In the world of business, and especially the world of technology, we have some archetypical stories of entrepreneurs in the garage, working to create new products and new companies. But too many of those stories seem to neglect the creative environment in which great ideas and inventions happen.
This is especially unfortunate because inspiration for this type of work doesn't seem to come from being surrounded by market analysis data, or charts and graphs about return on investment, but instead happens like so much creativity does, with a blaring soundtrack while sitting on a folding chair, inspired by the music, movies, books and art that surround us.
Worse, we hear about things like Celebrity Playlists and the artworks that people appreciate long after they've been successful, after they've already proven they have the ability to achieve, but seldom with a focus on what was playing at the time when they did the first work they were recognized for.
So, some time ago, I began a project to start to document some of these environments, inspired by the entrepreneurs and creative talents that I've had the chance to work with or be inspired by. Among others, I've gotten some great responses from Ray Ozzie of Microsoft (and of course Lotus); Jeff Bezos of Amazon; Pierre Omidyar of eBay; Dan Bricklin, co-creator of VisiCalc, and some more contributors along the way. As I start to share what I've found, I'd like to ask the same questions of you that I've asked of these people already.
- What music, books or movies do you remember paying attention to at the time when you did your signature work? (This can be your "best" project, or merely your best-known, or the one you're most proud of.)
- What do you remember of your physical workspace -- clutter on the desk, notes on the walls, whiteboards or blackboards, etc.?
The goal is to evoke a sense of what more subtle things may have been influencing the work that's created. There have, of course, been many similar or related efforts over the years, and I'll be trying to share and document of number of fantastic responses to these questions that I've collected.
If you'd like to participate yourself, you can answer the questions here in the comments, or post a reply on your own blog using the tag "createnv" (since it seems that's not taken yet) and/or embed this post on your own site with the code below. I'll be collecting responses from the blogosphere along with my own research and posting it all here in the days to come. (Thanks to Travis Isaacs for the image.)
Anil,
Fantastic project and I'm looking forward to your collection of responses. Before I offer up my own, I'd just like to mention that I'm doing something similar as a group-blog on Tumblr: ideawhen.com. The purpose of ideawhen, along with some friends, is to pay attention to the things we're doing, physically & mentally, when ideas hit us; trying to look for clues and make connections. Hopefully it's something worth taking a look at when you're working on this project.
My responses:
1. Lots of times, when I'm most productive or when I know the results of my work are the most solid, I'm listening to either classic rock or some form of techno/house music. Sometimes ambient music can work but often it doesn't have the same focus. For example, DJ Tiesto's podcast has been the soundtrack for many hours of awesome web work. The beat structure or song composition allows part of my brain to latch onto it and sort of ride it while freeing up the rest of my creative conscience to think abstractly and proactively about whatever project is at hand.
2. My physical body being comfortable more than anything else. Sometimes there will be paper-based notes that I've compiled and are translating into the digital environment but lots of times any physical workplaces extremes are less important than stuff like the music above.
Strangely, that URL for ideawhen isn't working. Try this: http://ideawhen.com
When I think back to my most productive time, I think back to the late 90s when I worked as the lone designer in a computer group at UCLA. It's there that I came up with MetaFilter and redesigned dozens of sites in a short time.
I recall working late nights all alone in my windowless office with the music cranked and the ideas were pouring forth and I remember this moment where I stopped myself and realized that it felt exactly like what I imagine painting in your own studio loft space must feel like. I was almost literally throwing paint at a blank canvas Jackson Pollack-style for hours on end, in my own world. The entire building was empty and I had a private office whose only entrance was through an inventory room deep in the heart of it. It was the only time I ever worked with external speakers instead of headphones (I had a big subwoofer thing that was too loud for my apartment but perfect for the space) and I only got interrupted once a month by a coworker saying hi during some late hours.
