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Sometimes I feel like I'm on a different planet to readers of publications like the WSJ: "we all "know" that tight deadlines lead to inspiration" Do we? I

Sometimes I feel like I'm on a different planet to readers of publications like the WSJ: "we all "know" that tight deadlines lead to inspiration" Do we? I've never thought that. It's always seemed straight forward that stress and reduction in avenues of potential exploration lead to less creativity, and the few moments of stress driven "eureka" lead to strong confirmation bias in the wrong direction. If this is apparently not the view of most management/executive types, no wonder business/corporate culture looks the way it currently does!

wslh 12y ago
You stopped earlier and skipped the whole statement: It starts with: For instance, we all "know" that tight deadlines lead to inspiration. Except they often don't. Instead, they typically are counterproductive—making people less creative precisely when they need to be. Please give a little freedom to the author to express himself!
- nhaehnle 12y ago
  I believe kolektiv's point was about how the author wrote her/his piece kind of assuming that their readers think tight deadlines lead to inspiration. That is, the point was reflecting on how warped the subculture of WSJ readers must be, or perhaps how warped the perceived culture among WSJ readers is. Had the author assumed that all readers already shared the idea that free breathing room is needed for inspiration, that particular sentence fragment certainly would not have appeared in the article -- therefore, kolektiv made a deduction about the author's audience. It's certainly an interesting point to observe; I was also very surprised by that sentence in the article, because to me, the fact that freedom of pressure (and even boredom!) is helpful for inspiration seemed like one of these things that "everybody knows". [0] And apparently I was wrong ;-) [0] Deadlines are definitely good for the perspiration part, though ;)
amirmc 12y ago
It seems to me that they somewhat conflated 'deadlines' with 'goals' early on and then just ran with it. Edit: Any idea why this was downvoted? I've re-read it and I still think the author has slightly conflated these two things. That doesn't make the article value-less but it does help with my interpretation of it.
graeme 12y ago
That's actually a very common view. It's been around at least since Aesop. See the Fable of the crow and the pitcher: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Crow_and_the_Pitcher http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Crow_and_the_Pitcher "Necessity is the mother of invention" is the version most used in English.

wslh 12y ago

You stopped earlier and skipped the whole statement: It starts with: For instance, we all "know" that tight deadlines lead to inspiration. Except they often don't. Instead, they typically are counterproductive—making people less creative precisely when they need to be. Please give a little freedom to the author to express himself!

nhaehnle 12y ago
I believe kolektiv's point was about how the author wrote her/his piece kind of assuming that their readers think tight deadlines lead to inspiration. That is, the point was reflecting on how warped the subculture of WSJ readers must be, or perhaps how warped the perceived culture among WSJ readers is. Had the author assumed that all readers already shared the idea that free breathing room is needed for inspiration, that particular sentence fragment certainly would not have appeared in the article -- therefore, kolektiv made a deduction about the author's audience. It's certainly an interesting point to observe; I was also very surprised by that sentence in the article, because to me, the fact that freedom of pressure (and even boredom!) is helpful for inspiration seemed like one of these things that "everybody knows". [0] And apparently I was wrong ;-) [0] Deadlines are definitely good for the perspiration part, though ;)

amirmc 12y ago

It seems to me that they somewhat conflated 'deadlines' with 'goals' early on and then just ran with it. Edit: Any idea why this was downvoted? I've re-read it and I still think the author has slightly conflated these two things. That doesn't make the article value-less but it does help with my interpretation of it.

graeme 12y ago

That's actually a very common view. It's been around at least since Aesop. See the Fable of the crow and the pitcher: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Crow_and_the_Pitcher http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Crow_and_the_Pitcher "Necessity is the mother of invention" is the version most used in English.