Do you want a job that offers some sort of stability without the soul-sucking repetition you equate with a 9–5 job? Maybe you want the intellectual challenge, problem-solving rush, and “we beat the odds” euphoria of doing the impossible AND to stay in a certain city or just have a steady paycheck and benefits for a few years.
Then you, my friend, should be an Intrapreneur.
A career in innovation is not for the faint of heart. While start-ups and entrepreneurs get all the press, intrapreneurs ride a similar roller-coaster of uncertainty.
According to research conducted by Innovation Leader, the average tenure of executives in innovation specific roles is 4.4 years. Tenures get are a bit longer for VPs (5.4 year) and a bit shorter for Manager (3.3 years).
This data is consistent with my decades of experience working with corporate innovators, also known as intrapreneurs.
Year 1, senior executives jump on the innovation bandwagon and create lots of activities (shark tanks, ideation sessions), establish innovation and corporate venture capital (CVC) teams, and proclaim their commitment to innovation loudly and broadly.
Year 2, the fanfare dies down, the events have become memories, and the teams are hard at work generating opportunities and testing new businesses.
Year 3, the $500M silver bullet has yet to manifest, the company has yet to be described as the “Apple of [industry],” and the attention and investment once dedicated to innovation gets re-routed to the core business.
Year 4, it’s back to business as usual.
But for those brave souls who, like me and like my clients, decide to strap in and ride the ride…Welcome! Here are 4 tips to help you have the best and safest possible corporate innovation career
1. Build Your Internal Network
Yes, you need to keep your finger on the pulse of all that is new and happening in the market and the best way to do that is by building and maintain your external network of advisors, experts, and thought leaders.
But, as an intrapreneur, you also need to keep your finger on the pulse of all that is new and happening in your company. Invest time in building relationships outside of your immediate team. Reach out across functions and business units to meet people, build trust, and share ideas. Over time, these connections will become the advocates and sponsors you need to break through organizational barriers, sources of vital information about evolving corporate priorities, and even guides to new roles in the (highly likely) event that your innovation group gets “wound down.”
2. Show off transferrable skills
It’s easy to get pegged as the “Innovation Person” in the group. The person who gets called in when a team wants to “be creative” or faces a particularly difficult problem that requires “thinking differently.” There’s nothing wrong with being the Go To resource for these things but it makes you very expendable when the organization decides that it needs to “get back to its roots” and “return to what made us successful.”
Instead, identify and share the skills that are at the heart of what makes you great at innovation, the skills that create value. Perhaps you’re able to talk to a customer for 30 minutes and learn things never before conceived by R&D, offer to do that for another team or teach others your skills. Perhaps you’re able to simplify and communicate the most complex topics, offer to help someone with their presentation.
Sharing the skills that make you a great innovator and showing others how to apply them in their “not innovative” jobs not only helps establish a culture of innovation, it establishes you as an essential resource no matter where innovation falls on the priority list.
3. Don’t go Stealth
It’s tempting for intrapreneurs, like entrepreneurs, to work in Stealth Mode. I’ve heard lots of reasons for this:
We don’t have results yet
Management should stay focused on the core because we need the money made there to fund our work
If they don’t know what we’re doing, they can’t stop us.
This thinking is fundamentally flawed. Not only is “out of sight, out of mind” a very real thing in companies, it ignores the essential fact that start-ups in Stealth Mode are “hiding” from the market, not their investors.
Intrapreneurs need to stay on management’s radar screens. They need to generate and communicate results, even if it’s primarily learnings, on a regular basis. They need to consistently prove to management that they are as important to the short- and long-term prospects of the company as existing businesses.
The best evidence of a manager’s priorities are the appointments on her calendar. If you’re not on there, you’re not a priority.
4. Channel your inner Gambler
For an intrapreneur, there is no better advice than the following:
You’ve got to know when to hold ‘em
Know when to fold ‘em
Know when to walk away
And know when to run
Change is hard for everyone and it always takes longer than you think it should. It’s normal to feel frustrated. The key is to know when your frustration has evolved to cynicism and, even worse, burn-out.
