George Faulkner

𝗡𝗼𝘁 𝗱𝗼𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝘆𝗼𝘂𝗿 𝗷𝗼𝗯? One of my favorite scenes from one of my favorite shows, 𝘔𝘢𝘥 𝘔𝘦𝘯, is about creativity and productivity: It opens with Don Draper, creative director, talking to his ad agency’s financial chief, Lane Pryce. Lane is complaining about the copywriters: they’re not being productive in the creative lounge. They’re napping, socializing, playing darts. Don looks at him: “We do this better than you,” he says. “And part of that is letting our creatives be unproductive… 𝘶𝘯𝘵𝘪𝘭 𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘺 𝘢𝘳𝘦.” 𝗟𝗲𝘁’𝘀 𝘂𝗻𝗽𝗮𝗰𝗸 𝘁𝗵𝗶𝘀 𝗰𝗼𝗺𝗺𝗲𝗻𝘁: Creativity boils down to putting old things together in new ways, which is a two-step process: 𝟭/ get knowledge and experiences 𝟮/ make unexpected connections But usually, you can’t force a connection. Usually, you need to 𝘤𝘰𝘢𝘹 it out by doing something unrelated, something distracting. Like napping. Like socializing. Like playing darts. These things 𝘴𝘦𝘦𝘮 unproductive, yeh, but they’re not. Because while these things distract your conscious mind, your subconscious will continue working, incubating, processing your knowledge and experiences until a random sequence of synapses fires off in your frontal cortex: And you have a moment of clarity. And connect disparate things. And then you blurt out: “Hey, that’s interesting!” And your colleague looks up and says, “What?” And you lean back and say, “Well, what if…” And then you’re off to the races. “You’re often most creative," says artist Austin Kleon, "when you’re the least productive.” Don Draper agrees: whether you work in copywriting or any other creative discipline, part of your job is not doing your job. 𝙮𝙚𝙝?