It is the dream: you end up a huge project that wins widespread support – from your boss, your colleagues, your customers, your friends and family. You fly high. The world should be your oyster.
And right? You can’t find the inspiration to follow up. Your productivity dries up. You are afraid that lightning will not strike twice.
You are afraid of being a one-hit miracle. Perhaps not in the outdated pop star – sensense – but in the professional, creative, successful sense. It is a terrible, restrictive feeling that kills your productivity, not to mention the trust.
But according to researchOf the Rotterdam School of Management in the Netherlands there is a reason for the feelings of inadequacy after a major achievement. And better understanding this phenomenon can help to break that mental block.
In this paid premium story you will:
- Understand better why success scares you
- How you can cheat your brain from the paralyzing loop
- Learn how you can hit the park a second time
Feeling marked by success
The research points to something that is called a ‘creative identity threat’ in which you become so attached to your reputation for genius (or, good near genius) that you are afraid to endanger it with another project. This paralyzes the original thinking of a second-year student almost a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Dirk Deichmann, one of the researchers behind the Rotterdam study, says that the inspiration for this project was the product of life in a flat above a cookbook shop. He was fascinated by the enormous variety of titles in their window. “You can do endless combinations with new categories [of cuisine]New techniques and materials, “he says. So as a creativity researcher, he immediately started to wonder what kind of factors would influence the success of a cookbook author.
In collaboration with Markus Baer, a professor of organizational behavior at Washington University in St. Louis, he turned into data from the British cookbook market, looking at detailed records of year-to-year-old. They discovered that about 50% of the first authors do not write a book in the five years after their debut.
Now this can happen for various reasons. Perhaps the sale of the first book was terrible. But in many cases it was the opposite: it was often the people with the most original ideas and the biggest support that failed to publish a second title.
They suspected the phenomenon, could be explained by a psychology area known as’Rol identity theory”: How certain” roles “are embedded in our feeling of who we are. If we have received extraordinary praise for our ingenuity, then our reputation for creativity can become central in our identity. We fear that Kroon is slipping, and so we avoid (contrary-inpatient) new creative adventure-in the case that we are to be the same attack.
Fear of an in danger reputation
Deichmann and Baer decided to test this hypothesis and explore this phenomenon of self-sabotage.
They measure how “novel” each cookbook was on their list (by analyzing the online descriptions of publishers of its content), as well as how many prizes each book receive, if present. And yes, the more “creative” a person’s debut would have been – and the more praised they had received – the less likely they would publish a sequel. Success, it seems, can be a poisoned chalice.
For further evidence, Deichmann and Baer decided to re -make the phenomenon with participants in the lab. In one experiment, the participants were asked to come up with a concept for a new cookbook. Some were told that they had shown great originality, while the rest were told that their idea was ‘solid and traditional’. These two groups were again divided, with about half of each extra recognition by hearing that their idea would probably “make a big splash” – so that they can be seen on the cover of the magazine of the university. Finally, all participants were given the opportunity to pitch a second cookbook concept.
As expected, the people who had been chosen for their creativity and the extra recognition of the magazine did won considerably less chance of proposing a follow -up idea.
It is crucial that a questionnaire about their feelings confirmed that this reluctance resulted from their fear of losing their creative identity. They previously agreed with the explanation: “The thought of coming up with a new idea for a second book gives me the feeling that I could, for example, endanger my reputation as a creative producer,”, for example.
A creative identity threat can occur in many domains, Deichmann suggests. Every time you allow your ego to be dependent on the appliance you hope to receive for a project, whether it is a murderous marketing campaign, an ingenious design or an excellent product line, you can struggle to come up with more new ideas.
Escape from the fall
If you are worried about suffering from creative identity threat, Deichmann has a few suggestions.
The first is collaboration. Find someone, or a group of people who may be able to contribute to your next project. “That way the creative identity threat is not so heavy on you, but you share it.” The second is to try to concentrate your mind on the creative process, instead of being obsessed with the final goal, that the freely flowing thoughts inhibits that are essential for generating ideas.
This fits in with research by Ella Miron-Spektor, professor of organizational behavior at the Insead Business School in Fontainebleau, France. She has investigated how people”Target Orientation” can influence their creativity. Some people are “performance -oriented” (worried about how their results relate to their colleagues); Others are “learning -oriented” (aimed at building skills).
In one study, Miron-Spektor looked at seven years of data from a technology company that had introduced an innovation program in which employees were asked to suggest ways to improve their processes or products, which were subsequently assessed by an expert panel. She discovered that learning -oriented people produced more ideas, and the quality of those ideas grew the tendency to grow over time. In the meantime, the performance -oriented people tended to dry up quickly.
Finally, Deichmann’s third advice: set up a creative routine. After a great success you may feel particularly anxious if you just wait for your next “Eureka!” moment to land due to change. But you can feel more confidence if you can find a systematic process to find and test ideas. For example, an inventor or designer can start interviewing and observing their potential customers to present new markets to exploit: “You define a problem“ You generate different ideas for that problem and your prototype. ”
There is no guarantee that inspiration will hit the same spirit twice – but a little courage, perseverance and strategy can considerably increase the chances that your genius will burn in the future.
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