Take breaks. Whether it’s a night off, a weekend away, a two weeks’ vacation, or a several month sabbatical. Step away from the table, unplug the devices, and rest. After all,
“Every gambler knows
That the secret to survivin’
Is knowin’ what to throw away
And knowin’ what to keep.”
In closing
Even though Innovation should be viewed as a discipline, on par with Marketing and Finance, in terms of corporate capabilities and operations, that’s unlikely to happen any time soon. Until that day comes, corporate innovation will remain a roller coaster that only the bravest dare to ride. Hopefully, these tips make that ride longer than just a few years.
The time of year when people everywhere write up their wish lists, hope to gain favor with those who can bestow gifts, and dream of the bounty that will greet them in a few weeks’ time.
Yes, it’s Annual Planning and Budgeting time.
The process of setting annual goals and budgets can be frustrating and even demoralizing for employees and managers alike as their visions and budgets get slashed in each round of management reviews.
This process can be especially painful for Innovators who feel like they are expected to do more with less and, as a result, can’t even try to do anything new or game-changing because they barely have the resources to operate the current business.
Resource constraints are a reality in every organization. The trick is not to give up when you run into them, but to figure out how to work with them and, more importantly, the people who control them.
1. Acknowledge reality
Yes, we all know that, when funding innovation, corporations should act more like VCs and follow a milestone-based approach to releasing funds. But the reality is that the budgeting processes in most companies are so rigid that you get your budget at the beginning of the year and you don’t get a penny even if circumstances change and additional investment could yield wildly positive results.
Instead of trying to change the system or asking only for what you’ll need in the first quarter or the first half of the year, work with the system and ask for your annual budget up-front.
2.Know where there’s flexibility
During my first year at Harvard Business School, my accounting professor would often run around the room yelling “No Rules! No Rules!” which often left me more confused than when the class started.
I’m still not certain what point he was trying to make but I like to believe that he was trying to shock us out of our rigid black-and-white thinking about accounting and to see that there is room for flexibility (while staying on the right side of the law).
As you draft your budget, understand which line items are more flexible than others. For example, a client of mine had to break her budget request into Fixed (salary, benefits, and overhead) and Flexible (travel and project-specific) costs. Fixed costs were locked in, but she had almost complete autonomy over how Flexible funds were spent. As a result, given the uncertainty of staffing required for innovation projects, she maintained a skeleton crew of FTEs and relied on temps, interns, and consultants to staff up projects when needed.
3. Channel your inner Mick Jagger
The Rolling Stones said it best when they sang, “You can’t always get what you want/ But if you try sometimes, you might find/ You get what you need.”
As you look at your innovation projects, estimate what you want (i.e. the resources you need if everything goes perfectly) and what you need (the bare minimum to required to operate if a project runs for the full year). Assuming that what you want isn’t a laughable number, ask for it. When the inevitable cuts are made, acted pained until you get to about halfway between your Want budget and your Need budget then, once you reach the halfway point, start talking about tradeoffs and highlighting the things that won’t happen if budgets continue to get slashed.
4. Make your case
Even if you do everything listed above, the fact remains that there are only so many dollars to go around. This means that a dollar allocated to your project is a dollar NOT allocated to another project.
Large companies crave certainty and they reward executives who are able to consistently deliver results. This system of rewards and incentives amplifies our already innate tendency to prefer avoiding losses to acquiring gains and drives most managers to fund “Safe Bets” and “Sure Things.”
As a result, it’s not enough to pitch your idea and request for funds, you need to emphasize the potential gains, explain how you’ll minimize losses, and make the case for why your project is a better investment than others.
In conclusion
Annual Planning and Budgeting season is stressful for everyone and, inevitably, there will be brilliant ideas and game-changing projects that go unfunded. But by acknowledging the reality and constraints of the process and learning to work within them and with the people making resource allocation decisions, you can significantly increase the odds that some of the items on your innovation wish list will become a reality.
On August 27, Pumpkin Spice season began. It was the earliest ever launch of Starbucks’ Pumpkin Spice Latte and it kicked off a season in which everything from Cheerios to protein powder to dog shampoo promises the nostalgia of Grandma’s pumpkin pie.
Since its introduction in 2003, the Pumpkin Spice Latte has attracted its share of lovers and haters but, because it’s a seasonal offering, the hype fades almost as soon as it appears.
