What motivates you to be creative?
Welcome to the ArtsBound Newsletter. Every Tuesday, I share three thoughts or insights meant to help performing arts students and young professionals flourish in their life and career. Today we’re looking at uncertainty 1) as an agent of your calling, 2) as a critical component of good problem-solving and decision-making, and 3) as a function of our motivation to be creative.
- 5.5-minute read -
(NOTE: If you know a student or young professional who is searching for their niche in the performing arts world, consider forwarding this email to them. If this email was forwarded to you, you can sign up to receive my newsletter every Tuesday. It's free.)
1. Uncertainty as an agent of your calling.
The most recent episode of The ArtsBound Podcast went live today. My guest is singer/educator/coach, Emily Wertz. In our chat, Emily discusses her education as a teacher of singing, tips for young people looking to undertake a similar career track, and how she makes decisions about where to invest her time and energy.
Emily explains that, for her, being true to her calling has meant going after a wide range of pursuits during different seasons of her life. We do a bit to deconstruct the myth that “finding your calling” is synonymous with landing that one dream job that you’ll love and keep until you retire.
One of the key things that rose out of our conversation is the idea that uncertainty often serves as a jumping off point for whatever is to come, and that living into uncertainty, while uncomfortable at first for many of us, actually allows us to tune into the realm of possibility from which our inner voice harkens.
2. Uncertainty as a critical component to problem-solving and decision-making.
In 2017, NPR’s Shankar Vedantam hosted an episode of Hidden Brain called “You 2.0: Getting Unstuck”. In the episode, Vedantam and his guest, Dave Evans, discuss the concept of Designing Thinking - what engineers do when they are building prototypes for a new solution - as applied to life.
At the heart of their thesis is this: There is not one “right and final” answer when it comes to what to do with your life. As they discuss this concept further, Evans explains that “problem-finding” has to come before problem-solving.
In other words, one must ask: Are we addressing the most important problem here? What are we missing?
In talking with students and young professionals who are feeling stuck in their life or career, I often hear them ask some of the same questions: What job should I pursue? What should I study? What school should I go to OR what city should I move to? The implication is that there’s one right answer, and if they don’t find it, then their life will inevitably pass them by.
However, getting to the heart of their problem usually requires asking a completely different ilk of questions.
Doing this can require the dismantling of an old paradigm, and letting go of old ways of thinking almost always presents an individual with a degree of uncertainty. Again, this can be unsettling, but when we know there’s the promise of something new and wonderful on the horizon, it can provide us with hope and courage.
3. Uncertainty’s role in creativity.
Design Thinking (discussed above) shows us that dismantling assumptions (the patterns of thought that inherently provide us with a sense of certainty) is one way to till the soil in preparation for the growth of new ideas.
But what about your motivation to be creative?
Dan Pink is a well-known author and speaker on topics related to business and human behavior. Perhaps his most well-known piece is the TED Talk he gave on human motivation. You can watch the abridged animated version HERE (no discussion of the candle problem), or the full talk HERE.
In short, through a review of numerous scientific studies, Pink reveals that incentives (I’ll call them “fixed” rewards; i.e. IF you do that, THEN you get this) work to motivate only basic mechanical tasks, and they actually produce a decline in performance as soon as the task requires cognitive skills.
In other words, fixed rewards stifle creative thinking.
Pink goes on to detail the implications of these patterns of performance for the business world, but I also think it has huge implications for students and educators.
Having taught public school for eleven years, I would like to submit to you that grades have become a fixed, dopamine-producing incentive. As a result, students seek out the one right answer that will get them the biggest reward (maybe that’s why so many people think there’s one right answer to the life they’re supposed to live!). Rather than serve as a formative tool for reflective learning, grades have become a habit-forming practice that causes emotional dependency for many young people.
Here’s the habit they form: I’ll do just enough to get what you promised me. (That’s the link to the uncertainty theme… I know FOR CERTAIN that I can get this reward if I just do what to tell me to do.)
It’s great for learning math, when the student need only follow a prescribed procedure (although it doesn’t help with those pesky “word problems” at the end of the problem set!).
It’s lousy for the arts.
Well, I’ll back up for a moment: incentives might help to motivate a student to practice scales or pliés.
But they actually shut down the part of the brain that would evaluate their own performance, let alone the inspiration to compose or choreograph.
I believe that every person on Earth - mathematician and musician, alike - is a creative being, and that the act of creation is critical for human flourishing. Being stuck in a habit of doing the bare minimum is no way to lead a fulfilling life.
So what happens if, in the quest for more creativity, we take away the certainty of fixed rewards? Thankfully, Pink has an solution for our conundrum… three of them actually:
Autonomy, mastery, and purpose.
My newsletter is getting a bit long (and I think I’ll write more on this topic in a future blog post), so I won’t take the time to unpack each of these right now. Instead, I’ll leave you with these questions.
How can you work more autonomy, mastery, and purpose into your life right now? If you are making a transition to a new school or job, how will the places you are considering support you being self-led, getting really good at what you do, and pursuing projects that you find personally meaningful?
The world needs YOUR creativity. Don’t let a few extra bucks - or a letter on a piece of paper - cause you to overlook the uniqueness you have to offer.
See you next week!
Lee
PS - If you know a student or young professional who is searching for their niche in the performing arts world, consider forwarding this email to them. If this email was forwarded to you, you can sign up to receive my newsletter every Tuesday. It's free.