Micro Class: Creativity + “No, thx!”

Hi, this is Brian.

Welcome back to another micro class.

This one's on. No, thanks. It's Inspired by Creativity by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi. No, thanks. That's what Peter Drucker told Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi when Csikszentmihalyi invited him to be part of his study. So Csikszentmihalyi, at the time he did this, this research on creativity where he interviewed hundreds of luminaries, right? He was very well known for his theories on flow, et cetera. He invited Peter Drucker, and Peter Drucker sent him basically, an apology note saying.

I'm sorry, but I'm not going to.

Be able to participate in your study, really respect you. You're awesome.

But you know what?

First of all, I don't even believe in creativity. Drucker says. He says, I believe in productivity. I just plod along. Some people believe in creativity. I don't. I believe in productivity, which is awesome. And then he said, and you know what? If I said yes to all these requests, I'd never get anything done. And he said, the number one thing that allows me to get so much done is a really big wastebasket where I can throw all these requests. That's awesome. A really big wastebasket.

How's that for a wastebasket?

Wad up all these, like, decent ideas, right? Here's his number one thing, which is to create. He's obviously, if you don't know Peter Drucker, one of the world's leading business thinkers, 20th century, just amazing, right? He was very clear on what he was going to do with his life energy. Everything else went into that trash can. No, thanks. We need to have that deep, deep, deep yes to whatever it is we're committed to in our lives. And. And then be willing to say no to the hundred other ideas that are decent. There's nothing wrong with them, but throw them into the wastebasket. Then, of course, we also need to reduce our distractions. All the things that aren't even good ideas, they're just terrible ideas, right? All the time, wasters, et cetera. Those obviously need to go. And ultimately, what we're doing when we do that is we're focusing all of our attention on what we've said matters the most. This was the core idea throughout the book that Csikszemihalyi comes back to. Focusing our attention. Truly extraordinary creators put all of their attention where they want, when they want, for how long, they want, on what they've decided is the most Important. It's really hard to do. And when you do that, you can look like a weirdo to other people. Csikszentmihalyi makes this point again and again and again. He says, look, if you ran into Leonardo da Vinci at a cocktail party, you'd want to avoid him. The guy was a bit of a recluse. He was somewhat compulsive, nearly compulsive. You know, he'd be boring. And he probably wouldn't even be at that party in the first place because.

He was so focused, right?

Albert Einstein was viewed as a weird guy. Why did he wear the same clothes all the time? He wasn't trying to be weird. He just put his attention on what mattered to him. And Csikszentmihalyi makes the point that, you know, if he wore the same, whatever he wore pants and sweater every day, right? Csikszentmihalyi does the math. He says, look, if that saved him two minutes a day, that's like 700 plus minutes over the course of a year, which is approaching a dozen hours. That's amazing for Einstein. You add that up, he puts it into what he really wants to put it into. You add that up over the course of a year and over the course of a lifetime, with that level of focus and attention, you get some great stuff done. So remember, no thanks. I'm up to some good stuff. I appreciate the invitation, but unfortunately I'm not going to be able to make it because I'm doing something else and I'm going to make another three point shot into my waste paper basket.

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