material is less in evidence. For example, there are a surprising number of inventors, artists and scientists who have spoken about how the new idea they originated can be attributed to the thoughts uncovered whilst dreaming. Five examples of these are briefly listed below: Paul McCartney has recounted how he dreamed of the tune Yesterday whilst sleeping in an attic room of his family's house in London. In her introduction to Frankenstein, Mary Shelley describes how she dreamed of a 'hideous phantom' that terrified her and realized that she could use this material to create character that would haunt her readers and this inspired her to write the book. Elias Howe resolved a problem he had been thinking over for some time through a dream in which he was held prisoner by a group of natives who had spears with holes near their tips. By then locating a hole at the top of a needle, he invented the sewing machine in 1945. The classic novel The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde was conceived by Robert Louis Stevenson through a dream. Jack Nicklaus is reported to have discovered a new golf swing in a dream, which improved his golfing position following a downturn in 1964. In the questions that follow, reflect on processes of creativity both within work settings and the way that problem-solving may occur outside of the workplace whilst engaging in leisure activities or even whilst sleeping. Questions 1. In today's frenetic world, how can we create boundaries that structure our working day to ensure that there is room for creative thinking? 2. Reflect on and discuss the suggestion that problems at the forefront of our mind may continue to be processed and resolved within our dreams. 3. Consider new experiences that you have had over the past 12 months and the extent to which they have stimulated new ideas and ways of thinking. 4. Do you feel that old experiences can ignite new ideas or stifle creative thinking? 5. If creativity is part of the process that enables leaders, managers and professionals to think and do things differently, how can this be encouraged in the workplace?