Creativity versus Productivity

Many years ago, I was reading an interview of iLaiyarAjA.

(All of the following are my paraphrasing)

The question to him was – “How are you able to come up with so many fresh tunes time after time?”

His response was fascinating – “If you go through the same life situations again and again, your life becomes monotonous. But someone who is cornered and vulnerable has to do something out of the box to achieve something. I behave like the latter. I eliminate common approaches to solving any problem which forces me to think from a fresh perspective. May be that is the reason for the freshness.”

So simple! You can never stop the mind from thinking the same thing. But you can eliminate the option the mind provides (which comes from knowledge or experience – only two possibilities. Even experience is multi-dimensional knowledge which is still the same thing!) which leaves the option of dipping into sources you never knew you had – provided you can tune into it.

That was the time I was coding a lot – my job function involved that. So for one programming problem I was presented with, a solution immediately popped into my head. I decided to eliminate that option. Immediately a void surfaced because my experience was just invalidated. But after some time of contemplation, another solution, just as effective, but totally off-beat surfaced. Later on a review with my manager, he had to convince himself with multiple reviews that it actually worked as intended. He then asked me – “It looks totally different. Why didn’t you do it in a more straightforward way?” Well, I didn’t tell him IR asked me to!

The whole world (with linchpin exceptions!) is bent on productivity. While necessary, it is overrated. Productivity is squeezing the last ounce of juice out of an existing process. Creativity is coming up with a new way or process. Many times, creativity trumps productivity even in terms of efficiency. Compare two scenarios – Travelling from A to B, which is a 10 km route. The goal of productivity is to increase the speed of travel so the time is reduced. Creativity is similar to getting from point A to B through a different route. Now this route may well be 4 km or even 25 km. The point is that the exercise is much more enjoyable because you are traversing through uncharted territory.
The world needs more creative people. Not productive people!