Can Time Away from Work Make Us More Creative? Seven Tips for Getting the Most from Your Next Vacation
Now that we’re back from the holidays and possibly planning time off for the year to come, it’s worth asking: Were your recent days away a true creative vacation?
Common sense tells us that vacations provide a chance to clear our heads and refresh so that we can become more productive upon our return. Yet the latest psychological research is confirming that vacations can enhance performance in one especially important respect: Creativity.
That’s good news, because creativity is more important on the job than ever. As we reported in an earlier posting, a 2011 IBM global survey of CEOs found that creativity was regarded as the “most crucial factor for future success” in a “highly volatile, increasingly complex business environment.” Another survey of U.S. manufacturing executives found that a large percentage considered “successful design thinking and creativity” as the primary advantage U.S. manufacturers have over those in other countries.
A stressful few days off spent shuttling kids around and fighting long lines at an amusement park while keeping tabs on things back at the office probably won’t replenish your creative juices. On the other hand, you don’t need to opt out for a month-long spiritual junket across the Himalayas, either. Recent findings in psychology are exciting because they inspire some simple suggestions for structuring your next vacation to maximize your own creative development:
- Use time away to catch up on sleep. Most of us don’t get enough of it, and it’s essential for performing creative tasks well. We might even find that getting sleep during a vacation helps us resolve specific problems befuddling us on the job. As an article in Psychology Today noted, “…sleeping on a problem apparently allows for a restructuring of the brain connections, ‘setting the stage for the emergence of insight.’”
- Create Psychological Distance from Work: It’s tempting to keep our smartphones on, even if we travel to another country. Unfortunately, that might damage our ability to replenish our creative stores. Several studies have shown that just thinking about things distant from the here and now can enhance creativity.
- Vacation with People Whom You Love: When participants in one study were “primed with thoughts of love,” they grew more creative. On the other hand, they became less creative “when primed with carnal desire.” (I’ll leave it to you to figure out what to do with that…)
- Take Time in Nature. This one is a little speculative. Scientists in Britain are embarking in a three-year research project to discover whether listening to the sounds of birds singing improves our ability to relax and think creatively. As the psychologist running the study noted, “a great deal of anecdotal evidence suggests that we respond positively to birdsong.”
- Read Something Crazy: Those of us who like to read might be tempted to choose the latest business book, or a title that otherwise bears directly on our work. Think again: Research has found that reading absurd stories by Kafka increased the ability to recognize hidden patterns. Apparently, absurdity forces our minds to work harder to make meaning out of what we encounter, thus enhancing our creative skills.
- Play Games—Especially Video Games: Believe it or not, a recent study has found that playing video games, even violent ones, makes kids more creative.
- Spend Time with Your Kids: If you spend time interacting with children, you might find yourself more inclined to think like them. And one study has found that just thinking about life from the point of view of our 7-year-old selves improves our creative performance.
Departing from the research for just a moment, here’s an eighth tip: When your vacation is over, plan a mindful re-entry into work. Spend ten or fifteen minutes reflecting on what you learned during the vacation and set goals for what you’d like to achieve in your work. Come up with a plan to deal with the onslaught of post-vacation emails and other work, so that the effect of the stress doesn’t sap up all the creative energies you’ve had so much fun unleashing during your time off.
Business leaders in our industry and elsewhere are doing many things to encourage creativity and innovation in their workforces. In the second of the CEO surveys mentioned above, a plurality of respondents reported that they sought to enhance creativity in their firms by “encouraging internal innovation competition an initiatives.” But what if something as simple as a vacation could also provide us with the creative boost we need to do better at our jobs?
It’s a possibility we all would do well to consider—and to plan for!
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I’ve always worried about friends and colleagues who didn’t use their vacation for time off, away. Mental health days prevent mental health daze!
[...] In his article, Seth Schulman offers some simple suggestions for structuring your next vacation to maximize your own creative development: [...]