Some more 'fun with numbers' today. A while ago I mentioned Idea Champions' When & Where Do You Get Your Best Ideas? survey. If you haven't taken the survey already, you can still do so.
But before you click to post your answers, write them down. Then you
can use this article to create your Personal Creativity Profile, as
I've done above. The Profile will tell you:
- When and where you get your best ideas
- How your sources of great ideas differ from others, and why
- How you can make more time and space for creative activities
The chart above compares my scores on the 36 questions with the
normalized* answers of other respondents. If you want to create your
own chart like this, using Excel or a similar spreadsheet software,
here's how to do it:
- From the Idea Champions' survey page, copy the 36 questions, and paste them to the first column of your spreadsheet using Paste SpecialText.
Copy your scores into the next column. Then copy the normalized average
scores from the bottom of this post into the third column, using Paste SpecialText.
Highlight the entire table you've created and sort it in ascending
order by your scores. Then add a row at the top of the chart and type
in column headings.
- Then highlight the entire table you've created and Insert a bar chart, which should look something like the chart above.
Interpreting your Profile:
In my case, brainstorming, creative thinking techniques, talking with
customers, taking time just upon waking, taking breaks, and listening
to music are my six 'sure-fire' ways to generate creativity, so I
should learn to draw on one or more of them whenever creative thinking
is needed. I should keep a pencil and paper beside the bed for
waking-hour inspirations. And since I take a lot of breaks and walk
around, I should get wireless headphones so my music goes with me. I
should study creative thinking techniques so that they become second nature. And I should spend more time talking with, and listening to, current and potential customers.
What's more, the last three of these six creativity sources are unusual
to me, and not effective for most others, so if I'm in a group
creativity setting I should be cautious about suggesting others take
breaks or listen to music. I should be sensitive to the fact that
happiness is an essential precondition to creativity for most people,
though it isn't for me, and also that most others will be more creative
if they take a walk, read books, talk with friends, or spend time
thinking just before bed, even though those techniques don't work
particularly well for me.
There are some other interesting differences between my creative places
and times, and those of most others. I find flying and commuting very
stimulating -- perhaps it's the movement,
and the fact that my commutes are off-rush-hour and hence fast-paced
and relaxing. I find television stimulates my thinking more than it
does for most others, but that's probably because of what
I watch -- documentaries, mysteries, in-depth investigative reports and
foreign programming. And the least effective three sources for me --
internet surfing, vacationing and exercising, are all fairly intense,
focused activities for me, that don't leave many 'cycles of brainpower'
for creative thinking, though I can appreciate that others who find
these activities more recreational could also find them more creatively
stimulating.
Next I asked myself how I could find more time and space for the
creative activities that work best for me. To answer this I added
another column to the spreadsheet, and entered for each of the 36
activities the amount of time each week I currently spent on each. I again used a scale of 1-5 for this:
- Activities that consume >20 hours of time a week -- 5
- Activities that consume 15-20 hours a week -- 4
- Activities that consume 10-15 hours a week -- 3
- Activities that consume 5-10 hours a week -- 2
- Activities that consume <5 hours a week -- 1
Now I added one more column that showed, for each of the 36 activities, my rating (1-5), divided by
the amount of time I spend at it each week (1-5, using the scale
above). If you do this and re-sort the 36 activities in ascending order
of this last 'Personal Score/Time Spent' column, the resulting chart
looks like this:
What this second chart reveals is what, ideally speaking, you should
try to spend more time doing (the activities at the top of the chart,
which you've rated as a source of great ideas, but which you spend
relatively little time doing) and what you should try to spend less
time doing (the activities at the bottom of the chart). In my case, I
should 'get out more' -- spend more time brainstorming with others and
just moving around, and less time in front of the computer. I also need
to use creative thinking techniques more often. My 'catch-all' #36
'other source' answer was spending time in the hot tub, which I suppose
must somehow work for me the way showers work for others. What is it
about being in the water that gets us thinking creatively? No wonder
dolphins are such imaginative creatures! Though to my surprise, others'
top 'write-in' answer for question #36 was 'on the toilet', so perhaps
we should see whether porcelain has some mysterious power to spark
ideation.
While others spend their time in airport lounges, airplanes and traffic
either bored or fuming, I find these activities 'transport' me and get
me thinking very creatively. Because it's dangerous to write while
driving, I've learned to use mnemonic devices
to capture and remember ideas that occur to me until I can safely write
them down (works in the shower, too). If I could find a dictating
machine that worked with my voice-recognition software I'd probably use
it instead -- maybe even write a whole paper or blog post simply
thinking out loud while I drive. It's quite possible, though, that
since much of my travel is early-morning, it's actually that time of
day that's responsible for the flurry of ideas, rather than the
movement. Though since I'm a night-owl, usually miserable in the
morning, I'm not sure that my body clock, or the ones around me, could
handle it if I tried early-to-bed, early-to-rise. It hurts just
thinking about it.
What works for you, and why? Are there times and places and techniques
that aren't on this list at all that seem to surface great ideas for
you? In what ways does your ideal environment for idea generation
differ from mine, and from the other survey respondents'? And are there
ways you could be spending your time a little differently to allow your
right brain to get some more exercise?
* How I normalized the 'average' answers to the survey:
First of all, I double-counted the '5' scores, the proportion of people
who found each time or place a 'sure-fire' source of great ideas,
because I think that's just as important as 'average' score. Then,
because when you average scores you get most of them clustered around
the 3 average, I 'stretched' the results so that the top-scoring source
(brainstorming) received a normalized score of 5 and the lowest-scoring
source (being sad or depressed) received a normalized score of 2.
Finally, I rounded the results to the nearest 0.5. The results then
more closely map, in standard deviation and distribution of results, an
individual's scoring.
Here are the normalized scores in order for the 36 questions (for copying and pasting into your own spreadsheet):
4.0
4.0
3.0
3.5
3.5
4.0
3.0
4.5
3.0
3.5
4.5
4.0
5.0
3.0
3.0
3.5
4.0
3.0
2.5
2.5
3.5
3.0
3.0
4.5
4.0
4.0
2.0
3.0
3.5
4.0
4.5
4.0
4.5
5.0
3.5
4.0
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MADE IN CANADA
trust your
instincts 
