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In today’s busy work environment, you’re expected to be constantly available on group chats and respond to emails quickly. Your calendar might also be accessible for others to view and book meetings, gobbling up valuable free time almost as soon as it becomes available.
“The idea of needing to fill every moment with activity, and equating constant busyness with productivity, contradicts what we know about creativity,” said David Kadavy, podcaster and author of the best-selling book Mind Management, Not Time Management. “To be creative, you need to connect ideas from different fields and fully understand the problem you’re trying to solve. This requires not just absorbing new information but also letting it settle into long-term memory.”
Critical Steps of Creativity
Kadavy said scientists have identified four essential stages in the creative process:
- Preparation. You learn everything you can about the problem.
- Incubation. You allow your unconscious mind to work on the problem.
- Illumination. The solution comes to you.
- Verification. You ensure the idea matches your standards and solves the problem you identified during the preparation stage.
Kadavy noted that it’s imperative to work through each step of the process. “However, many people skip straight to the illumination and verification stages, especially in meetings, which can be a counterproductive way to generate ideas,” he said.
In these meetings, groups often jump straight into brainstorming, tossing out ideas and immediately critiquing them. This early verification — dismissing ideas before they’ve had a chance to evolve — can stifle creativity, Kadavy noted.
“Even if the first idea isn’t great, the brainstorming process can spark better ideas,” he said. “It’s important to remember that the goal of brainstorming is not evaluating the quality of ideas right away.”
Problem-solving or innovating demands allowing time for ideas to incubate. “If productivity is measured by constant motion, there’s no room for ideas to develop because the brain becomes overloaded,” Kadavy said.
It’s possible to come up with a breakthrough idea and a plan of action within the same meeting for simpler tasks or goals, but it’s an unrealistic approach for developing truly innovative ideas or strategies. Those higher stakes require a different approach.
“First, you need to prepare by understanding the problem space, studying the competitive landscape and learning about emerging technologies and customer needs,” Kadavy said. “This might take several meetings, each focused on gathering additional knowledge.”
After preparation comes incubation, during which you let the information sink in and marinate.
“Research shows that a break between learning about a problem and solving it can lead to more creative solutions,” Kadavy said. “This is partly because of a phenomenon known as ‘fixation forgetting,’ which involves letting go of unhelpful ideas and allowing new ones to form.”
Kadavy pointed out that the human brain might subconsciously continue to work on problem-solving.
“Another often overlooked aspect of the incubation period is that ideas often come to us spontaneously during everyday activities, not when we’re actively trying to generate them,” he said. “That’s why it’s crucial to have a system in place to capture those ideas whenever they arise.”
Allowing Space for Ideas to Form
The “minimum creative dose” is a valuable concept for harnessing the four stages of creativity, according to Kadavy. The idea is to ask yourself: What’s the minimum effort we can invest to set ourselves on the path to generating a good idea?
This might be as simple as setting a timer on your phone. “Spend just a couple of minutes writing or thinking about the problem, then step away and do something else,” Kadavy said. “It’s surprising how much clarity you gain when you come back to an idea later.”
Sayings like “sleep on it” are popular for a reason — taking time away from a problem leads to fresh insights the next day.
“But we often forget to use this strategy intentionally,” Kadavy said. “Being aware of the power of incubation can help counteract the bias that tells us we must always be in motion, always pushing forward. Instead, hold ideas gently and allow them the space they need to develop.”
The common way to think about productivity is often influenced by outdated ideas left over from the industrial era. Back then, Kadavy said, the time put into a task was expected to directly correlate with the amount of output achieved in a linear relationship.
“While this might have worked for repetitive, manual labor during the Industrial Revolution, applying the same logic to knowledge work and creativity is outdated,” he explained. “Creativity doesn’t follow a linear path. Trying to fill every moment with activity and constantly pushing to move forward hinders the creative process. The paradox is that the more you try to force creativity, the more you can induce anxiety, which stifles the very ideas that you’re trying to generate.”
In creative work, it’s not about how much time you spend in active production. It’s about allowing space for ideas to form.
“Creativity requires a different rhythm — one that includes moments of pause, reflection and even mind-wandering,” Kadavy said. “In today’s knowledge-driven world, understanding and embracing the non-linear nature of creativity is key to producing meaningful and innovative work.”
Be Open to New Experiences
Creativity can flourish if you’re not willing to embrace uncertainty. “When you’re too rigid, sticking strictly to a planned itinerary or a clock, you might miss out on unexpected opportunities or insights,” Kadavy said. “Inviting serendipity and being open to detours is crucial in the creative process because you never know where a new experience might lead.”
He referenced a well-known story about Steve Jobs that illustrates this concept perfectly. Jobs once dropped in on a calligraphy class, which seemed to have no practical application to his life at the time. But years later, when designing the Macintosh, he incorporated beautiful typography into the platform, something that would eventually influence all personal computers.
“This shows that sometimes you need to explore paths that don’t make immediate sense to discover where they might lead,” Kadavy said. “This approach is something I’ve noticed when talking to innovative people on my podcast.”
For example, behavioral scientist Dan Ariely said he sets aside a portion of his resources each year to pursue projects that don’t necessarily have a clear purpose or immediate payoff. He does this intentionally, understanding that these explorations can lead to unexpected breakthroughs.
The barbell strategy that’s employed by experienced investors is a useful model for business professionals who need to balance innovation with hitting specific goals, Kadavy said. He explained that this strategy involves putting 85% of your portfolio into safe, reliable assets and allocating the remaining 15% to riskier, high-reward ventures. The idea is that the bulk of your resources are secure, but you still have a portion available for speculative investments that could pay off big.
“You can apply this concept to your time and mental energy as well,” he added. “Dedicate most of your resources to the tasks and projects that are sure bets, but reserve a portion for exploratory, creative endeavors that might not have an immediate payoff but could lead to significant innovation.”
The emergence of artificial intelligence (AI) and automation can help on this front.
“These tools widen the bottleneck of creative energy,” Kadavy said. “I’ve often had an idea but felt limited because I didn’t have the skills to execute it. In the past, this would have meant hours of learning or hiring someone to do it for me. Now, those barriers are significantly lowered thanks to AI and automation. They allow you to learn and apply new skills in a short amount of time.”
AI is also reducing the barrier to executing ideas by taking care of the rote work and allowing professionals to focus more on the creative aspects of their jobs.
“This shift makes creativity, fresh ideas and perception even more valuable,” Kadavy said.
