Creative Context: A Place To Think

One day, mother of future Microsoft mogul Bill Gates walked in on her young son to find him sitting there doing nothing. She asked Bill what he was doing. “I’m thinking Mom, I’m thinking.”

I recently purchased a Microsoft yearbook in a used bookstore not far from the Microsoft headquarters up in Seattle. I primarily got it for the image displayed here. I believe all great achievers carve out time to think and Bill Gates is certainly a great example of this.

Advertising Creative, William Bernbach said, “For the flower to blossom, you need the right soil as well as the right seed. The same is true to cultivate good thinking.” In this section I’m focusing on the soil, the place, or what I call the creative context.

Issac Newton (Scientist) reportedly gazed at the heavens for hours often entering a dream state.

Beethoven (Composer) took long walks.

Percy Shelly (Romantic Poet) sat by a lake.

Leonardo da Vinci stared at cracked floors.

William Wordsworth (Writer) gazed at the fireplace.

George Washington Carver who came up with over 300 uses for the peanut and saved the economy of the Southern United States routinely got up at 4 a.m., walked through the woods, and asked God to reveal the mysteries of nature. He interpreted Job 12: 7-8 literally.

Henry David Thoreau skipped stones on Walden Pond.

Alexander Graham Bell had a dreaming place.

Thomas Edison sat in his thinking chair with a metal ball bearing in each palm.

In Leadership expert John Maxwell’s book, Thinking for a Change he suggests finding a place to think your thoughts. He shares:

I once heard a story about Charles Kettering, the great inventor and founder of Delco, who once held more than 140 patents and received honorary doctorates from 30 universities. He talked about creating a place for thinking. He likened it to hanging a bird cage in one’s mind. It seems an odd way of saying it, but the idea becomes clearer when you hear about a $100 bet he once made. Kettering told a friend that he could make the man buy a pet bird in the coming year. The friend figured that no one could make him do such a thing, so he took the bet.

Soon afterward, Kettering gave the man an expensive handmade Swiss birdcage. The man took it home, and because it was so beautiful, he hung it in his dining room. But he found that every time he had guests over, someone would ask him, “When did your bird die?”

“I never had a bird,” he’d tell them. Then he would have to explain the whole thing. After doing this repeatedly, he finally went out and bought a parakeet – and paid Kettering the $100 he owed him. Kettering later said, “If you hang birdcages in your mind, you will eventually get something to put in them.”

As Kettering’s birdcage attracted a bird, so too will a designated place to think attract good thoughts. If you go to a thinking place to generate good thoughts, then eventually you will come up with some.

Maxwell himself says he gets some of his best ideas in his car, on planes, in his spa, and that he keeps a lighted writing pad by his bed. He also talks about finding a place not only to think your thoughts, but also a place to shape your thoughts, a place to stretch your thoughts, a place to land your thoughts, and a place to fly your thoughts.

World Class designer Bruce Mau writes in his Unfinished Manifesto about the importance of having a studio which he says by definition is a place of study.

Maybe you’re at a place in your life where you need a place to enlarge your thinking but your current home or office isn’t that conducive to it. Joel Osteen, in his book Your Best Life Now tells a story about some friends of his named Bill and Cindy. He shares:

They had just moved to a new city and at the time Bill had to work two jobs to make ends meet while Cindy stayed at home with their young children. It was a very difficult time for them as they were barely making enough for rent and food. Joel explains that they did something very unusual during this time.

Many nights after Bill came home from work, rather than sitting in their small apartment feeling sorry for themselves, they got all dressed up, got in their car, and drove down town to a very nice fancy hotel. They didn’t have enough money to pay for parking so they parked down the street and walked back to the hotel. They went inside this magnificent facility, just sat in the elegant lobby and would dream. Bill explained that he wanted to expose himself to an atmosphere of success. He wanted to be in a place where he could keep his hopes up. He wanted to be in an environment where he could dream of victories.

