If you are seeing this blog post, it means I got such a creativity boost from TEDx content last night in Kansas City that I couldn't get a follow-up blog post written after the event!
So here is a creativity boost idea from earlier in the week on why it is sometimes best to abstain from participating in a creative decision.
I Dislike Thinking about Food
My wife has bad reactions to a whole variety of foods and spices. As a result, we don't dine out often, and when we do, we go to the same familiar restaurants we know won't present any problems for her. If we do venture out to a less familiar restaurant, we have to ask questions and make sure the server is knowledgeable and disclosing all the ingredients in whatever she might order.
Suffice it to say, we do a lot of thinking about restaurants.
That thinking coupled with my dislike for selecting food and beverage menus for events AND my personal view of eating as something that's standing between me and doing more rewarding activities means thinking about food isn't something that gives me a creativity boost.
My apologies to all the foodies who are reading this!
Creative Restaurant Selections
The past two weeks, I've gotten together for lunch with Joe Cox and Aaron Deacon from Social Media Club of Kansas City discussing an upcoming brainstorming project. When it came time to select a restaurant the first week, I abstained from participating in the decision as Aaron recommended an Egyptian restaurant.
While I would never wind up at an Egyptian restaurant on my own, I decided to go along with the recommendation and force myself into a new experience. Well, the Egyptian restaurant was fantastic, and I loved the chicken kabob selection.
When selecting a restaurant for lunch this week, I never even entered the online conversation. This week, Aaron selected a Vietnamese restaurant. Again, a choice I NEVER would have considered. Once again, it was wonderful, with a great seafood stir-fry as this week's lunch choice.
As I told Aaron when we left the Vietnamese restaurant, I'm depending on him to make the creative restaurant choices for the rest of what's becoming a regular Tuesday lunch.
The Creativity Boost Lesson
There's the creativity lesson in all this: we can become so stuck in thinking and behavioral ruts, we don't even notice them. These creativity ruts can be compounded be trying to influence / sway / control group decisions we're involved with so we wind up never even considering something creatively new and different.
If you suspect this is happening in some aspect of your life, get a creativity boost by forcing yourself to abstain from making a decision - or even contributing input to a decision. Hand the decision over to your knowledgeable, creative teammates and let them take you in creative directions you would have never pursued.
Personally, I can't wait to see what the creative restaurant selection will be this next Tuesday! – Mike Brown
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