Sadly, the same cannot be said for its counterpart in corporate innovation — The Shark Tank/Hackathon/Lab Week.
It may seem unfair to declare Shark Tanks the Pumpkin Spice of corporate innovation, but consider the following:
They are events. There’s nothing wrong with seasonal flavors and events. After all, they create a sense of scarcity that spurs people to action and drives companies’ revenues. However, there IS a great deal wrong with believing that innovation is an event. Real innovation is not an event. It is a way of thinking and problem-solving, a habit of asking questions and seeking to do things better, and of doing the hard and unglamorous work of creating, learning, iterating, and testing required to bring innovation — something different that creates value — to life.
They appeal to our sense of nostalgia and connection. The smell and taste of Pumpkin Spice bring us back to simpler times, holidays with family, pie fresh and hot from the oven. Shark Tanks do the same. They remind us of the days when we believed that we could change the world (or at least fix our employers) and when we collaborated instead of competed. We feel warm fuzzies as we consume (or participate in) them, but the feelings are fleeting, and we return quickly to the real world.
They pretend to be something they’re not. Starbucks’ original Pumpkin Spice Latte was flavored by cinnamon, nutmeg, and clove. There was no pumpkin in the Pumpkin Spice. Similarly, Shark Tanks are innovation theater — events that give people an outlet for their ideas and an opportunity to feel innovation-y for a period of time before returning to their day-to-day work. The value that is created is a temporary blip, not lasting change that delivers real business value.
But it doesn’t have to be this way.
If you’re serious about walking the innovation talk, Shark Tanks can be a great way to initiate and accelerate building a culture and practice of innovation. But they must be developed and deployed in a thoughtful way that is consistent with your organization’s strategy and priorities.
Make Shark Tanks the START of an innovation effort, not a standalone event. Clearly establish the problems or organizational priorities you want participants to solve and the on-going investment (including dedicated time) that the company will make in the winners. Allocate an Executive Sponsor who meets with the team monthly and distribute quarterly updates to the company to share winners’ progress and learnings
Act with courage and commitment. Go beyond the innovation warm fuzzies and encourage people to push the boundaries of “what we usually do.” Reward and highlight participants that make courageous (i.e. risky) recommendations. Pursue ideas that feel a little uncomfortable because the best way to do something new that creates value (i.e. innovate) is to actually DO something NEW.
Develop a portfolio of innovation structures: Just as most companies use a portfolio of tools to grow their core businesses, they need a portfolio of tools to create new businesses. Use Shark Tanks to the surface and develop core or adjacent innovation AND establish incubators and accelerators to create and test radical innovations and business models AND fund a corporate VC to scout for new technologies and start-ups that can provide instant access to new markets.
In closing…
Whether you love or hate Pumpkin Spice Lattes you can’t deny their impact. They are, after all, Starbucks’ highest-selling seasonal offering. But it’s hard to deny that they are increasingly the subject of mocking memes and eye-rolls, a sign that their days, and value, maybe limited.
(Most) innovation events, like Pumpkin Spice, have a temporary effect. But not on the bottom-line. During these events, morale, and team energy spike. But, as the excitement fades and people realize that nothing happened once the event was over, innovation becomes a meaningless buzzword, evoking eye rolls and Dilbert cartoons.
Avoid this fate by making Shark Tanks a lasting part of your innovation menu — a portfolio of tools and structures that build and sustain a culture and practice of innovation, one that creates real financial and organizational value.
It’s been 22 years since the publication of The Innovator’s Dilemma, the book that catapulted Clayton Christensen to guru status, shocked and scared executives at large companies, and brought innovation into the mainstream.
In the decades since, “innovation,” “disruption,” and a host of related terms have become meaningless buzzwords, a massive industry of consultants and advisors (yes, including Mile Zero) has sprung up, and an untold number of books and articles have been written about how to innovate.
Yet nothing has changed.
Large organizations still struggle to launch anything other than incremental innovations, the failure rate of start-ups remains astoundingly high, and executives continue to flock to the latest innovation trend (2019 seems to be the year of Corporate Venture Capital).
Why?
