Articles

Denial of the Body

I heard an interview on National Public Radio's Fresh Air program with Frank Conroy, a deceased fiction writer, who described how he preferred writing in bed. He spoke with another author who did this also. Nelson's own take on it is that he wrote best when his mind flowed without concern for his surrounding; staying in bed was not simply for comfort, but rather to disconnect his brain from his body. The less he was aware of his body, the more his mind could reel and wander.

Seeing as he smoke and drank a lot, Conroy might have already been predisposed to ignoring the state of his body, given the fact that he's, well, dead. But there was something that seemed familiar in his take on being a creative person and allowing your mind to go places not even you suspected. I started to notice my own patterns and methods for staying creative and generating ideas by temporarily ignoring one's physicality.

Daily Altered Consciousness

I've structured my schedule so I work at home two days a week. This works great so that when I am in the office, I fully expect to not really sit at my desk much. This way I can be distracted, be in meetings, and help others all day without stressing out that I have all this other stuff to do, stuff that requires focus. My work-at-home days are all about ideas, concepts, and the creation of deliverables, and for that I've found it helps to create a cocoon of creativity.

When I work from home, I have a pretty predictable routine that completely differs from my in-the-office days. I don't sleep in; I'm still up at 6am. First comes the long hot shower and the full pot of coffee. Then the comfortable, loose clothes.

Then, for me, comes the most important part: music. When I need to do something repetitive, mindless, and quickly, on comes the techno or metal. But for creative work, it's all ambient. And I mean really ambient; I listen to the Drone Zone from SomaFM via iTunes, beatless music that ranges from gorgeous contemporary classical to true nonmelodic drones that most humans would find mind-numbingly annoying.

I do this, I think, because the morning quiet helps me persist a slight hypnagogic state, that half-waking drifting feeling that lets my mind wander. It's in the first few quiet hours of the morning that all my best creative concepts come from. Some would liken this to alpha state brain activity or even to trances or meditation, but to me it's just how my mind works through free association, pattern recognition, and idea generation.

Of course, hard-core right brain cognition has to come in somewhere in the design process. I call that the end of the pot of coffee.

I know enough about my own mind that I can sense the value of this drifting creativity wane as the morning progresses...straight up inspiration eventually gives way to more logical problem solving. At that point, I dress as though I was going to work: real shirt, real pants, shoes. And then I sit back down at my desk and change the music to something more beat-oriented. Then the deliverables take form, the notes are written (and make sense this time!), and the phone calls and meetings are attended. This period can be creative also, but it's more focused on decision making and problem solving than freeform idea generation.

Habitually Living in One's Head

My girlfriend often gets annoyed with how distracted I can be and how often I totally ignore the state of my body, sitting in front of the computer for hours. Unfortunately, all my work, most of my creative pursuits, and many of my hobbies all revolve around the computer. And it's a testament to her patience and wonderfulness that she puts up with all of it anyway.

But I think that those are just iceberg-tip symptoms of a larger creative need to sometimes put our physicality aside to let the creative juices flow. Creative professionals and artists are paid to live a majority of their lives within their heads, focusing on solving problems or working towards insights others might not reach. It's therefore easy to see how this can become habitual, and lead to what others might see as obession, or lethargy, or nerdiness.

And in no way am I saying that's a good thing.

Reconnecting the Mind and Body of the Designer

You'll notice that my own little body denial dance in the morning has its ending signal...I can easily sense when the altered consciousness of morning gives way to more constrained, rational thought. And there's no sense in fighting it...in fact, rolling with that transition is important self-knowledge and self control.

I do this by bike riding, traveling and hiking, but I'm not talking about exercise, per se (although the importance of exercise should hopefully be obvious). I'm talking about being places, seeing things, meeting people...getting informed and allowing one's work to be informed of real things. If denial of the body influences creative output, which is largely a resynthesis of what is already in our minds, then recognition of the body can help with creative input, which is the basis for what we resynthesize onto the screen and page. We consider opinions by being sociable, we take in design patterns and user experience by being in physical places, we even recognize rhythms in our own bodies. I find all of this very inspirational, even if I'm not going to utilize it until I get back into my morning creative trance.

All of this sounds like a horribly long-winded way of suggesting that the best designers are well-balanced people, who can live within and without of their own minds as their own creative needs and impulses warrant. In my experience, this has proven true. So how do I rank in the pantheon of the world's great, well-balanced designers?

I am writing this article at night, on my laptop, on a couch, in the dark, wearing comfortable clothes and slippers, completely unaware - until right now - what time it is and how hungry I am.