We all get stuck sometimes in our lives. In that place where we just aren’t sure what to do next. It’s happened to me several times.
There is one rule of thumb that I’ve learned over time about getting stuck. When we are stuck, the best thing we can do is create something new. It doesn’t matter all that much what that something is; what matters is that when we engage in the creative process. Which energizes us in ways that are hard to fully articulate.
Way back in the 1980s, I read a book on the creative process called The Path of Least Resistance by Robert Fritz. It’s the best description that I have ever seen on how the creative process actually works – and where it head into the weeds if you don’t treat it with care.
Fritz is a musician and artist by training. Fritz presents in some depth what we might call a structural model of how creativity happens. The creator starts with a firm grasp on the current reality. Then, the creator develops a vision of a desired future state. The creativity process is then about resolving the tension between the current reality and the desired future state. There are several ways the artist, or the creative, can get “blocked” from resolving this tension. One is a refusal to accept the current reality of a particular situation. This form of denial is most unhelpful to the creative process. Another way to get blocked is from an insufficiently robust understanding of and vision for the desired future state.
Successful creators need to learn to live with the tension between the current reality and the desire future state, without getting overwhelmed by the situation. Sometimes for very long periods of time. Like for example when you are writing a book or developing a new product or, God help you, starting a new business. There is a definite art form to learning to live with that tension. But if you can learn to live with that tension, even relish it, and even better get into a “flow state” where you lose track of time, you are well on your way to creating something valuable. Your vision of the desired future state may start our awfully blurry, but it will get clearer over time with enough effort and willingness to engage in the creative process.
I’ve lived with The Path of Least Resistance in my head ever since I read the book. I used the model quite a bit when I was focused on software product innovation and often with good results. Even when I didn’t get good results, it helped me understand what was happening inside the creative process. Fritz gave me a fantastic model for dealing with the often unstructured (and scary) process of creating something new.
I’ve come to believe that this creative model can be applied to virtually any creative process. Let me close with a mundane example. I’ve recently been trying to re-learn how to swing a golf club. Golf, as anyone who has tried it knows, can be a very humbling sport. To say that my swing needed an overhaul just might be the understatement of the century. I knew enough to realize that I needed professional help. My first lesson did not go well. In retrospect, that lesson was mostly about both me and my golf coach accepting the current reality of an ugly, unbalanced, contorted-beyond-belief golf swing. In the next lesson my coach started to calmly show me what a much better swing might look like. I was able to stay with the process. My vision of my desired future state golf swing started forming. By the fourth lesson I was asking my coach where the ball went and he started laughing. Because I wasn’t looking the one place my ball was actually going – long and straight and high. Which was unfamiliar territory to me.
If The Path of Least Resistance can help me swing a golf club, believe me, nearly any new creation is possible.
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