The Brandcast

I read an interesting article in ADWEEK called “The Unprofessionals”. The focus of the article is an argument FOR downtime. Jon Steel, planning director of WPP in London, talks about how the filling of one’s day with work and countless distractions is making people less effective, less interesting, less intelligent and less creative.

Steel quotes Leonardo Da Vinci as saying, “It is by logic we prove, but by intuition we discover” and “the greatest geniuses accomplish more by working less”. What he’s saying here is that we desperately need downtime to experience new things and allow our subconscious time to wonder and discover. This is why our best ideas come to us when driving in a car or that moment right before you fall asleep. Steel says, “…the subconscious mind has many times the processing power of the conscious mind”. Just because we are in this so called “downtime”, that doesn’t mean that our brain stops thinking. In fact I find it to be quite the contrary, while at work I almost have to force thought because it’s so hard to focus my energy on one task when so many things are nagging for my attention. My greatest ideas for Concentric have come from time spent at the gym or during a five mile back-up on I-77 or going for a walk with my daughter on a Saturday afternoon. We ask each other for out-of-the-box thinking but then try to force that thinking into a 9 to 5 rigid container. You can’t schedule creative thinking.

Steel goes on to talk about a new medical condition called “Attention Deficit Trait” which has been brought about by our constant availability. For example, I find myself suffering from this very condition, being unable to focus on any one task for more than ten minutes because my “you’ve got mail” icon is bouncing up and down beckoning me to respond respond respond. Steel says, “American office workers now devote an average of three minutes to a task and are interrupted every two minutes.” “We all have to create time and space for thought, to respond to email when it suits us, not as soon as it arrives, to find the ‘off’ button on our cell phones and Blackberries, to get out of the office once in a while, to create some distance.”

When I sat down and thought about my day, I was surprised by how much time is lost mindlessly managing tasks. I am taking steps to reduce the amount of distraction in my day and increase my allowance of time for free-thinking. For example, I have turned off “instant” email notification and I would urge you to do the same. We need to move away from expecting each other to respond to correspondence instantaneously and start freeing up time for our creative thoughts to mature. This is just one simple example of limiting distractions. The point is to allow for unscheduled free thinking. Doing this will allow us to start creative problem solving, rather than simply managing tasks.