05: The Strategic Value of Unstructured, Unstrategic Time for Strategic People
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If you're new: I use this space to explore creativity, art, storytelling, writing, design, tech, UX and the intersections between them—whatever that means. I personally know those connections are what rev me up, and so, let’s see what happens!
Let us begin ...
In a previous newsletter, I talked about how I come at things “from the side,” and yesterday morning I have a good example of how I do this. I was watching a video in the Art Prof anatomy-drawing series when suddenly I realized how I wanted to structure arguments I’ve been meditating on for years about the relationships between UX, strategy, content and design. While Professor Lieu discussed how to handle foreshortening via Michael Fassbender movies, I furiously scribbled down a logical order to express thoughts that have floated phantom-like in my brain. I finished with a big grin and sense of accomplishment. Finally, I thought. Truly—finally.
But what was it about this lecture on hand anatomy? Why was it the key to helping me organize my thoughts to solve this puzzle? I'm going to try to explain that in this newsletter, and to do it, I'm going to jump through time. Ready?
Back when I had a full-time agency job many years ago ...
I used to work at a small agency with 10 full-time employees. The agency was constantly working to refine and define their methodology in order to express why it was unique and why clients should work with them. One time, they even invited a liaison to run workshops for us. When it came to defining the steps for customer acquisition, accounts management and the dev team, there was quite a lot to say and document. But the black hole of the workshops always remained around the creative strategic stuff. Whenever the liaison tried to get the creative and strategic people—like myself—to articulate the tools and tactics we always used, we balked and pushed back. "It's never exactly like that from project to project," we'd say. But at the same time, when our teammates left us space to share our process, the creative people were unable to define it.
It's something that I see over and over again. It's something that still permeates the attitude toward creatives and creativity in our society. As much as we laud the outcomes of creative thinking, we all have a very poor understanding and weak relationship to the process that gets us there. In that particular moment in time, I thought: How weird is it that so many smart people just can't fill in this gap in the agency's workflow.
So I tried to think about it. I don't remember how it happened, but I'm sure my role at the time was a helpful catalyst to my thoughts. Because I worked at a small agency, we all wore lots of hats across multiple projects. At any one time, I was the UX, product, business, brand, creative director, writer, designer, other of the team. It was unsustainable in the long run, but it really helped me understand the intents, purposes and perspectives of each discipline. And with all that information floating in my brain, I landed on an articulation I still believe.
The mental model of the creative process as a progression of tools or tactics was inherently a mental fallacy. Instead, it was better to think of the creative process as chunks of unstructured time used by the creative to think critically and solve problems creatively. Depending on the restrictions of a project—time, budget, scope, team, talent, technology, etc—the creative will utilize their time in up to 4 ways in whatever order makes the most sense to their process and with whichever tools they believe are necessary:
Work/consult with their clients
Work/consult with one, some or all of their teammates on the project
Work/consult with a colleague in their discipline who is inside or outside of the project
Work alone
In breaking down time, the first three steps ranged from time blocks of an hour to four hours. The last time block required at least one day (8 hours) of solitude. What the creative does during these time blocks is up to the creative. In the first three, they might converse, workshop, ideate or do something with a tool depending on a problem. In the last category, the creative was free to do whatever they needed to arrive at the solution—even if it was doing laundry, bingewatching TV, taking a walk, doing a yoga class or stress-eating a bag of chips. They use the time to tackle the problem from the uniqueness of their perspective and skillsets by allowing them to do what they actually do best: Be creative. However, the time must be unstructured and must be respected by the business. Any attempt to manage it destroys the integrity of the artistic process—which in the end is when a person engages all their technical, intuitive, mental, emotional and physical energies to solve a problem whatever it is. It is how we as a species have ended up with the wheel, geometry, Hamilton, the Constitution, lunar landings, and the Great British Bake-off.
Learning to trust "unstructured" time over and over again...
The creative spark that powers the artistic process is humanity's greatest evolutionary asset. But modern businesses continually try to manage it and impose structure on the people who they need most to utilize it. Society also always questions its value. If you can't see the direct line of a figure drawing to a price tag, then we are encouraged to ask: Is it all worth it? If you can't guarantee that your process will take you to a specific outcome, then why invest in it all?
In your job setting, I'll admit that this has some merit—depending. For example, when I was a book editor, I asked the company to pay for my first design classes. I argued that since I acted as an art director anyway, then it would benefit the company if I had some knowledge of the subject. The company argued that my title didn't merit the knowledge even if my responsibilities included it. So what happened? I took the classes on my own, changed careers and am living the life I want. The company lost me—a valuable asset. On the other hand, in my small agency, we were tasked with building products—websites, apps, brands, etc. Therefore, whenever I asked for solitude, I made sure to say it was to solve a specific problem for my projects. My leads were always very supportive and they made sure to protect me while I used the time to get a solution.
Outside of a job setting, the value of unstructured time has been something I've grappled with repeatedly. I've often struggled with how to align the capitalist, business mindset of society with the creative, intuitive, organic mindset I enjoy the most. This is no more apparent than in my decision to backpack Europe for 5 months in 2015 just because. At the time, I was burned out from my life in a small agency. We parted ways. I didn't know what job I wanted to step into next. And I was haunted by one question in the 36 Questions Modern Love column that was on everyone's social media feed. The question: If you knew you were going to die in a year, what would you do? My answer: Tell everyone I love to go away. I needed to write!
