Is distraction hurting your creativity?

Creativity needs freedom of mind.

We need to have time for ourselves in order to be able to let your brain wander and produce ideas. From my office, I look out the window and see people with their smartphone, nose down, checking and writing, reading and listening.

Are we still able to create when our brain is busy 24/7?

A survey from Udemy says that 36% of Millennials and Gen Z report spending two hours or more each workday “looking at their phones for personal activities. On the other hand, they feel “stressed, unmotivated, and feeling bad about themselves and their jobs.” Maybe the most interesting part is that the majority who have learned to reduce distractions say they’ve become more productive.

Basically, it seems that if you let your brain breaths, then you leave room for ideas and stress-free thinking.

Creativity is a wild mind & a disciplined eye – Dorothy Parker

I read an article from Brian Solis, author of Lifescale: How to Live a More Creative, Productive, and Happy Life in the Harvard Business Review, commenting these findings.

He found out that even having a phone nearby damages performance. But not everything is bad about distraction. It is said also that it can lead to creativity. An article published in the Neuropsychologia magazine found that failed attention can lead to both costs and benefits of creative cognition as it can break the attention span but also enable the brain to find new path to ideas.

For Brian Solis, the main goal is to find the right balance between focus and creativity. Finding this balance requires work and effort. At the end of the day, it can be summarized by his concept of Productive distraction, accepting and even embracing the desire to check notifications, read various media, or even watch videos, but to teach yourself patience in doing so.

One of the techniques to do so is the well-known Pomodoro one. It has its origin from the Pomodoro like cooking clock used in kitchen across the USA. It was originally used as a cooking timer. The idea is to set it to 25 minutes, work intensively during this time frame and then, take a 5 minutes break when you can let your distraction takes over. After that, you just begin a new 25 minutes cycle distraction free.

This method has an added value, it teaches us control. It enables us to take control of our distraction. It sounds antinomic but it is actually exactly what is happening.

Let yourself be distracted but under your own terms. You mix control and distraction.
Creativity is an essential part in Itecor, and this is the reason it is so important to find ways to help people be creative. This is also why we try to implement working habits when people are focus but interact between themselves in a casual way. The brain has then breathers enabling it to be more creative.

His “focused distracted” environnement makes Itecor a special creative place.

I would love to hear from you about creativity…

Comment and critic…

Cécile