What “Work” Looks Like

The mantra of sharing your work and involving everyone in decisions naturally leads to inviting and copying people into things that add no value to them, or you.

Work at MIT found that brainstorming generally “reduced creativity due to the tendency to incrementally modify known successful designs rather than explore radically different and potentially superior ones.”

I think Business with a capital B loves “collaboration” because of the seeming evidence of the feat: the potential for innovation is visible, even palpable when people are in a room — “I can see people meeting and talking and there are sticky notes all over the wall!”.

The funny thing is, sitting alone thinking doesn’t “look” like work. Even more so if it’s away from your computer. However, my own process for brainstorming and ideating often looks like this:

1. Load my brain with all the context of a problem.
2. Step away from the computer and go live — do the dishes, go for a run, vacuum the carpet.
3. Once potential solutions distill in my mind, go back to my desk and write them down or sketch them out.
4. Prepare a presentation, demo, or prototype to convey my idea to others and gather their feedback.
5. Rinse & repeat.