Using Failure to Leverage Creativity
Recently I was trying to hang a TV, and learned the hard way that the walls can have metal studs. Heavy TV + full motion TV arm + metal studs = no bueno. Long story short, I failed, and to add insult to injury, my girlfriend used the H word (“let’s hire a handyman”).
This morning I woke up to a burst of creativity. Getting my butt kicked last night triggered phenomenal creative thought.
I think that embedded deep in that is a concept – failure doesn’t just teach you from your mistakes, but on an evolutionary level, failure triggers a creative burst.
Problem – if the above is true, how do we force a very real but low consequence failure, and then refocus the creative energy on solving more urgent problem in our lives?
Idea – when you can’t solve a problem, pick a video game that you can’t beat. Play it on the hardest mode, so you really feel the failure and frustration. End your day on that. Return to your problem the following day.