The productivity phoenix
I am writing this in the middle of a very messy desk. Around me is the debris of a planning session on next quarter’s preaching programme. Soon, quite soon, I shall start to type up what I have – but not yet. For now I shall stick with my heaps of paper and my scribbled notes and my wiggly arrows connecting this to that and that to the other. Neatness too soon in the creative process can short circuit creativity, don’t you think?
Just yesterday I read a gem by a top US designer who said that young designers should be discouraged from designing on screen, but should do it with pencil and paper instead. I also read a description of the creative process deep inside Pixar. You might imagine that a studio whose name is synonymous with exceptional computer animation would have no place for paper and pencil except in a glass case. Apparently, nothing could be further from the truth. Each Pixar film starts with a 4ft by 8ft bulletin board covered with row after row of hand drawn panels. For Monsters Inc there were 46,000 of these panels, and for Ratatouille 72,000. These boards are the womb from which the films are born.
A friend of mine who works as a consultant always carries a pad of paper with him. The thing is, it is very deliberately plain and not lined. In his view, lined paper inhibits the creative process and makes us think in rigid, linear ways. If he wants to help a client take their company apart and put it back together -lined paper is simply not up to the job.
For those who work in communication of any kind, the finished product must be polished, attractive, tasty and compelling. Out of the productive mess a phoenix must arise who shakes off the ashes of the creative process but keeps the heat of the creative fire. Those of us who write for speech at a computer may find that the whirring of the computer fan has cooled the fire and the phoenix just won’t arise.
Image: Creative Commons