So I decided to travel Europe for 5 months to fulfill that wish. Once I made the decision, things just fell into place. But I still felt like I needed to justify my time. I left in July with a schedule of deliverables. I was going to finish my novel, learn a language, immerse myself in different cultures and even pitch outlets to earn money while I traveled. Within four weeks, I was an anxious wreck. My expectations and the burden of proving value debilitated me. So I made the intentional choice to let it all go. I gifted myself the privilege of having no plans, no expectations, no outcomes, no strategies. I just meandered Europe listening, observing and absorbing whatever was in front of me. I'm still reaping the rewards.
Here's one of the main things I learned from that. While on the surface, I was drifting across borders, at multiple sublevels, my brain was doing some intense computations. I eventually used this metaphor for people: It was like I planted a seed then walked away to trust the earth to nurture and germinate it. Eventually, I wandered back to see what had grown because something always did.
In this mindset, I never knew what was going to blossom, but it was always very worthwhile. Out of that Europe trip, I never completed anything on my initial list, but I did get things like this:
More confidence in my creative process and my ability to talk about it to others
The realization that I could successfully leave my life and career for 5 months and return with no problems from anyone
The realization that I didn't miss my professional work or any of the trappings of "success" at all
The coming together of a creative spark that had been brewing inside me for a decade
And the most relevant thing? The proof that if I freelanced without trying just to go to Europe for 5 months where I didn't work at all and was the most mentally, emotionally and physically healthy I'd ever been, then why would I contort myself into another job description and company? For the first time I thought: What if I went into business for myself? And I've been running that experiment ever since!
Leaping into the unknown again and again..
It's almost November, which means I'm about to take my end of the year sabbatical again. I started doing this four years ago after I'd been running my business for three years. It was my most uncomfortable business year at the time. I wasn't making consistent money. I kept finding myself on projects that were canceled, postponed or truncated for reasons outside my control. In response, I kept trying to impose formulas and methodologies to help me "guarantee" my monthly income and remove that uncertainty. Nothing seemed to work, and I just got distressed and ate desserts.
So I decided to do something that didn't seem to make strategic business sense. I applied for a sabbatical through the startup Amble. For the privilege of living in a national park, I'd have to pay a not insignificant amount of money and do UX work for a non-profit for free. It seemed like a raw deal for the privilege, but I knew enough to know I needed to get away from everything to change my mind-set—costs be damned!
Thank goodness the founders put up with me in the beginning! I channeled all my fears about risk-vs-reward and uncertainty-vs-certainty into my communications with them leading up to the trip. And within three days in Yosemite, my brand new car—which I bought because I was afraid my 20-year-old Accord would die on the road—was broken. Rats and mice had chewed through the wires in the engines because what else are rats and mice going to do? I laughed. I cried. I baked cookies. I let my cohort members hold me. And then, I let go of all my plans and expectations. I tried to just be. I cooked a lot in that communal kitchen. I remember I rewatched Justified. Sometimes I went into nature, and sometimes I wrote. When I came home, I didn't stress about what would happen in the new year. Instead, I shot off a few inquiries in response to postings in networking groups that seemed interesting, then I just enjoyed my holidays. Within three weeks of January 1, one of those inquiries turned into an opportunity. An agency I'd never heard of wanted me to come work for an uncertain amount of time in New York City in a technology and with a platform I'd never worked with. And I had to be there in 7 days. Would I come?
I closed my eyes, and I said, "Yes!" That year turned into one of my most professionally successful and creatively productive years ever. My harvest from that year still continues to this day, and all because I leapt into the unknown.
Signing off for 2021!
As I said, this will be my fourth official sabbatical since Amble. Each one has gone down very differently than expected. But for each, I'm just trying to respect the gift of space and time. Nowadays, whenever I talk to potential clients, I let them know I'll be out for these months, and no one ever gives me grief. Instead, the response is always the same: "I wish I could do that, too."
You can. I encourage you to try. It doesn't have to be five months in Europe, two months at the end of the year, or whatever I'm doing. It can be your own special little oasis of unstructured time wherever and whenever. It can be as simple as how it was yesterday morning for me. I like art. So I've made space in my life to learn more art. That's how I encountered Art Prof, and that's how I now have a tangible piece in the UX/product/creative/art/professional/design intersection puzzle that propels a lot of my life.
It took me over a decade just to get here, and I'm still learning how to get comfortable with the privilege. I can't tell you how or why the time will be worthwhile, but it is. I can't tell you how and why or what I'll do with it, but it will generate something.
It's not just "5 steps" I do every single time to always get an answer. It's a journey, and luckily, it's mine.
See you all in 2022!
S
Reading, Listening, Watching
I have been re-reading tons of manga—Sailor Moon, Rurouni Kenshin, Maison Ikkoku, Ayashi no Ceres, Wish, Angel Sanctuary. In the early 2000s, I used to read graphic novels a lot, and I haven’t really touched them since. So it’s been fun to revisit these stories. I always love a reread because you remember how/why you felt about them then vs. how/why you feel about them now.
It's always fun when you pick up an unknown book in an unknown place and it turns out to be really really great! That was The Sirens of Mars for me, which I bought while in Joshua Tree last month.
The Great Pottery Throw Down! I have a totally different perspective now on this whole genre of craftsmanship and art. And with that said, please enjoy this really fun video a friend sent me because of it.
I wrote a book!
My talented friends stylized quite a few photos, and I want to show them off. You can also read an excerpt of my book here. Buy it here.