In his book called Primal, Mark Batterson talks about “places of perspective”. He builds on a thought from a small book in the Jewish and Christian Scriptures by the name of Habakkuk written 500 years before Jesus walked the planet. Habakkuk wrote:

I will climb up to my watchtower
And stand at my guardpost.
There I will wait to see what the Lord says.

Batterson has found his own watchtowers in his hometown of Washington D.C. He goes up to the observation gallery at the National Cathedral where he gets a full 360 degree panoramic view of the nations capitol. Another place he goes is the roof top of Ebenezer’s, the café he helps oversee.

And speaking of Jesus… the Bible says that He often withdrew from the crowds to pray. Perhaps prayer is the highest form of creative thinking. I know most of us think about it like bringing our long list of request before God. It’s that too, but maybe a higher form of prayer is listening to what God has to say to us. I’m thinking He might drop a good idea or two in our brain if we invite Him.

Like John Maxwell and the others I have my own favorite thinking places. I currently have a wonderful home with some great thinking places including my office, my thinking chair recliner… I think the reclined position gets the blood to my brain! My car is a place I do some of my best thinking. The repetitive environment of freeway driving is especially conducive to creativity. I believe Starbucks is one of the most accessible creative environments in the world. I love bookstores of all stripes, new, used, all of them. Borders and Barnes and Noble offer some of the greatest thinking places in the world with the advantage of offering exposure to the greatest thinkers in the world… essentially for free… just grab a stack of books and find a chair. I haven’t gone to the library often for years but I do keep the cards to my local library and a seminary library.

I think Disneyland is a great place to think. They advertise it as the Happiest Place On Earth. Maybe so, but I think it’s perhaps the Creativiest Place On Earth as well. (I made that word up… just thinking about Disneyland makes me more creative) One year I got a pass and went several times just to relax and think about how they conducted their business trying to apply it to my own situation and circumstances. I love to walk the grounds of the Crystal Cathedral. In fact, for the last 20 years I have found many churches to be great places to think and get ideas.

In you are around the country check out a service at one of the following:

Houston, Texas - Lakewood Church and Ecclesia
North Point in Alpharetta, Georgia
Sea Coast in South Carolina
Fellowship Church in Irving, Texas,
Mars Hill in Seattle
Mosaic in Los Angeles
Willow Creek in Chicago
Adventure in Sacramento
Central Christian in Las Vegas
Mars Hill in Grand Rapids, Michigan
Saddleback in Lake Forrest, California

These churches are like creative Mecca’s for me. Even if you don’t consider yourself religious in anyway I think you would benefit from attending a couple of times for the creative environment alone.

A trip to any art museum is worth the time. I love to stroll the streets of Carmel, California ducking into the art galleries there. The Museum of Innovation in San Jose, California is a favorite of mine as is the Charles Schultz Museum in Santa Rosa. I still read Peanuts from time to time in compilation books I own and the classics that still run in some of the newspapers. To look at Schultz’s sketches, his office, and a sense of how he worked is inspirational.

This last year my wife and I took one of our very creative son’s and very creative our daughter-in-law to see a Ray Harryhausen exhibit in the Santa Monica area. Ray was the creative genius behind much of the earlier science fiction and adventure films like Sinbad, Earth vs. Flying Saucers, and The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms. To see the tools he used to make early circa Claymation monsters was fascinating.

This year we are planning a trip to the University of Arizona’s Creative Photography Center and the Poetry Center. I love great photography and some poetry but mostly I’m going to immerse myself in the creative process in yet another way. I planning on visiting the Disney Museum in San Francisco and my brain is already working on a creative idea to visit Pixar and Skywalker Ranch. As you can see I love creative people and creative process!

I find exercise a great inducer of creative thought. I good walk around the neighborhood clears my mind and seems to attract good ideas. The gym is the same. Repetitive action seems to work the best. It seems to create a meditative state that attracts ideas.