Home » Blog » Experts share the best ways to maximize creativity during times of stress and transition

Experts share the best ways to maximize creativity during times of stress and transition

Kendall Kazor is a member of Google’s People Development School for Googlers team, which produces Resilience at Google, a podcast that examines the science behind resilience and high performance. Below is an excerpt from an interview featur during season two.

Creativity can be hard to define, but it’s an essential skill in today’s workforce. Being creative helps us solve existing challenges and envision new opportunities, which is why many of the world’s most innovative companies consider it an X factor—a key aspect.

As the pace of work and connectivity constantly increases

How do we create the space we ne to generate our skype database best ideas? Can we be creative and productive at the same time? How do we keep the spark of creativity burning, even when we start to feel burn out? These are questions we often hear from Googlers, but they are not unique to them.In April of this year, we launch a podcast series to help people better understand resilience, which we define as the ability to respond to and recover from stress. Each episode brings together neuroscientists and psychologists with mental performance coaching specialists to discuss the science behind resilience and chat about effective ways to react to change and other daily challenges.

In the first episode of the second season of the podcast we focus on creativity, and specifically how to recharge and maximise creativity during periods of high stress and transition. For this conversation we were join by digital anthropologist and author Rahaf Harfoush and Associate Professor of Sport and Performance Psychology at Nottingham Trent University, Dr Mustafa Sarkar.

We all strive to improve ourselves, and we often

 

Equate that with being productive. Rahaf, you wrote a book call “Hustle and Float,” which is a useful concept for thinking about productivity. Can you explain that?

Rahaf Harfoush: “Hustle and float” is a phrase taken from creating engaging headlines whitewater rafting. It’s the idea that to have a good experience doing whitewater rafting, you ne a mix of hustle and float. There’s a period where you have to hustle to get the raft to go where you ne it to go so you can move forward. But there are also times when you have to lift the paddle and let the river do its work.

Too much of either will ruin your trip
If you push yourself too hard because of the constant hustle cyprus business directory and bustle, you’ll get tir and make mistakes that can be dangerous. If, on the other hand, you float for too long, the dynamic becomes boring and you don’t get where you want to go because you’re at the mercy of the river.
The idea is that to navigate successfully, we ne to strike a balance between when we do the work and when the river does it. And that easily applies to productivity culture: we’re so us to rushing that we don’t remember how to float.
Scroll to Top