Blog #6

A Day of Rest

At one point in my TV career I produced live music shows. I found that the success of my work (and my value as a producer-director) was judged in large measure by how good my last show was. (People in the business seem to have short memories!)

And in my case that was judged against the work of another very capable producer-director who was doing the same type of shows.

In order to compete, I found myself working seven-day weeks. Even in my "down time" I was trying to conger up new and creative ways to do musical numbers. (Think 30-minutes each week of new and original music videos.)

With the stress and with my head constantly "buzzing," I found that truly creative, "out of the box" ideas didn't come easily. Often, I felt like a writer with writers' block.

Then I discovered that the really creative ideas came to me when I wasn't thinking about "work." The time during my morning shower was my best daily example. (The producer-director I mentioned earlier said his best ideas came when he was sitting on the john! He was serious; and, no, I wouldn't make something like that up!)

Being a '"family man" at that time, I felt an occasional obligation to get away with the family for a day, or even just for an afternoon -- something in retrospect I should have done much more often.

During these "outings" when my mind was seemingly occupied with other things, ideas would simply pop into my head. (I started taking along a small audio recorder so I wouldn't forget them.)

Finally, I realized that mental chatter stifles creativity, and truly creative ideas spring from the silence between thoughts.

Years later I found this confirmed by scientific studies. Even Albert Einstein said these were the times when he got most creative ideas.

Bottom line: For starters, those who have forgotten about it might want to reexamine this "day of rest" concept.

Possibly not unrelated, Americans take less vacation time than people of any industrialized nation.

In fact, in order to keep up with their work, many U.S. workers forego vacations all together.

But, in terms of yearly productivity among these nations, Americans are nowhere near the top of the list.

As "Fog" used to say: "Think about it."

-Ron Whittaker

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