Creativity is Critical For Business Owners
When you’re working 14-hour days most of the time, you won’t be able to be creative. Not to mention the risk of burnout, poor decision-making, etc. That leads to the question: Is not being creative really a problem for entrepreneurs?
Creativity is critical for a thriving business
Because so many people think of creativity as being exclusively the realm of artists – writing, drawing, painting, and so forth – they also think of themselves as not being creative if they don’t make art.
I’m not saying that making art isn’t creative. Not at all! But there’s a lot more to creativity than “just” art, which definitely contributes to human flourishing. I definitely think it’s an important part of any educated person’s life. But you can appreciate it, not make it, and still get the same benefits.
For business owners who don’t enjoy making art, creativity comes when you’re solving problems. We live in the 21st century, and a lot of obvious answers to business problems have already been suggested.
And because any entrepreneur is no longer competing only against locals, but anyone in their space across the planet, they need to have something special that sets them apart.
It could be your personality, the signature method of how you do your work, the way you approach marketing, or a different kind of solution to a popular problem.
Aside from personality (maybe), the key ingredient for differentiation is creativity.
For example, I work with financial professionals a lot, especially CPAs and tax professionals, since I used to be a financial planner myself. As I meet more and more women entrepreneurs in the accounting space, I’m seeing a lot of new approaches both to finding and retaining clients, and also how to package the work.
One of the biggest issues CPAs have in their work is, well, their clients: trying to get all the data you need is often the biggest challenge in trying to make an April 15 deadline.
So many business owners wait until the last minute to enter expenses, find receipts, and provide all the data that their CPA requires to do the return. That bunches up all the work into the span of a few weeks, which is very hard on anyone who’s under that kind of deadline.
I’ve seen some creative ideas about shifting to more of a monthly system, where the business owner and CPA have a short meeting each month. Not only does this help the business owner better understand their own numbers (which as a former financial planner I can assure you is a HIGHLY desirable outcome), but it also provides their tax professional with a better window on the business.
Plus gathering a month’s information at a time is usually a lot easier for the business owner than trying to do it for the entire year.
Most people probably don’t want their CPA getting too creative when it comes to accounting principles! However, changing the nature of the relationship is a creative way to assist both parties in a positive outcome.
Even though no art has been made, it’s still a new way of envisioning the way a CPA works and changing the relationships they have with clients for the better. Taking something that exists and putting a new spin on it is a fundamental principle of creativity.
Creativity and time management
Can you do all this creative problem-solving in the middle of your 14-hour days?
Of course not.
OK, technically you can. But the result is going to be suboptimal, at its very best. Not at all the quality you'd get if you approached creativity in the right way.
When you’re thinking logically, planning, working with numbers (such as on a tax return), strategizing, and all that linear-type thinking, you’re using your prefrontal cortex.
That’s where executive function lies, but more importantly for business owners, this area gets tired REALLY fast.
In terms of brains, this function hasn’t been around that long. Not all animals have a prefrontal cortex, and the others that do, don’t use it to the extent that we do. It’s certainly not adapted to 40-hour work weeks, never mind anything more than that.
It’s why you only get super deep focus time for a few hours a day, and why you periodically need to take breaks when you’re doing hard thinking work. Your brain needs a break from that.
Creativity uses several different areas of the brain, which is why you don’t get good ideas from linear thinking. But you can’t just switch from clicking away at a spreadsheet to coming up with some creative ideas.
Your brain needs a little time and space to be creative. If you have a deadline looming over you or an unfinished business task, you won’t be in the right headspace for it, because your brain doesn’t like to let go of unfinished business. (You can counter that by writing down the unfinished task as a priority for the next day.)
If you want to be creative, boredom is actually a good place to start. Put your phone away. Take yourself off the internet. Stare into space for a while. The human brain gets itchy when it doesn’t have anything to do, so it’ll start coming up with things.
You might not like the first bunch of things it comes up with, which is fine. Once there’s something that you feel like you could make something out of it, then you can wonder away at that. (Keep your phone and internet off. They’re going to destroy your creative mood.)
Another way to ease into it is to make art. Whether or not you do this regularly, it’s probably going to be pretty shitty. Know that going in. You’re not aspiring to have something worthy of hanging in the Guggenheim, at least not in this moment, so don’t worry about how bad the art is.
It’s the making it that’s the point. Once you’ve started doing something creative, no matter how wobbly or strange-looking, and you've turned off the critical voice inside your head because at the moment it’s really not necessary, you’re in the right headspace for thinking creatively about your business.
Or you could just continue making bad art if that’s what’s good for you in the moment. Creativity really is about the process and not the results.
Creativity and improving productivity in the workplace
As you can see, having the headspace to be creative takes some time out of your day.
Which isn’t a bad thing. True productivity (as I discussed last week) requires a lot of time not spent working. So that when you are at work, you’re as ready as you can be to tackle the tough tasks that only you can do, that move your business forward.
Creativity is a good way to give your prefrontal cortex a break. And human brains like to be creative. That’s why we have cave paintings and musical instruments from tens of thousands of years ago.
That’s why creativity is such a great boost for productivity. It’s something your brain likes and it’s not fatiguing your brain in the way 21st century work does.
You could even go to a local art class, or paint night. You can be creative in the presence of others, and especially when you go with friends, you’ll get that social tickle that brains also like.
May 30th is National Creativity Day, so consider trying something creative that day and see if you find something you enjoy.
Recap (tl;dr):
Creativity isn’t just about making art, but novel solutions to existing problems. Entrepreneurs need to be creative to stand out from the crowd, and creativity helps you be more productive and make better use of your time.
If you want more time for art or other hobbies but you want to keep growing your business and don’t know how to balance them out, schedule a free consultation with me here.