All we need is more creativity

Bringing back joy into our lives

One day, I was sitting at work, being frustrated at my tasks. Somehow, I had lost all joy from doing what I was doing.

I felt like I was taking one lifeless ticket after another and pushing it to the right on a Kanban board. It was never something to get excited about - just something that needed to be done - a chore basically. A bug here, a missing feature there. If one knows the codebase, they could do it with their brain switched off.

This made me think - how did I end up in this situation? I love programming. Even when it’s difficult, even when it’s frustrating and you feel like you’re in over your head. Yet somehow, sitting comfortably and doing exactly that was actually sucking the live out of me. Why?

One thing was the lack of purpose and failure to identify with the problems I was solving. I was not excited about the products we were building. But there was also something deeper. In fact, I’ve worked on products I didn’t necessarily find great. Still, on the technical level, they were quite interesting and building them was incredibly satisfying.

That “something else“ was creativity. And with “creativity“, I don’t mean art. I mean the literal meaning of the word - the process of creation.

No-one carves a piece of wood to have a thinner piece of wood and shavings on the ground. They do it to create something. They do it with a purpose.

Similarly, we build software with a purpose. Or at least we want to. The problem is that often times this purpose is missing - be it because we don’t understand the product, because we don’t care about it or because we have no power in defining that purpose.

A common misconception for many developers is that they want well-defined features and well-written tickets and specifications. They want everything to be thought out and prepared so the actual implementation is almost a formality. For these people I have a question:

What sort of sad and boring world would that be? Take a task, mindlessly read and execute it and move on. Where’s the joy in that? Where’s the… creativity?

We all want to feel heard and we all what to be appreciated. The only way to achieve that is to have the opportunity and the space to express ourselves and our opinions.

The lessons here are two:

As an employee, embrace the uncertainty and find a way for yourself to use your creativity and leverage it in your work.

As a manager, make sure to give each of your team members enough space to grow and to bring themselves into the team and project. If you don’t, it’s a matter of time until the team starts losing motivation and ultimately either gives up, or moves on.

Another bonus lesson is that creativity is the final frontier. If your job is so uncreative and so well-defined, you are in danger that soon a machine would be able to do it instead of you. It is your creativity that gives you an unfair advantage and what could propel you forward.

This statement might upset you or make you resent your job even more. The good thing is, as an alternative, you would look for a sense of creativity and purpose outside of work. In fact, for many, this is the default state.

Many people find purpose in building a family or having a hobby. This works great if you are driven by these things. For others, professional goals are also paramount to success, purpose and fulfillment. And they, too, can look for creativity outside their regular jobs.

Think of people doing community work, having side projects or contributing to open source. They usually go to work like everyone else, yet continue to build something in addition to that. This is not because they are workaholics, but rather because what they do on the side gives them the fulfillment that their regular job doesn’t.

Landing the plane

So what does this mean for your day to day life? You need creativity - so what?

I think it’s important to acknowledge that we need to feel accepted, heard and appreciated in our community - both at work and outside of it. We can also put up with a lot of frustration and negative emotions, as long as we see the upside clearly - if we know why we do the things we do.

If your job is not brainless, the chances are you take at least some pride in what you do and you, deep down, want to excel at it. And in order to show that, you need enough room to spread your wings. In most cases, this manifests through ownership, trust and… creativity.

Creativity is the foundation, on which you build your career. So if you feel stuck, either you as an individual, or a whole team, look for reasons why this creativity is lacking. If you do, there’s a good chance you will find a bottleneck that trumps growth.