Mike Bonem
Does your role require creativity? If you’re a leader, then I will answer for you with a firm “Yes!” If you think of creativity as the domain of artists, think more broadly. Crafting a powerful sermon or an inspiring message for a leadership team requires creativity and the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. So does envisioning a different future for your church or ministry. Or reimagining the roles and interactions for the people on your team. Or revamping a specific ministry to give it new life and increase its impact.
Do you have the bandwidth to do this kind of creative work? Most leaders that I work with would answer “not enough,” especially not over the last two years. Their time is filled with all sorts of meetings and tasks. And when bandwidth is scarce, so is creativity.
This is more than an issue of good time management, which focuses on efficiency. The starting point is to recognize that the bandwidth for creative work is different than for other tasks. Creative work happens as much in the unscheduled spaces as in the intentional blocks of time. For example, the idea for this article came to mind one morning as I was getting ready for the day. For me, these unscheduled spaces for creativity include times when I’m driving, running, or doing mundane errands.
If you’re sensing the need for more creative bandwidth, consider these three ideas:
- Don’t cram tasks into every possible space. I could fill my unscheduled moments with “productive” work such as listening to podcasts or making phone calls. But if I do that, I’ll lose the important moments in which free thinking may lead to an important idea.
- Limit the number of projects requiring creative thinking. Even if I protect my unscheduled spaces, they are not unlimited. I’ve found that my best results come when I only have 2 to 4 projects requiring creative attention at any one time. I can cycle through this small handful, but with more than this, either something will be ignored or I’ll start to feel overwhelmed. That may mean postponing or delegating the work on other projects.
- Schedule your best time for creative work. It’s great to get a fresh idea while brushing my teeth, but I still have to write the article and that requires a block of time. My best creative work is done in the mornings, so that’s when I try to block out time. If I don’t schedule that block, the article won’t be written.
You can judge whether the creative spark for this article was a good one. But more importantly, you should decide how to create the creative bandwidth that you need as a leader.
