Hey readers, this week we’re focused on how to foster creativity by making space in your day for unstructured thought, rather than screen time.

I don’t want to sound like an old fuddy-duddy: I realize even using that phrase can make me sound old, but the fact is that younger generations need to look up from their phones, put them down, and allow their minds to wander.

Let’s dive in.

When do you come up with your best ideas?  When are you the most creative?

I would wager a bet that your answer was NOT, “sitting at my desk, under a deadline, in between Zoom meetings.”  If I had asked you where you spend most of your day, that would most likely have been your answer.  No, creativity does not breed in the same setting as anxiety. Creativity thrives in unconventional spaces.  It thrives in the “in-between” moments.  Creativity comes when you least expect it.

My best ideas come when I am driving, jogging, at the gym, or in the shower. 

The idea for this column came to me while I was driving my older son to school.  As always, when there’s a spare second, he is likely scrolling through videos on his phone.  We had been in the car for 30 seconds, and he was already on his phone.  Teens today are natural multitaskers, and I get it.  I don’t want to sound like an old fuddy-duddy (though, in writing that, I sound like one), but I wish they knew the value of just not thinking for a few minutes. 

My son was watching videos and having a full conversation with me, which led me to believe that neither of us was getting his full attention.  It was mid-term week at his high school, and I asked whether he was prepared.  He said yes, but I knew he was also nervous.  I implored him to put down his phone and just look out the window for the 15-minute drive.  I told him, “Your brain needs unstructured time to process what you studied and what you learned.  If you don’t give it that time, you can’t fully digest and use what it was taught.”  He sort of ignored me, as any teenage boy tends to do, but I know he got it because a day later, I noticed some minor changes in his behavior.

That observation got me thinking about the value of unstructured thought.  The ability to connect dots between disparate ideas is what makes humans so effective as a species.  We process things differently and have a much larger capacity for intellectual pursuits than any other animal on the planet.  Our brains are wired differently, and our minds function best when they are given room to breathe.  They need room to process concepts and play out scenarios.  I find my best thinking will emerge from nowhere.  I may have read something, processed it a little, and my mind will bring it up later while I’m listening to a song or watching a show.  Maybe I’m just looking out the window on a drive, and something will connect and shout out in my brain, “Hey – have you thought of this?” 

Your brain, given space to breathe, will create connections that might otherwise go unnoticed.  Teens today have to give themselves that time.  They can’t cram videos, shopping, social media, and gaming into every waking minute.  The brain needs to do its own thing.  It needs to file, categorize, and question everything presented to it over the last day or week so that the information can be used effectively when the time is right.

This is also why AI will never win.  AI is trained on data to think linearly.  It is trained to connect ideas based on what it has seen in the past, and it is never given time for unstructured thought because, well, why would it?  AI solves a problem.  It doesn’t sit and try to invent new problems to solve.  That’s what humans do.  We worry.  We have anxiety.  We process things and overprocess until we find something new be concerned about.   We can think nonlinearly and come up with ideas that no machine will ever be capable of generating.  No computer would have ever come up with a Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup.  Combining chocolate and peanut butter?  No way.  That’s a purely human concoction. 

Nonlinear thinking is the key to creativity.  If you give an AI a task, it starts broadly and funnels down to an answer.  Think back to the last series of prompts you had and how that conversational flow went.  The AI I engage with only goes so far before it gets stuck in a logical loop.  If you give someone a task, they can do the same, but they can also look to completely unrelated categories of business for ideas and inspiration and use them to come up with something different.

Creativity is a human trait. 

Unstructured time for thinking leads to creativity.

Our kids need encouragement to find more time for unstructured thinking so they can succeed, because creativity tends to lead to success.  Very few people, and very few businesses, have been considered super successful by simply doing what others have trained them to do.  AI is trained to do things.  People are creative.  We do what we are NOT trained to do.

So, the next time you sit down to tackle a problem, make sure to change your scenery.  Clear your schedule. Get outside and go for a walk.  Find a way to be inspired and look for clues in the world around you, but don’t look at your phone.  And let’s all try to get the young people around us off their phones and into a less structured part of the day.  That will lead somewhere fun and interesting and far more enjoyable than a virtual world.

I love to write, and I love advertising. I write a weekly column with Mediapost. There you can read my POVs on media and advertising, but this blog is more general ideas and ones that don’t really fit into Mediapost. I do this because it’s fun, but I would love more people to see it. Please support the sponsor at the top with a click, and share this newsletter with 2-3 other people who might like it. Thanks again for your support, and have a wonderful day!