220 THE CREATIVE INVESTMENT TEAM
that taking off your shoes in the park is going to stimulate break-
through thinking? How can somebody writing an article about
creativity be so uncreative? My point, and I do have one, is that
platitudes like “Change your patterns” must be supported with
real-world examples to be of any use. Otherwise they just waste
our time. I don’t want platitudes, I want to know what this author
has actually done in real life that helped him get new ideas. That
would be a juicy meal. Instead, he offers up these rice cakes. I had
the same complaint about the advice to “turn off” my inner critic.
Tell me how!
So, what do I do to break patterns? First off, I admit that I hate
breaking patterns. I like my routines. So did my father. When I
ragged on him about the rut he’d been living in for 20 years of
retirement, he responded, “Buzz off, I like my rut.” Routines are
comfortable. William James advised that we use lots of routine in
our lives so that we would have energy for the “important” stuff.
But creativity is part of the important stuff, and messing with
routines means using different thinking. Changing habits feels
awkward at best and painful at worst. If you don’t believe that, go
have a baby or get a puppy or use your opposite hand for a day.
Your routines will be smashed like an egg off a 40-foot building
and you’ll be pissed off. You’ll be forced to let go of the comfy
patterns and wrestle with life on an hour-to-hour basis. You’ll have
to wake up.
When I was writing and recording music albums, I found that
I could break my patterns by composing on different instruments.
If I wrote only on the guitar, the chord progressions and melodies
would revolve around familiar finger placements. My hands would
automatically grab a D-major or E-major chord almost by them-
selves. The same was true of piano: Certain chord progressions—
different from those of guitar—were patterns. What I did then,
to come up with new melodies, was alternate between the two
instruments. It was much like alternating between two preferences,14-25 ware 220 1/19/01, 1:17 PM