That’s the question that Joshua Gans, Professor of Strategic Management and holder of the Jeffrey S. Skoll Chair of Technical Innovation and Entrepreneurship at the University of Toronto’s Rotman School of Management, tries to answer in his book The Disruption Dilemma.
He starts by grounding the reader in the core definitions and theories related to disruption, then makes the case that rather than trying to predict disruption (a difficult if not impossible task) organization should instead follow one of four strategies, before wrapping up with a re-examination of the data and research Christensen used to create his original theory of disruption.
“Disruption” is more than a new technology…it is an identity crisis
in their 1995 Harvard Business Review article, “Disruptive Technologies: Catching the Wave,” Clayton Christensen and Joseph L. Bower coined the term “disruptive technology” and defined it as having
“two important characteristics: First they present a different package of performance attributes — one that, at least at the outset are not valued by existing customers. Second, the performance attributes that existing customers do value improve at such a rapid rate that the new technology can later invade those established markets.”
For Christensen. disruption occurs when management chooses not respond to a new innovation because it does not perform as well as existing solutions along traditional performance dimensions and therefore is unappealing to existing customer.
Interestingly, at the same time that Christensen was studying for his PhD at Harvard, another doctoral student was also conducting research into why successful firms fail in light of new technologies. In 1990, Rebecca Henderson, now one of only two University Professors at Harvard (the other one is Michael Porter), debuted the term “Architectural Innovation” with her collaborator, Kim Clark, in their paper “Architectural Innovation: The Reconfiguration of Existing Product Technologies and The Failure of Established Firms.”
For Henderson, disruption, happens when managers are unable to respond because the innovation requires changes to how the firm operates, communicates, coordinates, learns, and makes decisions. Thus,
“Architectural innovation presents established firms with a more subtle challenge. Much of what the firm knows is useful and needs to be applied in the new product but some of what it knows is not only not useful but may actually handicap the firm. Recognizing what is useful and what is not, and acquiring and applying new knowledge when necessary, may be quite difficult for an established firm….”
Gans terms the Christensen theory demand-side disruption and the Henderson theory supply-side disruption. He unites both of these two types of disruption under a single definition of disruption as
“what a firm faces when the choices that once drive a firm’s success now become those that destroy its future.”
What I like about this definition is that it takes disruption beyond the narrow fields of technology, products, or services and considers it in the broader context of markets and industries. It reveals disruption to be something that all organizations are likely to face at some point in their future and one that will call into question many of the fundamental beliefs upon which the organization operates. Further, identifying and understanding both demand- and supply-side disruption can help organizations understand the challenge they face and where and how to focus their resources to navigate the rough road ahead.
Kodak Smile and the Polaroid Mint
Predicting disruption is hard.
What both demand-side Disruption (Christensen) and supply-side Disruption (Henderson) theories have in common is that they are kicked off by the introduction of a new innovation into the market.
However, new innovations launch all the time and very few of them start the domino effect that characterizes disruption. This is because an innovation must do two things in order to be disruptive: (1) offer poorer performance on some dimensions that existing customers value and offer new performance benefits that appeal to new customers and (2) improve rapidly enough that the innovation is able to quickly perform at levels desired by existing customers while offering the new benefits that new customers have grown to love.
As Gans point out, it’s relatively easy to determine if an innovation will meet the first criteria but it takes time to know whether or not the second criteria will be met. “Therefore, both supply- and demand-side theories lead to the conclusion that predicting disruptive events is very challenging, if not impossible.”
Responding is even harder.
To illustrate this point, Gans shares the stories of Polaroid and Kodak, two companies that recognized and responded to a potentially disruptive innovation decades before it transformed the market, but still failed.
In 1981, Polaroid recognized the threat posed by digital technologies. By 1989, it was investing over 40% of its R&D budget into digital imaging. However, while it was investing in technology, it was struggling to envision the right products to commercialize its technological advancement. This struggle was rooted not in its ability to innovate cameras but rather by “razor/blade” business model (and supporting mindset) that resulted in Polaroid subsidizing cameras and making money on film, a model (architecture) that would need to change if the company shifted from film to digital technology.
