Creative Process

I want to just talk aboutsomething real quick,and it was an idea that Iwas sharing with Matthew.This is something that Iprepared for Otis, a talkthat I had done there recently,but I never got to the slide.So I want to shareit with you and talkabout the creativeprocess because everybodyasked this question.Inevitably, they said,where do ideas come from?How do I never get stuck?Or how do you getpast those pointswhen you're justcreatively constipated?Well, let's talk about that.So those kinds of prompts?Send me down this spiral whereI'm evaluating my own processand thinking abouthow I think, and so Iwant to share this with you.I told my wife about this.She's like, how do these things?She said, well, it'sfunny because wehave a very intelligentaudience on YouTube.And so whenever Italk about a conceptwhere I haven't research,somebody will tell me,so here's that idea thatyou're talking about Chris,and then they will give mea long, detailed report.And it's fascinatingbecause I read them.I read every comment andit's like paragraphs deepand I was thinking,this is wonderful.I love this.I love this community.So it turns out wehave three brains.For this conversation,we had three brains eachand every one of us.We have the reptile brainthat's really concernedwith survival, sex, food,shelter, those kinds of things.The bottom of Maslow'spyramid, right?And in the hierarchy of needs.Then we have thisthinking, learning brain,the brain that we're usingright now, because let's justassuming most ofyou are not worriedabout that reptile brain rightnow because you have space,you have some digitaldevice, you'reconnected to the internet,so you must be doing OK.It's not like you'reworried about whereyour next meal is coming from.So we're in thethinking, learningspaces when we'reacquiring new information,and hopefully some ofthis call is new to you.This is fantastic.Then there's this reallycool part of your brain.It's called thearchiving, or sometimesreferred to as theautobiographical brain, whichis the brain that rememberseverything you've everlearned for your entire life.That part of yoursubconscious or conscious selfthat isn't used, people say youwill only use less than a fewof our entire brain.This is the part of thebrain they're talking about.OK, so one is really smartbecause it knows everything.One is constantlylooking for new things.I want to just worriedabout your survival.So when we're not worriedabout food, shelter threats,we can actually usethe two other brainsand we need to focus on thesetwo parts of our brains.So I've dim down the reptilebrain just for the conversationbecause we're going totake that off the table.Now, the magic is thebridge between the thinking,learning brain andthe archiving brain.As a thinking, learningbrain is so busygrabbing onto new information.You can't access thiswonderful databaseof things you've learnedin your entire life.Every book you've read,every TV show you've watched,every movie you've seenis there for the taking.It's all there, everyexperience, every feeling,emotion, even pre language issaved in the archiving brain.What we have to do is findspace where we can navigatebetween these two brains.Now, when you'redreaming, the dreamingis a byproduct ofyour archiving brain.Connecting whatyou learn that dayis trying to make sense ofwhat you learn that day.And that's why dreamscome out so weird.And that's why whenyou're dreaming,it doesn't mean whatyou think it means.It's not literal.It's never is.It's always connectingthose things.But when you're dreaming.Very few of us havethose lucid dreamswhere we can actuallycontrol what itis that we're dreaming about.Very few of us can do that.So now you have no control.It's wonderful.It's deep, it's rich.It's almost infinite,but you have no control.So the magic partis this weird areabetween conscious andsubconscious brain,between the thinking,learning and archivingautobiographical brain.And this happens,and most peopleknow this when you're takinga shower, when you're brushingyour teeth, when you'redoing the dishes,vacuuming or justgoing for a brisk walk.Why is that?Because you're vacillatingbetween these two things.You brush yourteeth so many times,you wash the dishesso many timesor taking a showerthat it's happeningon an automatic level.I think at theword is autonomic,but I'm spacing onthe term right now.My archiving brainisn't working.OK it's happeningautomatically, so your body.Though awake is inalmost like a sleep,self-induced hypnosis state.And this is where all thebeauty of your creative brainstarts coming out.All the crazy, wonderful things.So what we have to do is finda state that we can predictablyrecreate when needed.To be able to getyourself in the zone.So we'll talk aboutthis a little bitsince I don't want youstaring at these brainsthe entire time.I'm going to stop the sharingso I can just talk to you so youcan see my face, right?OK, everybody follow along here.Now the reason whyI rarely ever getstuck because I've developeda method for myselfto be able to do this,to consistently come upwith, I think, meaningfulcreative solutions almost allof my life.And here's how I do this now.When you talk to a young personand you give them a designbrief, what do they do?They automaticallystart jumping into itand you just startmaking the work.And then what are they doingbecause they feel insecure?They fall back onwhat they know,so they're automatically goingback to the archiving brain.What have we done before forwhat has worked in the past?Oh, if we are inlove with gradients,we're going to start doinggradients all over the screen.If we like big, boldtype and we wantto make it scratchy and messy,we start printing things outon the printer and startscratching up and makinga messy and justcollaging things together.Well, nothing newcomes from this,because this is purely comingfrom the archiving brain.Let's take a differentkind of person,let's take a person