How long is now? Reflections on time and creativity

A visit to The Long Now Foundation in San Francisco inspired the theme for this post. “The Long Now” was coined by Brian Eno, who asked “How long is now?” when he first moved to New York City, and noticed “here and now” meant this room and this five minutes, as opposed to the perception of a larger here and longer now, at home in England.

The Long Now Foundation hopes to provide counterpoint to today’s “faster/cheaper” mindset and promote “slower/better” thinking.

Civilization is revving itself into a pathologically short attention span. The trend might be coming from the acceleration of technology, the short-horizon perspective of market-driven economics, the next-election perspective of democracies, or the distractions of personal multi-tasking. All are on the increase. Some sort of balancing corrective to the short-sightedness is needed-some mechanism or myth which encourages the long view and the taking of long-term responsibility, where ‘long-term’ is measured at least in centuries.

The Long Now Foundation explores whatever may be helpful for thinking, understanding, and acting responsibly over long periods of time.

Time is Elastic

At a recent workshop on Whole-Brain Thinking for Creativity & Innovation I asked a group of managers to listen to a piece of Baroque music, then tell me what they experienced. Most of them thought the piece went on too long and they were somewhat bored by it. When I told them the piece was only three minutes long, they were surprised. When I asked them to paint what they heard as I played the same piece again, they complained the music ended too fast and they barely had enough time to finish.

The lesson? Our perception of time changes depending on how engaged or absorbed we are in an activity. Art and music have the power to expand or contract our experience of time.

When I ask people to paint conversations with each other, rather than speak, they become absorbed in the creative process and lose all sense of time. When I invite them to add visual conversations to their meetings, they tell me, “We can’t do that, we don’t have enough time!” Most had no awareness that each painted conversation took three-five minutes. It takes almost no time at all to incorporate an art-based process as a catalyst for reflection, and insightful dialogue.

Time Out

And speaking of reflection, in my travels across the US, Europe and Asia by Zoom, I asked clients how much time they take to reflect on workplace challenges before jumping to a solution. I knew the answer before they told me, but it still shocks me. Almost nobody today takes time out for reflection, and yet they all see its value.

Consider these 10 creative leadership questions for reflection and try this powerful question-storming technique to enhance creative problem-solving