The company resisted re-organizing itself around the new architecture such that when it eventually developed and launched a digital camera it into the market, there were already 40 established competitors and Polaroid struggled to differentiate itself. Five years later, in 2001, Polaroid declared bankruptcy.
Digital imaging technology had been on Kodak’s radar screen since the mid-1970s. In the 1990s, it partnered with companies like Apple to develop digital cameras and, by 2005, was the market leader in docks that enabled sharing of digital images between computers and cameras.
So prescient were Kodak’s senior executives that “it was even one of the first few companies to consult with Clayton Christensen himself. Managers at Kodak read the Innovator’s Dilemma upon its publication and used it messages to direct Kodak’s product strategy. One example of this was to launch cameras in toy stores as a defense against Nintendo, which had put them in one million Game Boys. Nintendo’s cameras were by all accounts awful, but they were enough to get Kodak worried about disruption. Kodak was able to outpredict the market and to make substantial investments in what came to be disruptive innovations. Though they were initially inferior on multiple dimensions, the improved to take the market in less than a decade.”
If Kodak did everything right, at least according to Christensen’s theory, why did it declare bankruptcy in 2012?
It failed because it did not predict that the dominant design for digital photos would shift from cameras to phones and continued to innovate and invest in “hybrid products that would combine its existing strengths with the new technologies, for example the Photo CD, a way of taking film to photo shops and bringing a digital product home.”
The moral or these stories is that if you are able to identify a potentially disruptive innovation and if you take action to respond, it is nearly impossible to predict the path the innovation will take and attempting to do so is likely to require considerable resources but result in adding only a few years to the organization’s life.
4 strategies for responding to disruption
If you buy-in to Gans’ argument that predicting and trying to stave off disruption is a fool’s errand, it can be tempting to throw up your hands, declare defeat, and simply wait for disruption to claim your organization as its next victim. And, to be fair, Gans does offer this, Wait and Give up, as one of four possible strategies to deal with disruption.
But let’s say you’re not one to declare defeat easily or quickly, what then?
According to Gans, you first need to acknowledge that the two greatest barriers to innovation are uncertainty and cost. Uncertainty is a barrier because, as described above, you can’t be certain of an innovation’s disruptive path until it is well on the journey and this uncertainty is likely to make managers hesitant to take action. However, even if managers are willing to stomach uncertainty, “established firms face a dilemma in introducing new products or innovations because this cannibalizes their existing, profitable businesses….” This reality, “that there are no free lunches, only trade-offs,” has been part of economic theory since Nobel Prize winner Kenneth Arrow named it “the replacement effect” in a 1962 paper.
For organizations unwilling to surrender to disruption, Gans offers three potential strategies to manage uncertainty and cost and position themselves for success:
1. Double Downby leveraging existing strengths to contain a new entrant. This strategy works best when the innovation to which the organization is responding turns out to NOT be disruptive. In cases where it is disruptive, organizations are likely to face the same challenges and fate as Kodak and Polaroid
2. Wait and Double Upby investing heavily only once it is certain that an innovation is disruptive. This approach works because, as economists Richard Gilbert and David Newbury wrote in 1981, “when an established firm can defend a monopoly segment against innovative entry through investment, its incentive to protect its monopoly will be greater than the incentive for new entrants to invade.”
3. Wait and Buy Upa the most promising new entrant. Even though established firms are likely to pay a premium to acquire the new entrant, it offers them certainty of watching the market shake out and saving them the cost of the Double down or Double up strategies. However, this strategy works the best when only market-side (Christensen) disruption is occurring as “the problem faced by established firms is not the acquisition of such knowledge but instead the integration of different ways of doing things into an organization that already has ingrained processes.”
Putting it all into practice
As much fun as it is to nerd-out on innovation theory, let’s get down to brass tacks and outline what all of this means to Intrapreneurs (people trying to innovate within existing organizations).
