Where Flexible Won’t Bend
Recently, I got a Dachshund and asked my kids to name him. One was adamant about ‘Hotdog’, while the other swore by ‘Frankfurter’. Our dog is now named ‘Hot Frank’ and to me, that name is collaboration at its best - two disparate thoughts that came together in the room, to create something that wouldn’t otherwise have been created.
It’s that live collaboration I enjoy when I work in the office. Conversely, I enjoy the flexibility to work from home - free to dog sit my puppy, pick the kids up from school, or keep odd hours because they suit me better.
While the traditional 5-day, office-bound model might foster collaboration, it was never built with creativity in mind. Creativity gets stagnant when confined to one place, and it’s a terrible team sport. It’s played alone in the ever-remote recesses of your brain - where two disparate thoughts can come together in a room that no one other than you and the voice in your head will ever set foot in. Creativity is something that can be done anywhere. And it’s something that is almost always done better outside of the office.
Work has never bent to suit our lives as much as it does today. However, gaining more flexibility in one area - how, when, and where we work - has fostered less flexibility in another - our creative output.
The hard work of creativity is completely unseen, so there is no point in watching over it. And we no longer do. Gone are the days of measuring the effort you put into arriving at an idea by how long you’ve been at your desk, or what time you show up in the morning. The only measure that remains is the quality of the ideas you eke out on paper.
Coming together will continue to be important - to feel part of something greater, learn from our mentors, and spend time with each other. And awards will continue to measure the standard of the final product. But now, more than ever, creatives will be judged on the quality and depth of their thinking. Our day-to-day is now solely linked to those thoughts that we scribble down hurriedly, in the hope that another is following closely behind. And that’s an exciting time for a creative person. Creative merit is now the only measure.
