There is a yin and yang between productivity and creativity—how soloists can find the right balance

Talking Points

Why authority-based businesses require being unproductive sometimes—and how to give yourself permission to go there.

The hidden costs of failing to innovate, especially for soloists.

The wide spectrum from productivity to creativity—and deciding where you want to be at any given moment.

Pushing through any residual guilt from not being highly productive all the time.

The difference between exploration and expedition—and why exploring (a proxy for creativity) may be challenging for experts.

Quotables

“There are things that you probably need to do for an authority-based business…that require you to be unproductive.”—JS

“Creativity is like being delightfully unproductive.”—RM 

“There's no stopwatch to be like, okay, like how fast did you come up with an idea today?”—JS 

“You may have this sort of mindset that you always need to be busy. And sometimes that just has to be broken.”—RM

“The question immediately comes up like, how do you schedule projects back to back if you're unsure when they're done? And I'm like, why are you scheduling projects back-to-back at all?”—JS

“You just have to find a way to shift back and forth between those times where you're really busy, and it's relatively quiet.”—RM 

“There's a thing that I do that looks like I'm doing nothing from the outside. And if you just recognize that that's part of the process, like without that, you're not gonna innovate.”—JS

“People resist it (allowing an idea to roll around before it gels) like I can't even tell you because there's so much discomfort in sitting in the not knowing.”—RM