For me, this boils down to three questions organizations need to ask themselves:
1. Should we act in response to a potential disruption?
2. How should we organize to respond?
3. What should we do to respond?
The questions and their corresponding answers form a basic decision tree:
The answers to question 1 were outlined above — large organizations should WAIT until they are certain that disruption is occurring and have confidence in the path it could take
The answers to question 2 reveal another point of difference between Christensen’s and Henderson’s theories:
Christiansen advocates for independent autonomous units, using Lockheed’s famous Skunk Works as an example. He asserts that, in order to be successful, independent units “cannot be forced to compete with projects in the mainstream organization for resources. Because values are the criteria by which prioritization decisions are made, projects that are inconsistent with a company’s mainstream values will naturally be accorded lowest priority. Whether the independent organization is physically separate is less important than is its independence from the normal resource allocation process.” (The Innovator’s Dilemma)
Henderson recommends integration — a culture and practice in which organizations examine and question the implicit linkages in how they operate, evolve them to meet business needs, and readily assimilate linkages that emerge or are acquired. This approach enables firms to respond to both demand- and supply-side disruption. However, “to proactively use integration to prevent disruption often involves sacrificing short-term competitiveness and even market leadership” and, as a result, Gans argued is best used by companies operating in industries where disruption is frequent.
How an organization answers question 3 is based on numerous factors, including available capital, competitive activity, and market/ shareholder pressure. In my experience, however, the choice usually boils down to how the organization has historically grown. Companies that have grown primarily through acquisition should prioritize a Buy up strategy while those that typically grow organically should eschew acquisition for and either Double up or Double Down.
The bottom line
The book wraps up with a nerd-tastic deep dive into Christensen’s research of the micro-processor industry, the data set he used to develop his theory of disruption, and the logic and analysis flaws in his conclusions. It’s worth reading but, as Gans admits, it shouldn’t significantly alter how we think about disruption
Ultimately, by weaving together multiple theories of disruption with tried and true economic theories, The Disruption Dilemma expands how we think and talk about the dynamics that influence if and how organizations respond to disruption and ultimately how we can be more successful when confronting it.
If you want to read The Disruption Dilemma you can buy it at MIT Press, Amazon, Powell’s, or (hopefully) your local independent book seller.
“What do you plan to do on vacation?” my friend asked.
“Nothing…”
Long silence
“…And it will be amazing.”
We live in a world that confuses activity with achievement so I should not have been surprised that the idea of deliberately doing nothing stunned my friend into silence.
After all, when people say, “I wish I had nothing to do” they usually mean “I wish I could choose what I do with my time.” And, when they do have the opportunity to choose, very few choose to do nothing.
Why does the idea of doing nothing make us so uncomfortable?
“driven by the perceptions that a busy person possesses desired human capital characteristics (competence, ambition) and is scarce and in demand on the job market.”
We didn’t always believe this.
For most of human history, we’ve had a pretty balanced view of the need for both work and leisure. Aristotle argued that virtue was obtainable through contemplation, not through endless activity. Most major religions call for a day of rest and reflection. Even 19th-century moral debates, as recorded by historian EO Thompson, recognized the value of hard work AND the importance of rest.
So what happened?
While it’s easy to say that we have to work more because of the demands of our jobs, the data says otherwise. In fact, according to a working paper by Jonathan Gershuny, a time-expert based on the UK, actual time spent at work has not increased since the 1960s.
The actual reason may be that we want to work more. According to economist Robert Frank, those who identify as workaholics believe that:
“building wealth…is a creative process, and the closest thing they have to fun.”
We choose to spend time working because Work — “the job itself, the psychic benefits of accumulating money, the pursuit of status, and the ability to afford the many expensive enrichments of an upper-class lifestyle” according to an article in The Atlantic — is what we find most fulfilling.
It’s not that I like working, I just don’t like wasting time.
We tend to equate doing nothing with laziness, apathy, a poor work ethic, and a host of other personality flaws and social ills. But what if that’s not true.
What if, in the process of doing nothing, we are as productive as when we do something?
Science is increasingly showing this to be the case.
Multiple fMRI studies have revealed the existence of the default mode network (DMN), a large-scale brain network that is most active when we’re day-dreaming. Researchers at the University of Southern California argue that
“downtime is, in fact, essential to mental processes that affirm our identities, develop our understanding of human behavior and instill an internal code of ethics — processes that depend on the DMN.”
