
Creative People Say No - treskot
https://medium.com/design-thinking-1/bad7c34842a2
======
nine_k
The post has little to do with creativity. It is all about _high-achieving_
and thus renowned people who achieved what they have by concentrating on their
work.

The same 'ignore everybody' approach works well for any activity, including
not very creative kinds like bodybuilding, when you know what to do, and all
you need is a lack of distraction.

This approach also has obvious problems: you can end up with a useless result
because it falls out of context, or shadowed by a vastly better approach you
chose to not pay attention to.

And, of course, you can be brilliantly creative with little or no lasting
output, like someone showering others with mots and impromptus on a party.
Researcher rarely interview such people, though.

~~~
lmg643
I also have to wonder whether such high-achieving and renowned people, being
quite busy and in-demand, would of course decline an interview with someone
who couldn't further boost their status or spread their message and would
otherwise just compete for scarce time.

I am noting that even the author of this article did not identify the
anonymous hungarian professor.

If Barbara Walters was calling for a feature interview on prime time
television, the answer might very well be "yes".

~~~
dongumm
The psychologist is Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, and all of the quotes that the
blog's author posted come directly from Csikszentmihalyi's book Creativity:
Flow and the Psychology of Discovery and Invention. Csikszentmihalyi is most
widely know for his term 'flow.'

[http://www.amazon.com/Creativity-Flow-Psychology-
Discovery-I...](http://www.amazon.com/Creativity-Flow-Psychology-Discovery-
Invention/dp/0060928204)

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flow_(psychology)](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flow_\(psychology\))

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smutticus
I am consistently dissappointed with links pointing to medium.com. I wish
there was a feature of HN to block webistes from view. I no longer want to see
any articles referencing medium.com.

~~~
hboon
Why are you disappointed with links to medium.com?

~~~
scorcher
For a start there is no guts to the article. It could be summarised in one
line, "Time is valuable, make your default position no"

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lubomir
What is the point of a sentence like "A Hungarian psychology professor once
wrote …" without the actual name? His/her mythical study is a recurrent theme
in the article, but not once the name of the author is mentioned. This
diminishes the value of the text.

~~~
DanBC
Well, the name of the professor or his/her book isn't so relevant to the
story, but I tend to agree with you. A real name would have been nice.

([http://www.good.is/posts/secret-to-creativity-learning-
how-t...](http://www.good.is/posts/secret-to-creativity-learning-how-to-say-
no))

> When setting out to write his book Creativity, Hungarian psychologist Mihaly
> Csikszentmihalyi contacted 275 creatives whose habits he wanted to study.
> The idea was to gain insight into their processes so that others could apply
> these practices in their own lives. But in many cases, the answer to his
> very inquiry was actually the secret to creativity. Out of all the subjects
> he asked, one third of them said no to being studied. The reason? Most
> simply did not have time. In order to be creative, many explained, it was
> vital they say no to any request that would take away from their time spent
> creating. Several who rejected Csikszentmihalyi knew of the respected
> author's work, yet they still maintained their hours were best spent on
> their own output.

~~~
mherdeg
Is this medium.com post ( [https://medium.com/design-
thinking-1/bad7c34842a2](https://medium.com/design-thinking-1/bad7c34842a2) )
plagiarized from this good.is post ( [http://www.good.is/posts/secret-to-
creativity-learning-how-t...](http://www.good.is/posts/secret-to-creativity-
learning-how-to-say-no) )?

I see substantial similarities in the content and no attribution. I don't
think this would pass muster if it were a newspaper column.

~~~
aet
It does seem to lift a lot from the good.is post.

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chrisbennet
I think people forget that time _is_ really money or something like it.

Most people would never dream of taking a few pennies out of your account even
if they could do it without asking. When someone spams me with an email or
sends me on a detour with a link bait title, they are taking precious moments
from my life "account".

~~~
joonix
So how much did writing this comment cost you?

