Relaxing into better work.
As an industry that harps on about work life balance, why does relaxation matter and how should we approach it?
In today’s day and age, it’s increasingly hard to find calm. With every device incessantly interrupting our waking thoughts, imposed societal expectations distorting what we think we should achieve, and a general cultural emphasis on productivity and monetisation. It’s no wonder we struggle to let it all go and allow ourselves to relax.
In fact, when was the last time you truly relaxed? Shoulders down, muscles loose, free of any thoughts dominating your mind. I’ll be honest — I can’t actually recall. Whether it’s a brief I’m working on, another flight to book, or the sudden realisation I haven’t allowed enough time to meet friends in town, there’s always something adding an element of tension to the day.
Mental health is becoming more of a focus for many people post-pandemic and increasingly less of a stigma, even in the most blokey of social circles. The rise of apps like Calm and Headspace are also allowing more and more people to build meditation and introspection into their daily routine. And yet, relaxation is still positioned as something that should be momentary before we return to our standard, marginally tense, productive personas for the rest of the day.
So, should we be more relaxed more of the time? Or would too much calm make those in the creative industries less productive, and more inefficient with our timesheets than we already are?
When I reflect on the times I’ve been relaxed in life, what I can remember are times when I’ve actually done things better than I would have otherwise.
Some of my best work was developed in an environment that I felt comfortable to ponder beyond the norm, to write strategy that looked at the world differently, in much less time. Equally when I’m doing my own creative writing, a relaxed state seems to elicit richer thoughts than forcing the proverbial pen onto paper.
In social settings, my banter (or lack of) even with good friends is much more free flowing than when I’m stressed or tense. Jokes float to the surface of my consciousness easier whether they’re funny or not.
In sport, my best moments have been when I’ve been totally calm, unafraid to take shots and make plays. I’ve never played well in the games when the team is intent on psyching themselves up for the contest pre-kickoff.
But is there any truth behind my sample size of one?
Bud Winters, famous for leading the US men’s sprinting teams in the 1960s and producing 37 world record holders, was a man who was famous not only for his success on the track but also his methods & philosophy. He believed relaxation was not only the secret to running faster but also to life itself. In his book, Relax and Win (1981), Winters breaks down techniques he used during the Second World War for an experimental program with the US Navy. At the time, despite considerable investment and rigorous recruitment, the US Navy could not achieve air superiority in the Pacific. Highly trained pilots were cracking under combat conditions, freezing up & making life threatening mistakes. The Navy tasked Winters to improve the results at the flight training school I can only imagine resembled Top Gun, 40 years earlier than Tom Cruise was on the scene. Winters set up a control group and an experimental group in which he trained them in progressive relaxation techniques such as:
How to fall asleep within 2 minutes: controlling your body’s ability to fall asleep by switching off the mind greatly reduced fatigue.
90% effort: Winters realised those who tried to run at 100% ran slower than if they run at 90%, this applied to cadets as well.
Positive self suggestion: Suppressing negative talk means nothing will ever bother you and imprints positive messages to heighten a relaxed state.
Incredibly, not only were the cadets in the experimental group sleeping better at night, they outperformed the control group in nearly every regular cadet activity. They were better academically, in physical drills, and could even identify Japanese planes faster and more accurately.
It’s important to note that at no point would Winters promote relaxation to lead to apathy. Winters felt the best attitude for any competition was “cool confidence”, where one must balance the desire to win while staying loose:
“You must want to win. you must be determined, but must be loose — relaxed. Your adrenaline is up, but you must be in control. This presented a paradox. We had to teach cadets to be pepped up and relaxed at the same time.” - Bud Winters (1981)
This line of thinking around relaxation isn’t only limited to the armed forces and sports. John Cleese spoke at Nudgestock 2021 about his reflections on creativity and the role of allowing your mind the ‘time to play’. Like many of us, he realised his most creative moments were when he was trying the least - in the shower, taking the dog for a walk, or even sleeping. He urged the audience to unburden their minds, remove the interruptions and build barriers that create space for our minds to comfortably wander (aka relax).
“Sit there like a cloudy glass of water and let the cloud settle. Some days things flow and other days they don’t - and that’s OK. It’s not about sitting there with a furrowed brow, beating your brain. Let’s sleep on that. When you’re being creative, there’s no such thing as a mistake. Play!” - John Cleese (2021)
So what could we learn from the power of relaxation when it comes to the creative industry?
Firstly, you can’t force ideas (despite our best efforts to monetise creativity and attach a time/cost value to an idea). There’s a reason the insight often doesn’t appear to me in the moment I’m reading a report or talking to someone, it comes back to me and slaps me in the face in the shower that night. As Cleese says, allow yourself the time for the ideas to come to you.
Secondly, we need to create a culture whereby strategists and creatives feel comfortable enough to relax in the first place. If they fear for their jobs, or they’re only ever allocated 0.5 hours on a job, or accounts are projecting the client’s stress into every brief, then no one is set up for success. At the same time, that cultural shift to allow relaxed thinking to occur can’t become indifference or apathy to developing meaningful work. The balance that Winters’ writes about also applies to us - cool confidence is the secret sauce.