Toddlers with a New Toy
Trying to Create and Analyse at the Same Time
"Don't try to create and analyse at the same time. They’re different processes." - John Cage
STEPHEN KING—an author so prolific that he had to create a pseudonym alongside his real name so he doesn’t flood the market—shares a secret about his creative process in his book On Writing: He tells his stories to himself first, bolts the door, mutes distractions and creates a cocoon where he can generate ideas. Days later, he returns to edit with the doors wide open, the music cranked up and the kids running riot.
Designers start with squiggly, illogical and uncertain ideas, which they slowly refine through prototyping, gathering feedback and iterating towards a polished solution.
This sequence of free creation and controlled analysis is the formula behind business success too. The Objectives and Key Results (OKRs) framework used by companies like Google and General Electric works because it combines wildly motivational objectives (creation) with the results of how to get there (analysis).
Even romance revolves around this natural ritual. Many of us don't consider the suitability of our lovers until later; in the beginning it’s just two colliding bodies and one shared fantasy.
The magic happens when we give these two processes—creation and analysis—space to flourish. So when we write, we begin writing selfishly, feverishly, opening all the boxes and being as messy as we can. Then, at the appointed time, we start to seek feedback, consider our reception, re-read, re-write and cut, cut, cut.
"I write with fire in my veins and I edit with ice in my veins." - David Chambers
Instinctively we know there's a need for balance but the sweet spot is hard to pin down. When, exactly, do we start analysing?
It could be when:
deadlines loom or when our timer pings
we find ourselves drowning in a sea of information
we’re getting fewer fresh ideas and our creative flow starts to slow
Practical matters like milestones and deadlines can easily stifle the creation phase. Having said that, we can set the game up to win by leveraging time in two ways.
First, knowing the total available time for a project gives us our working horizon. If we’re writing a book over the course of a year, then we can give ourselves six months to get messy. If we’re publishing blog posts weekly, on the other hand, then we’re dealing in days instead.
Second, we can factor in gestation time between creating and analysing to make us sharper analysts. The longer we spend away from our creations, the less the work feels like our own. And the less it feels like our own, the easier we notice errors and opportunities without being troubled by our ego.
Our creation-analysis ritual is a simple rule that can produce really complex and beautiful results.
But the analyst is impatient. At every moment, they’re trying to snatch the tool from the creator’s hand and refine what is still striving to be created.
Getting them to play together is like stopping two toddlers from fighting over a new toy. We can’t expect to reason with them; we can only use distraction.
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Thank you to Meryl at
, Abhilasha at , Lavinia at , Priya at , Becky at and Baxter at for reading drafts of this and helping me design these writer’s prompts.