Relaxing over a meal is such a good trigger for creativity. It's important to remember that some of the greatest ideas in history have occurred over breaking bread.
In more than 40 years, I have never seen a good idea come out of a traditional corporate planning process. Planning should follow ideas. Planning's about implementation, not conception.
In fact, I've seen plenty of people conceive good ideas in spite of rather than because of the planning process. By good ideas, I mean game-changing insights that lead to opportunities, not just different ways to refill the water-cooler.
In the early 1990s, A mate of mine was a writer at a Sydney advertising agency. They had a map of the city placed on the office wall. A pin was stuck in the map to indicate where good ideas had been conceived. But not just any idea, only those that were made into ads.
Over the years, hundreds of pins were stuck in the map, with less than 10% having their provenance in the office.
Many ideas were conceived in a nearby Italian restaurant, others on the freeway, some in the homes of writers, art directors or account handlers — with many of those ideas being ignited in the shower — yet more were dreamed up right off the map, in planes or on beaches far away. Almost universally, the ideas came in places where there originators were relaxed; not under pressure in the office environment.
Mike Hutcheson: "Rather than slapping fringe benefit tax on lunch, the government should subsidise it. Wouldn't it be a great boost the hospitality industry Post-Covid, if FBT was abolished?"
Idea -generation defies process, the best ideas usually come at random, often as a result of coupling otherwise unrelated notions, or seeing common things in a new light. That's why we often get our ideas through travel, a new environment or from someone else's discards.
Post-it notes were developed from an experimental adhesive that was thought to have failed. Picasso welded handle bars to a bicycle seat and made a bull's head — a work of art symbolising creativity — simply by seeing two ordinary objects in a new way. When asked how he carved an angel from a block of marble, Michelangelo famously replied, "The angel is always there, I just carve till I set him free."
I believe we get screwed up at school, when we are given problems to solve then told to "think hard!"
We can't think hard. The brain has no muscles; we can't push our skulls around to connect the relevant parts of the cortex. If we try and strain we're more likely to fart or have a hernia than squeeze a thought from our neural synapses.
It's no coincidence that some of the world's great discoveries have occurred while their authors were relaxed. Dimitri Mendeleev conceived the periodic table of elements after he dozed off while playing solitaire; Archimedes was in a warm bath. The concept of the curvature of time came to Einstein in a dream. It's all about brainwaves and consciousness. Here's why: there are four categories of brainwaves — beta, alpha, theta and delta.
Beta waves are the predominant brainwaves in our everyday life and pulsate at 13-plus cycles per second. Beta waves process our thoughts and focus our attention on logical, sequential activity — like driving or buying the groceries. It's a vital state because we become confused if incoming information is not put into order. Beta brainwaves stimulate practical action. Most education is beta geared, characterised by logical thinking and written or verbal communication.
Photo / 123rf
Alpha waves — eight to 13 cycles — are less frequent, but deeper than beta, and bridge our conscious and unconscious minds. When we relax, our brains shift into alpha waves, it frees the brain's logical, sequential left-brain mode and allows us to access our more intuitive and creative right-brain.
Unfettered by language, our right brain thinks in pictures and sounds. It is usually in this state inventors have their 'eureka' moments.
Theta waves — four to eight cycles — mark a meditative state and enable us to plumb our unconscious creativity and spirituality. Thomas Edison kept a notebook by his bed and after waking, wrote down his memory of theta-wave dreams, translating them into beta-wave thoughts.
Delta waves — below four cycles — mean you're almost comatose. (If they dropped to zero you'd be dead.) Delta waves provide intuition and instinctual insight.
While we need to be in beta mode to enable us to function, it's the alpha and theta waves we need to achieve insight and inspiration. That's why relaxing over a meal is such a good trigger for creativity. It's important to remember that some of the greatest ideas in history have occurred over breaking bread.
For instance, the Christian Church was founded at a supper, not an ecclesiastical conclave. God didn't call Jesus and the disciples together around a board table, then tell Jesus he had to take one for the team. Nor did he order Peter to go and start the branch in Rome. Or let Judas know his name would become synonymous with betrayal. Of course not, it could never happen like that. The Last Supper was more about motivation than analysis. It is the same with sticky ideas. They can't be conceived on demand.
Abolish the FBT
Relaxing over a meal is a great portal to spontaneous thinking and insight.
Rather than slapping fringe benefit tax on lunch as entertainment, the government should subsidise it.
Wouldn't it be a great boost for the recovery of the hospitality industry Post-Covid, if FBT was abolished?
It was an accountant cum politician who introduced the tax. Not known funsters and short on having original ideas or flashes of inspiration, politicians see lunch as fun which should be punished.
In the post-Covid world where ideas and innovation are going to be critical to future success, I want to start a petition to have the tax repealed.
Mike Hutcheson is an Adjunct Professor at AUT, and a former managing director of Saatchi & Saatchi. He's written four books, and is a regular TV guest and commentator. He has a Master of Philosophy degree (1st Class Honours). Photo / Jason Oxenham
