My creative department had its usual Monday morning meeting and this morning, the creative director opened the meeting with a phrase from an Kansas City Ad Club luncheon that he and I attended a couple of weeks ago (and I’ve been trying to find time to write about since)... “chaos breeds creativity.”

The phrase was then opened for interpretation, and I was a little surprised at the overall reaction and interpretation. I felt that the main feeling about the phrase was negative… that the group as a whole seemed to fear chaos, or at least what they have been conditioned to consider to be chaos.

In this context, chaos is not the literal definition of disorganization, rushed deadlines, or rampant project confusion. It’s about how to mix up one’s point of view so that a problem or situation is looked at from a fresh perspective.

Now, how does one do that? Personally, I feel that the best way to put some creative chaos into your work is to pull yourself out of the drudgery of routine or established process and find yourself a way to distract the conscious part of your creative mind that always autopilots you through familiar territory time and again. I like to read magazines, surf the Internet, talk to friends, or even work on small personal projects to gain insight into some fresh new vein to tap for my next creative task.

Which, now brings me to the point of this article. Some people are afraid of distraction, of that idle time that for one reason or another they do not feel is being well spent. Lifehack.org published an article entitled Working Delusions today that I thought tied in nicely to this morning’s discussion regarding “chaos breeding creativity” discussion and the side subject of “work smart, not hard” that threaded loosely throughout it.

From the article:

Let’s tie this back to the creative process now. If one tries to apply the Puritan Work Ethic to creative work, what one usually gets is a headache from banging one’s head against a wall for an extended period of time.

When we are so focused on working hard and adhering to a process, we blind ourselves to the myriad of creative opportunities a fresh outlook affords. How do we get this fresh outlook? By breaking out of our routine… by creating chaos.

So, the question to end this with… how do we as a creative team add constructive chaos to our everyday routine? How do we do it on a personal level?

How do you do it?