Develop Better Habits With Improvisational Thinking
Giving up on your day to day can be a powerful way to unleash great new ideas, both personally and professionally. Jazz musicians and improvisational comedians are often adept at this idea of breaking away from the routine and taking a fresh approach.
This post originally appeared on the Help Scout blog .
Take, for example, Miles Davis’s 1959 album Kind of Blue , considered by many to be one of the greatest jazz albums of all time. While most jazz musicians of his era played dynamic bebop, Davis wanted to take a new approach to jazz – to force himself and his band to break out of the bebop routine. The result is one of the highest grossing jazz albums in history.
“Everything on this tape is a first impression,” says organizational behavior researcher Frank Barrett of the Davis album in an interview with the Harvard Business Review . “These musicians are exploring this for the first time. They couldn’t rely on old routines and habits. They noticed, created and discovered everything at the same time. “
Notice. Creation. Opening. Barrett argues in his book Into Disorder that each of these skills is critical not only to creating great jazz, but also to developing breakthrough ideas and being a strong leader.
However, it is often easier said than done not to follow a textbook. In our world of synchronized calendars and countless scheduling tools, getting away from routine can seem like a kind of sacrilege. Indeed, maintaining a routine prevents us from being sucked into a maelstrom of YouTube and social media videos that can easily undermine our productivity. But on the other hand, might too much routine discourage positive habit change and stifle creativity?
Let’s look at a few ways to avoid stagnation by changing your personal and work routines.
Give up control
If you deviate from your routine, it’s hard not to feel like you’ve lost control of your day. However, when done with intention and self-awareness, avoiding regular routines can be a powerful way to stimulate new thinking, break bad habits, better adapt to change, and increase collaboration in a team environment.
“Great leaders can help people get out of routine and pay attention to them,” says Barrett. “They are receptive […] so they can react creatively on the spot.”
By giving up control over how you always do something, you can create space for new ideas and a more receptive worldview.
Make more mistakes
Embracing failure has become a zeitgeist in startup culture. If you don’t take risks, chances are you are not doing anything interesting. As Miles Davis said, “If you are not mistaken, then it is a mistake.”
This means that you need to rethink your thinking so that deviating from routine does not count as falling from the cart, but rather moving it along a different path. “You have to constantly experiment, explore and try new things,” says Barrett. “If everything you play is clean, fresh and smooth, then you have given up experimentation.”
Barrett warns that continuous success can be seen as a red flag over and over again. “There is a certain point in the life of a group, or in a person’s life, there’s not much that can be learned by being more successful,” he says. “There is a certain point where your real learning and real transformation, as an individual or as a group, occurs after an unexpected mistake.”
Look for the unfamiliar
Our brain shortens the path, gravitating towards what is familiar. In most cases, our routines are so ingrained that we don’t even think before we act. According to a study by the Department of Psychology at the University of Southern California, nearly half of our daily behavior usually occurs at the same time and in the same place.
Researchers suggest that the best way to take your mind off your routine and seek new ideas is to literally put yourself in unfamiliar places and situations. According to neuroscientist Gregory Burns, these new experiences help unleash your imaginations, forcing the mind to abandon its tendency to rely on categories and shorten paths. “Only when you consciously confront your brain’s dependence on categories can you imagine beyond its boundaries,” he writes in his book Iconoclasm .
How to get rid of bad habits
Even if we don’t plan for them, bad habits can take root in our routines just like good ones. You may never play sports when you come home from the office because part of your daily routine involves opening mail on the couch, which causes you to lift your legs, resulting in two hours of watching TV instead of putting on your sneakers and walking. for a run.
This is not a recommendation to completely abandon your schedule, but rather a call to notice if and how your usual behavior can reinforce negative habits. Charles Duhigg writes in The Power of Habit : “Unless you deliberately fight the habit — unless you find new routines — the pattern will unfold automatically.”
Give yourself a fresh start
Starting over from the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School can have powerful psychological effects that lead to positive behavioral changes, according to a study by the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania. This “fresh start effect” suggests that making changes to your daily routine can lead to a feeling of starting a new one, which helps to reinforce positive changes in habits.
For example, researchers found that people who wanted to lose weight were more motivated to change their habits and behavior when they thought they were starting over – at the beginning of the year, season, month, or even week, according to Google. search data that revealed an increase in the number of searches for the word “diet” and an increase in gym attendance.
Adopt an “improvised mindset”
Comic improvisers, like jazz musicians, are often adept at this idea of breaking away from the routine and taking a fresh approach. They accept the rule of “yes and …”, leaning towards what comes to them, instead of refuting it. The key here, of course, is the willingness to take risks, make yourself uncomfortable, and fall on your face – what Barrett calls improvisational thinking:
While problem solving is necessary, it is not enough. If you’re just in the mood to solve problems, your imagination will shrink. The possibilities for interpreting the action will be less. You must have a mindset that says yes to the possibility of something new, interesting, and creative.
Of course, routine has its advantages – it helps us stay focused on the task at hand, removes distractions, and gives us the rhythm of a hectic life. But take the time to give up the routine and embrace the unfamiliar while trying new; Passing mistakes may just lead to your best work.
Routine failure: how to change your habits for the better | Scout help