Volume 5: Take a Break for Creativity Sake
We are in the throws of the holiday season. Some of us are probably already on vacation. While the holidays bring their own list of things to do and stress to manage, they do provide the opportunity for us to break from other projects and pursuits, at least for a few days and for some of us longer.
In our output obsessed culture, we don’t set up these sorts of breaks very often, and even when we do we often find it hard to truly step away. But it’s important to remember how beneficial it can be to give your brain a break.
In my teaching role, I oversee a class called Entrepreneurial Design. It spans three semesters, and student teams have to create and launch a product. Winter break falls right at the end of the first semester, just as teams are finishing up deep research on problems to solve and really starting to gain momentum in developing potential solutions. You might think the break would be ill-timed, disrupting the team’s flow and killing momentum. In reality, I’ve found that it’s perfectly timed. At this point in the project, the teams are deep in it. They have been researching for weeks and, as happens in projects like this, a perspective bubble starts to form.
Perspective bubbles represent a narrowing of the team’s view of the problem and the context around it. Their view of things gets more and more shaded by individual opinions and specific insights that may have caught their attention. Sometimes the team is on the right track, sometimes they are missing the forest for the tress. The problem is that you can’t know which direction you’re heading when you’re in the bubble.
And then they take a break. An actual break. Unlike the things we characterize as breaks in the professional world, academic breaks are actual breaks. Classes are done. Responsibilities are fulfilled. Cognitive space is created. For my class, this means the bubble gets popped.
Then something amazing happens. Perspectives change and creativity and inspiration flood in. Students are not asked to actively think about their projects during break. But when you give the brain space it does its own work - consolidating, connecting, and synthesizing. When you ask people when they are most creative a lot of them will say things like “when I’m in the shower” or “when I take a walk.” The brain works best when we get out of its way.
Year after year I’ve watched those student teams bring their best concepts to the table in the first week after the break, usually prefaced with “We had a realization over the break.”
So if you can this holiday season, give yourself permission to take some mental space from those pressing projects, your work will be better for it.