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Creativity Connection Always on

Paul Kitcatt on why creatives need to be able to switch off

By Paul Kitcatt

February 12, 2014 | 5 min read

Not long ago, if you saw someone walking down the street talking to themselves, you knew they were crazy. Then suddenly there were a lot more crazy people about. And then it was nearly everyone, and it turned out they were on the phone.

Paul Kitcatt

No one is where they seem to be anymore. Their physical bodies may be in front of you, but between their phones, social media and headphones, they are in fact in a bubble, and their minds are elsewhere. Or nowhere.

It's quite charming, in a way. It shows a touching desire to be connected to all your friends, all the time, and to be open to whatever anyone might want to say to you, whenever they want to say it. While listening to your tunes.

It's almost as if we were all cutting ourselves free of our physical bodies and wafting away to live in a cloud, floating above mere mortal concerns.

But I think we may find we need to be attached to the material world. Not just for obvious stuff like food and procreation. Living in a bubble is fatal for creativity.

Of course being so very connected means you can be in touch with what others are creating, all the time. But if you want to be creative yourself, you need to feel the earth beneath your feet.

Creativity needs fuel. The problem with the always-on bubble is it's managed. Chance encounters are all mediated. What you don't get is serendipity. The smack-in-your-face raw stuff of life, unfiltered, coming at you whether you like it or not. Not because it fits your profile, or because it's like what's on your playlist, or because someone you know thinks you'll like it, but because it's in front of you, all around you, and you're paying attention.

You need this. Creativity needs a slap to make it cry out.

You also need solitude. You need not to be connected. You need to be offline, alone with yourself. It's hard to achieve, and a bit frightening. But you need it, so that whatever is in you can well up and make itself known. How can you hear yourself if you're always hearing others?

You need boundaries. You need to admit the world on your own terms, when and where you decide, and you must shut it out when you need peace. If not, the leakage of other people's ideas will dilute your own.

You need renewal. You must not take all your devices into your bedroom, for example. The urge to check your messages or email or whatever else you're in love with will not leave you alone unless you put the shiny little gadgets out of reach. Never use your phone as an alarm clock, because the little bastard will also wake you up when someone else decides they need you.

You need to know the difference between knowledge and understanding. The internet is brilliant for instant facts. It specialises in disposable knowledge – great for pub quizzes, rubbish for actually understanding things. That takes work, not just clicking. And it takes time.

You can tell yourself how clever you are, because you can walk down the street and talk, tweet, text and listen to your music, and you're multi-tasking. Which means doing several things at once badly. The research shows multi-tasking is about the same as doing things drunk, or stoned.

The creative mind is receptive, absorbent and connective. It soaks up what's around it and joins it up in new and unimagined ways. You have to give it time and space to do so. And most of all, you have to be here now, in the present moment, listening, seeing, feeling, being surprised and taken to places you'd never have chosen.

I love my devices. I have in my hand an iPhone, a connection to all the music, books, pictures, movies, knowledge, ideas and people I could ever want. It is breathtaking. I could lose myself in it. I do lose myself in it.

But it has to be a servant, not a master. It can be the greatest tool, but it can also get between me and everything else. When it does that, it starts to channel my mind. It takes me down well-worn paths. And that is death to creativity.

Unplug yourself every day. Switch off the devices. Be in the world, alone. Let it happen to you. It will be boring at first. But boredom is good. Stay with it, and you will begin to notice things. The world will make itself apparent to you. It will not be boring for long.

Paul Kitcatt is chief creative officer at Kitcatt Nohr

Creativity Connection Always on

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