Every day I'd work from 9 or 10 am until 6pm, go home and eat dinner, then go back into my office from about 8pm until 1 or 2am. I did this schedule for over two years day in and day out and loved every second of it. The music was important to the process (Ben Folds, Cake, and all the other indie music I could download) but the key thing was being totally alone and isolated so I could concentrate 1000% on the task at hand. I have my own home office now with a huge monitor, plenty of tunes, and I get to spend several hours alone in the house each day being productive, but it's not quite the same as my UCLA office back when I was 25 and doing 8-10 completely different mockups for every project I took on.
Two weeks before I hunkered down to write my last mega treatise, all of my CDs were stolen from my car. I whimpered on a mailing list and this super kind guy burned off 200 of the ones I lost and sent them to me. That week, I also bought the new Son Kite album. I took the 201 CDs with me to the cottage where I hibernated. One small problem... the CD player in the house in the middle of the woods did not play burned CDs. So, for 10 days, I listened to one CD on repeat: Son Kite's "Perspectives Of."
Ever since then, whenever I hunker down to write something longer than a blog post, including all of my articles and most of my essays, I mostly ignore the other 10,000 songs in my iTunes and play Son Kite. On repeat. Every once in a while, I expand out a little bit.. some Dr. Toast here, bluetech there, a little Antix, Ticon and Vibrasphere. But it mostly comes back to Son Kite.
To separate serious writing from anything else (since I never leave my house), I switch to more organic sounds. Blog posts get a little jazz, a little downtempo. When I am emotional and need to just run around the house screaming as a coping mechanism for writing, I turn on Ani DiFranco. Anyone who has followed my Last.FM lately probably realizes that there's been a lot of screaming.
As for environment, my living room (a.k.a. office) has been the same for years. Two fuzzy green couches with 5 separate sitting options. Legs up on fuzzy stool. Surrounded by 1200 books, organized obsessively by topics and catalogued in a database for easy locating... a dozen or so sitting on the couch beside me. Lots of plants, all organic colors, no TV or monitor of any kind. A big calming buddha statue that weighs over 200 pounds and a variety of paintings from friends and travels. Huge windows with lots of light streaming in and birds chirping outside. Candles for nighttime. Twelve different lights that can be combined in different ways in relation to my mood. No fluorescents, all incancesdents.. I love the environment, but lighting really affects my productivity. Most importantly, my cat Marbellio sits on my left side or above my head on the windowsill all day while I work.
I've transported this setup to four different apartments since 2002. I can't work in offices or anywhere where the lighting is headache producing. I can't work at desks. I'm not so good at working without books surrounding me or my cat purring next to me. Environment really really matters when it comes t me producing anything of value.
I am most creative at night, when I am fighting sleep and feeling desperate. That is when the good ideas flow, the creativity sparks and things start to move. I choose the music (Neil Young records) and lighting (hushed) carefully, doing what I can to build up the atmosphere. I romanticize the night-as-environment, but will admit that as a way of life, it can be somewhat problematic.
I'm a writer with a day job. In the past year, I signed two 2 book contracts for books publishing in 2008 and 2009. I finished grad school in May 2007, which freed up some time, thank goodness. I'm also a single parent/soccer mom. The reality is it doesn't matter when I think I'm most creative or what environment I'm in. To meet my deadlines and stay published, I'm creative when I have to be, which is every single day, wherever I happen to be writing; sitting in the back of my car at soccer practice or at lunch time, waiting at appointments, at the computer in my room at home, at the gym on a stationary bike brainstorming with a pen and a notebook or doing a paper read through of my manuscript. (Stick it in a binder, and I can do that read-through anywhere, including in the passenger seat of a car during long drives.)
I often listen to music while I'm working, but not always. Sometimes that's too distracting. The kind of music depends on the book I'm writing and what new artists I've discovered. My room is mostly a mess because, well, gosh, partly because of me and partly because deadlines means housework comes third.
When I'm writing, I block out my environment as much as I can so that I get the work done and meet my deadlines.