John Cleese is a comic genius. The video embedded below isn’t comedy gold, but it does contain three nuggets about innovation and creativity and John Cleese is one of the most creative brains that I know:
1) If we want to be innovative, Cleese advises us to create a “tortoise enclosure” i.e. to create boundaries in time and space which help to avoid interuptions and destroy the creative flow.
2) When it comes to creativity, the subconscious brain does the vast majority of the heavy lifting. In just the same way that humour can be laboured, when the so-called comedian tries too hard and uses the conscious brain; so it is true of creativity. When we have a mental block, Cleese advises us to “sleep on it”, because unconsciously stuff just continues to get better, to such a degree that sometimes we can’t even remember what the mental block was the next day.
3) An amazing implication of the unconscious brain taking the strain is that the brain continues to work on the masterpiece even after the conscious brain has moved onto new things (or the deadline has passed).
This has a down-side: Because the unconscious brain keeps working on your masterpiece after you have submitted, then in your head your masterpiece continues to get better and better. Of course, the physical deliverable just says the same, which can lead to you remembering it as great masterpiece (which unfortunately, it might just not have had time to become). You might not want to admit it, but does this ring any bells ?
There is an up-side as well: Ever spent ages on something that you’ve then lost before you had time to deliver it ? How annoying is that ? What seems most gaulling is that you’ve already spent all of that time, but then at some point you need to cut your losses looking for it, and decide to write it again from scratch. But, once you reach that point; do you know what happens ? Not only, do you write your masterpiece much more quickly second time around; but also you benefit from that sub-conscious brain and it comes out better second time around. Not quite sure I’m suggesting loosing your work to make it better; but don’t worry so much if it does go astray.
