The Groove Issue 86 - Embrace Your Paradoxes
EMBRACE YOUR PARADOXES
If you have ever been confused or surprised by holding opposite views concurrently or experiencing what seems to be incompatible traits at the same time, rest assured that this is a good thing for creative thinking.
I feel I live with these paradoxes daily and have learned not only to accept them but also to milk them to my advantage. You can do the same.
Creative People Are Walking Paradoxes
Hand With Reflecting Sphere (1935), by M.C. Escher.
Paradoxes usually start at the level of your personality and then expand to your work.
The late Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, the foremost researcher on creativity, wrote in his book Flow that most creative people exhibit paradoxical traits. In fact, he highlighted the 10 most common ones:
1. Creative people have a great deal of physical energy, but they’re also often quiet and at rest.
2. Creative people tend to be smart yet naïve at the same time.
3. Creative people combine playfulness and discipline, or responsibility and irresponsibility.
4. Creative people alternate between imagination and fantasy, and a rooted sense of reality.
5. Creative people tend to be both extroverted and introverted.
6. Creative people are humble and proud at the same time.
7. Creative people, to an extent, escape rigid gender role stereotyping.
8. Creative people are both rebellious and conservative.
9. Most creative people are very passionate about their work, yet they can be extremely objective about it as well.
10. Creative people’s openness and sensitivity often exposes them to suffering and pain, yet also to a great deal of enjoyment.
Being creative is not about denying, suppressing, or trying to steer your traits in one direction the way a society that insists on boxing you in does. It’s about having the capacity to tolerate the tension when you generate strong oppositional values and express them through your work.
Are You Really Sure That a Floor Can't Also Be a Ceiling?
M.C. Escher in his study in Baarn, Netherlands.
Many artists embrace all these paradoxes, including Dutch M.C. Escher. Maurits Cornelis Escher was a graphic artist who before his death in 1972 was never fully recognized by the art establishment.
In fact, the first time I saw his work in person was in Brooklyn in 2018, at a pop-up show mounted by the people who handled his estate - they wanted to do some justice to Escher’s work, having failed to secure a retrospective in any of the major museums in New York.
The contradictions in Escher’s life showed up plentifully in his work. He had a mysterious personality but was also open to giving public talks and lectures about his process and views. He said that living surrounded by boring landscapes and plain architecture in Switzerland, Belgium and the Netherlands compelled him to “withdraw from the more or less direct and true-to-life illustrating of my surroundings,” embracing what he called his “inner visions”.
M.C. Escher, Ascending and Descending, 1965.
This is the guy who teased us by saying “Are you really sure that a floor can't also be a ceiling?” And went on to create the famous 1960 lithograph “Ascending and Descending,” with its two ranks of human figures moving forever upwards and eternally downwards, respectively, on an impossible four-sided everlasting staircase.
Escher wanted to show the paradox of a flat piece of paper conveying the depth of a 3-D space, and in a 1963 lecture on “the impossible”, Escher declared: “If you want to express something impossible, you must keep to certain rules. The element of mystery to which you want to draw attention should be surrounded and veiled by a quite obvious, readily recognizable commonness.”
And when you think about Escher’s words and his paradoxical perspective, wouldn’t you say that this is a much more interesting and infinitely more creative way to approach life?
Harmonize Paradoxes at Work
You already know that businesses with rigid structures tend to fail, but ultimately, they are run by people and one of the best predictors of creativity and progress in companies is the management’s ability to embrace paradoxes.
Toyota lives and thrives on two goals: maintain stability and encourage constant reform. That’s how they keep the business running efficiently and at the same time looking for ways to innovate, grow and disrupt.
For example, Toyota is frugal, but it splurges on key areas. In Japan, the company turns off the lights in its offices at lunchtime. Staff members often work together in one large room, with no partitions between desks, due to the high cost of office space in Japan. At the same time, Toyota spends huge sums of money on manufacturing facilities, dealer networks, and human resource development.
But how do you apply these paradoxes to your own job or career?
Israeli researcher Ella Miron-Spektor spearheaded a study where she found that managers who accepted that paradoxes amplify their points of view, scored better as creatives than those who saw no value in looking for contradictions.
You could look into the paradoxes that moved artists like Escher and consider his ideas to get your creative juices flowing: rules and impossibilities, boredom and excitement, flatness and depth, mystery and commonness.
One way to get to this standpoint is by simply writing down any paradoxes you encounter – and to reflect about them before you set about solving problems.
Just as Escher and Toyota benefitted from both the observational and the inventive, the routine and the unconventional, you too can actively conceive multiple opposites simultaneously and expect them to give you a perspective you’d otherwise not receive.
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Have you already watched my TEDx Talk: “NFTs, Graffiti and Sedition: How Artists Invent The Future”?
I share three lessons I have learned from artists that always work for anyone in their careers. Watch it here.