Creativity or Hacking the Brain

When discussing creativity and or being creative, my mind goes back to college and one of the last classes I took. The professor was writing a book on creativity and was of the opinion that you could teach businesses how to be creative. My profs idea of creativity was turning his briefcase in a different direction on his car seat so he would remember to do something on the way home. The creativity was in coming up with a good trigger to remember to do something.

My understanding of creativity is a little different. I believe that while you can force a team or individual to come up with a better idea using some wonky techniques, a true creative puts out an idea well before it's time or is able to define a whole new way of doing something that no one has thought of before.

Brain hacking is figuring out a trigger that will lead to a different result. Creativity is crafting or thinking up something new without any prompting. While you can help someone be more "creative" it really is hacking their brain to do something they may not normally be inclined to do or figure out.

Saying no to a client

The simple answer is, always tell a client Yes. And then explain the Total Cost of Ownership to what Yes means. I learned this lesson early on in my career and still use it today in almost all aspects of my life. When a client asks if we can launch this app to the moon and build a base of operations there, yep we can. When a client asks if we can add three buttons to the screen that does nothing, yes we can. The simple, psychological, reason to do this is that people do not like hearing the word no. No, being a negative word, defences go up, arguments start forming and you end up backpedalling about why you are not supportive. By saying Yes, approving of their idea, validating their needs and opening up the door for conversation about the request.

When you say yes you keep the door open to discuss how much the idea will cost. Cost being a factor of time, money, resources and other ideas is where you take the conversation next. When you are able to have the conversation about cost you will allow the client to make the decisions about the implementation of the idea. This is ultimately the important part of the conversation with the client. The idea was brought to you for the conversation and validation. The approval or denial of any idea should rest with the client and by saying Yes, you allow them to make the choice.

Are you too experienced?

Even in the software world there is a growing expectation you are an expert in a single area.

What if you are an expert software developer, regardless of the language? When a project lands on your plate you need to ask yourself if you plan on using the language the customer/employer wants you to use or the language you'd like to use. In many cases you are going to use the language that the rest of the team can support in the long run. Still, you'd like to use a lighter, faster, shinier new language to make sure you stay current. However, development skills have become more specialized in recent years and that is actually hurting our career field.

If you've been working with OS's, databases, languages, scripting tools, build tools, etc. etc. for a long time then you may be too experienced for the current crop of companies looking for good people. By too experienced I mean you have yet to specialize your skill sets and forget everything else you've learned. You are a polyglot engineer or a language agnostic developer and if asked you can spin up and be an expert in a given language in short order, pulling from years of experiences, your expertise can shift depending on the project at hand. If this is you, you may be too experienced and finding a good fit in today's world may be more difficult.

Please, if you are a PolyGlot Engineer, Language Agnostic Developer or just a well rounded software type person, don't change.

Rabbit Holes

If you have a lot of little projects going on at once you may drop down a rabbit hole on one and forget to come back up for air. Right now I should be at the grocery store getting fixing for dinner tonight but I went down a hole for one of my projects and am now a little behind. Rabbit holes are not a bad thing and you just need to set yourself a time limit if you drop down one. I give myself only 15 minutes to write this blog and then I have to move on. If you give your rabbit hole a time limit then you can still be productive for the day and feel good about one of your projects.

Time limit you say, yes, time limit yourself and you can get more done than you think. A lot of people tend to work better under a deadline and a time boundary will help you stay focused and productive. Keep notes of where you were on a project, limit yourself to a set time and you can focus more effectively on each project.

Times up.

Advice vs Perspective

Looking over some notes I found a quote I heard a few weekends ago. I don't give advice, I give perspective. This is, of course, a quote from someone else and I wish I had that reference. If you know it please share.

I had to determine what this meant to me and how to change or update my methods of communicating before I understood the quote better. This is not a call to arms to just stop giving advice or to only hand out your perspective in a situation. There is always a balance and the challenge is finding what that is for each conversation. Your perspective is how you see a situation or conversation or event and it is only your view of what is happening. Your advice would be how to correct or fix or affect the situation or conversation, which in turn means a lack of active listening on my part. A good conversationalist will be able to mirror back your discussion so they fully understand your point of view. Giving a perspective is very similar in that you have to listen to the person talking or pay attention to the situation to be able to have a perspective. And, your perspective may be entirely wrong. 

Having a perspective has given me the ability to listen and observe, better than before and it helps me with my tendency to always want to fix or problem solve something. Having a perspective is also having good active listening skills and many times listening is what's important.

When do you think?

Better yet, when do you clear your head when a problem comes up? If you have been trying to push through a problem, keep working till you get it right, banging your head against the wall to knock out all the bad ideas... You may need a new method to flush out that solution to your problem. Admittedly this is more related to the people who have 1st world problems and normally sit to do their work. Regardless, when you have a problem and you need to noodle on it pretty hard, you should be doing something completely different than what you are doing now. The subconscious has almost all of the answers you need to solve the problem at hand. Getting the subconscious to do the work for you is what we are talking about here.

When up against a wall of a big problem, sometimes, you need to step away from it and let the smarter part of your brain kick in. Options here are boundless and each person is different. Just like sharpening the axe, taking a break from the current problem can allow your brain to do the work it does best. I've had solutions or developed a better picture to solve a problem in the shower.

Sometimes, stepping away will help you solve the problem faster and better.