The results of harnessing the power of your DMN are immense:
More creativity. The research discussed in Scientific American suggests that DMN is more active in creative people. For example, according to Psychology Today:
The most recorded song of all time, “Yesterday” by The Beatles, was ‘heard’ by Paul McCartney as he was waking up one morning. The melody was fully formed in his mind, and he went straight to the piano in his bedroom to find the chords to go with it, and later found words to fit the melody.
Mozart described how his musical ideas ‘flow best and most abundantly.’ when he was alone ‘traveling in a carriage or walking after a good meal, or during the night when I cannot sleep… Whence and how they come, I know not, nor can I force them.’
Tchaikovsky described how the idea for a composition usually came ‘suddenly and unexpectedly… It takes root with extraordinary force and rapidity, shoots up through the earth, puts forth branches and leaves, and finally blossoms.’
More productivity. According to an essay in The New York Times, “Idleness is not just a vacation, an indulgence or a vice; it is as indispensable to the brain as vitamin D is to the body, and deprived of it we suffer a mental affliction as disfiguring as rickets. The space and quiet that idleness provides is a necessary condition for standing back from life and seeing it whole, for making unexpected connections and waiting for the wild summer lightning strikes of inspiration — it is, paradoxically, necessary to getting any work done.”
Less burnout. Regardless of how many hours you work, consider this: researchers have found that it takes 25 minutes to recover from a phone call or an e-mail. On average, we are interrupted every 11 minutes which means that we can never catch up, we’re always behind.
That feeling of always being behind leads to burn-out which the World Health Organization officially recognized as a medical condition defined as a “syndrome conceptualized as resulting from chronic workplace stress that has not been successfully managed” and manifests with the following symptoms:
Feelings of energy depletion or exhaustion
Increased mental distance from one’s job, or feelings of negativism or cynicism related to one’s job
Reduced professional efficacy
Doing nothing, quieting our minds and not focusing on any particular task, can actually help reset our bodies systems, quieting the release of stress chemicals, slowing our heart rates, and improving our mental and physical energy
Better health. Multiple studies indicate that idleness “produces many health benefits including, but not limited to, reduced heart rate, better digestion, improvements in mood, and a boost in overall emotional well-being — which, of course, affects everything on a biochemical and physiological level, thereby serving as a major deciding factor on whether or not we fall ill, and/or remain ill. Mental downtime also replenishes glucose and oxygen levels in the brain, and allows our brains to process and file things, which leaves us feeling more rested and clear-headed, promotes a stronger sense of self-confidence, and…more willing to we trust change.”
Fine, you convinced me. How can I do nothing?
There are the usual suspects — vacations, meditation, and physical exercise — but, if you’re anything like me, the thought of even finding 5 minutes to listen to a meditation app is so overwhelming that I never even start.
An easier place to start, in my experience, is in intentionally working nothing into the moments that are already “free.” Here are three of my favorite ways to work a bit of nothing into my day.
Make the Snooze button work for you. When my alarm goes off, I instinctively hit the Snooze button because, I claim, it is my first and possibly only victory of the day. It’s also a great way to get 9 minutes of thoughtful quiet nothingness in which I can take a few deep breaths, scan my body for any aches and pains, and make sure that I’m calm and my mind is quiet when I get out of bed.
Stare out the window. I always place my computer next to a window so that I can stare out the window for a few minutes throughout the day and people think I’m thinking deep thoughts. Which I am. Subconsciously. Lest anyone accuse me of being lazy or unproductive while I watch the clouds roll by, I simply point them to research that shows “that individuals who took five to ten minute breaks from work to do nothing a few times a day displayed an approximately 50% increase in their ability to think clearly and creatively, thus rendering their work far more productive.
Bring the beach to you. Research from a variety of places, from the UK Census to The Journal of Coastal Zone Management, indicate that our brains and bodies benefit from time at the beach. But, if you can’t go to the beach, there are lots of ways to bring the beach to you. Perhaps the simplest is to bring more blue into your environment. Most people associate blue with feelings of calm and peace and a study published in the American Association for the Advancement of Science found that the color blue can boost creativity. Even putting a picture of a beach (or your own personal happy place) on your desk or computer screen can trigger your brain to slow down, relax, and possibly trigger your DMN.
With so many benefits, isn’t it time you started doing more nothing?