who's reallykind of like in a leadershipposition, they'revery intellectual.They read a lot, so theysit there and just thinkabout the problem.They're learning, they'rejust thinking all the time.But they actually neverget into the making part.So they're really good atlearning and processingnew information, but theyhave no tools or waysof reflecting thatand manifestingthings in the real world.So they too are stuck.So for me, I find that thebalance is in between the two.Let's say that you have10 days to do a project.The first thingthat you should dois you should try to consumeas much information that'srelevant to thisproject as possible.You start with the brief,you read the brief,you read the script, you readany references or inspirationas to why this show wascreated or this bookwas written, whateverproject you're trying to door why they created thiscompany in the first place.You learn all about that.You learn about the competitors,you learn about the technology,if there's any.You find any kind ofliterary referencesto this idea in general.You read about mythology, youread anything and everythingyou can that's related to thekey ideas, to the project,to the design brief.And then you stop after thosetwo days, you just stop.So now your brain is saturatedwith images, words and videos,this is what I do.I go to Ted, I go to YouTube.I start reading PDFs on thingsthat I know nothing about.I'm like, Wow.And don't worry too muchabout what it all means,I just read it all.And then I slip intothe archiving brainand have a very deliberateprocess on how I do this.Some of you guysalready know this.Right before yougo to sleep, youreview all the things youlearn in the last two days.Just go through it, likeon Monday, I did this,I read that I watch thisvideo and you keep doingthat until you fall asleep.So your programming,your archiving brainto connect those dots that aremost relevant to you right now.Now, usually by the time I wakeup, most of my ideas are ready,they're fully baked,I grab a notepad,I start writing all my ideasdown in my dream state.Old ideas sound goodin my objective state.When I'm awake, I'm like,ooh, that's terrible.That's terrible.And I'm prettysure without fail.If I go to the next four steps.A good idea will appear.Usually brushing my teeth.Taking a shower, we'redriving into work.Those three things.Because I'm doing iton autonomic levelwill produce the idea, soI allow my archiving brainto connect the new things thatI learned, but I'm coaching it.And what we want to do isto be able to and hiking to.I'm sorry when I hike.Same thing happens as longas nobody's talking to me.I'm just filled with ideas.The problem here isthis it's critical.These ideas are very fleeting.These connections.They'll disappear onyou in an instant.You think I got this, I got it.There's no way I'llforget this, somebodysays, hey, Chris, what do youthink about having for lunch?The idea is gone,so you need to beable to capture these ideasin the way that's mostconvenient for you right away.So I think somebody is lookinginto waterproof paper for meto see how well itworks, and I thinkBen burns was saying if youhave a glass shower or somethingor something smoothto write on, hewould leave a dry erasemarker inside the shower.To capture these ideas.This idea or thisprocess, I should say,has not failed me for thelast 25 years of working.It's not failed me one time.I've never not comeup with an idea.Usually, if it feels like Ican't come up with an idea,it's because Ihaven't learned enoughor I've not given myarchiving brain enough timeto work through the problembecause I'm busy running aroundlike a monkey thatI'm never goinginto that trance likestate, that hypnotic statethat the archivingbrain can come and solvemy problems for me.So in a way, you already havetwo people that work for you.We always wish we canhave a clone of ourselvesand you already do.You just need toknow how to use it.OK that's all I wanted to sayabout my creative process.OK, I hope that helps you.If you have any questions,let's talk about right now.Otherwise we're goingto jump into Slidoand answer your questions.Chris, I just wanted to addto that because I think Ilike that process,and we tend to do thatall the time to when we'reworking on client projects.But I just wanted to pointout that you could alsodo this at scale, too.So if you have ateam, you can havethem do the sameexact thing becausein a lot of the commercialprojects that we work on,for instance, likethe Xbox projects,you know, we'll have a teamof three or four peoplethat I'm working with.And I have them do the samething the first two or threedays and I'll havethem design anything.All I have them do isresearch very deeply based offof a few prompts I givethem from the creative briefso that all of usare just exploring.And from there, eachof us on the teamis just gathering informationand they're presenting it backto me in terms of how theypersonally process it.And that helps mebecause then now Ihave more diagnostics the next.And that allows me asthe creative directorand the creative leadto think about itin a much bigger scope.Then, you know, I alonehave the possibility to do.Perfect I like that youactually managed to have that.No, no, it's good.I like that you actually managepeople so that you can say,this is how youdo it as a group.Fantastic so Martin,I've been talkingabout possibly doing some kindof workshop where I gave youa creative brief, like adesign sprint where I give youtwo hours of researchsomething and thena certain amount of time.Then we go, we go forlike a two hour hike.Together and then we do ideasat the end of that hike,and you have to bring thenotepad or something with you.So that you cancapture your ideas.So during the hike,nobody's allowed to talk.Just walk and think.I think that's going to producea very interesting resultand hopefullysurprise some peopleand start to trainthemselves howto do this on a regular basis.