We're not all as busy as we make ourselves out to be. People love to give
others the impression they are swamped in order to say "no," not the other way
around. "No, I can't go to dinner with you tonight, I'm sorry, I'm just so
backlogged with work..."

~~~
chrisbennet
It took maybe a minute but it was a minute I _chose to spend_ , not a minute
that was _stolen_ from me. See the difference?

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perlpimp
Not to be confused of taking creative avenues along same lines of work. Tunnel
vision helps. But walking into a post is not always necessary. So taking up
and extra 'distraction' project may well be beneficial to mail line of work.
Alot of painters I know do it to avoid myopic vision of work of art at hand.

There was an article here, mentioned that developer guy got involved in
another project and started moving faster that before on the main project.

Ideas need 'rest time' time. Photographers take pictures and mature them for a
while.

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Spooky23
...and many creative people end up bitter and disappointed when their work
goes unrecognized and they lack the ability to make changes in their life or
work.

The word "no" is a powerful thing. It's probably the first word that as
infants we discover has the power to alter our environment. But when we move
out of the nursery, it's a word, a tool, and a habit with profoundly negative
impact to the wielder.

How many times in your life have you been frustrated with a gatekeeper over
some process? Chances are, they embraced saying "no".

You can say "yes". That doesn't mean that you drop everything and do exactly
what is asked, either. Try it sometime, it's a transformative thing. In big
bureaucracies, saying "yes" is fun, because you get these bizarre reactions...
people are trained to hear "no" and lobby for you to change your mind.

------
jt2190

      > The professor contacted 275 creative people...
    

Selection bias?

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enjo
This article really says "1/3 of creative people contacted said no". That's it
really.

It certainly doesn't jive with my real world experience. I've always been
absolutely floored at how far really well-known people will go to help me when
I need it. Whether it be spending an hour over coffee or just exchanging a few
emails, the really creative (and successful) people I've reached out to in my
life have generally been willing to spend their time to help me out.

I should note that often these requests are completely blind. I don't have a
business school background with lots of contacts (I went to a small state
school in the south). I don't have lots of friends with friends to help me
out.

I suppose my experience is about the same as the study in the article. 33% of
folks fall over backwards to help me out, at no real benefit to themselves.
Another 33% are kind of difficult to tie down. The rest say no. To draw a
conclusion as definite as "creative people say no" is hard for me to accept.

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instaheat
I appreciate this article. It is a slap in the face, a pail of cold water
poured on me while I'm sleeping, a match under my toe.

Too often I am pulled away from my personal pursuits because someone wants
something from me. Come drink with me, come have dinner with us, go on this
trip with us this weekend. I'm never going to get anything done or 'get ahead'
in this life without saying no every now and then.

Some people may be OK with living in this HO HUM world we live in; punching
the clock and sitting in the cubicle or whatever their version of the cubicle
is but point is they're trapped. Maybe they're happy though.

I look forward to my next 'no' \- maybe then I can actually sit down and code
to my heart's content and fulfill my dream of being my own boss, of creating
something, and pulling myself out of the muck to reach true freedom.

~~~
jmduke
_Too often I am pulled away from my personal pursuits because someone wants
something from me. Come drink with me, come have dinner with us, go on this
trip with us this weekend. I 'm never going to get anything done or 'get
ahead' in this life without saying no every now and then._

A good perspective on this is that time is a scarce resource, and by choosing
to allocate it to one thing you also choose not to allocate it to everything
else.

That being said, I'd imagine if most people (myself included) chose to
prioritize personal pursuits over everything else, they'd end up exactly as
unhappy as otherwise.

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hobbes78
Recently two problems I was stuck into were solved outside working hours, one
while having a beer at a friend's house and another while taking a bath... I'm
unconvinced starting to avoid all activities really is going to help me get
more creative...

~~~
igravious
Was one of your problems concerned with a social method for getting
inebriated? And did the other concern itself with a relaxing full body
cleaning method?

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Vivtek
Time and attention management doesn't necessarily preclude a social network.
Be creative all you like, but without downtime and some time to laugh the
duration of that creativity is going to be sharply limited.

~~~
Gotttzsche
wonder what the ideal amount of time spent on work is. tim ferriss seems to
recommend 4 hours (surprise, surprise...) of "real" work.

what's your "Time and attention management" like?

~~~
Vivtek
Mine? It sucks. I've noted that the 4-hour limit is pretty accurate for actual
focused work, but I've drifted into some areas (technical translation) that
don't always need a lot of focus.

It varies.

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binarysolo
Correlation not causation: I think it's about opportunity cost of time.

If you're a successful person, creative or not, you probably know how to
manage your time well and don't allocate it towards random studies.

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igravious
I do not have the time to read this article, nor do I have the time to peruse
the (no doubt) enlightening HN commentary on said article.

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OldSchool
Well, we've always had to deal with opportunity cost. If your style involves
high focus, a distraction's cost is that much higher. Most "normal" people
don't really gets this.

Additionally, the freer you are from routine obligation, the harder it is to
politely say no. I've long said fill up your schedule or others will fill it
for you.

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6d0debc071
Maybe they said no because they thought they'd be asked a bunch of low-brow
intellectual-tourist questions and essentially treated like whores. There are
lots of possible explanations for someone not wanting to speak to you.

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lowlevel
Automatic reply .. to all meeting requests... attach PDF of this article...
now to figure out how to auto-decline.

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randren
The fact that I have time to type this seems to disqualify me from commenting.

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general_failure
This is more about productive than creative

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k0mplex
I don't have time to read this

