Diamonds form under pressure
There are many examples of companies that have allowed their staff to take time to work on their own innovations and creative ideas. Companies such as AT&T's Bell Labs (which led to the transistor and laser), 3M allowing people to have 15% of their time work on projects of personal interest (leading to Post-it Notes) and Google.
At the same time, the stories of people, teams and companies who managed, under extremely tight deadlines, to come up with revolutionary ideas to solve a problem, produce a work of art or create a new product.
Stories like how, during NASA's Apollo 13 lunar mission in 1970, ground control engineers and scientists had only hours to produce, test, and teach astronauts how to produce an air filter using only the materials that the astronauts had around them.
Or how modern video game developers often have to work until the last minute to complete a game before it achieves critical acclaim.
There are also countless examples of people saying they work better under pressure, using deadlines as motivation to do their best.
So is time pressure really good for creativity?
According to research, the answer is: no.
In most cases, if your employees are constantly working under pressure and the stress that comes with it, it can hinder their ability to be effective. creative and effectively implement these innovative ideas.
One of the most in-depth studies on the subject date from 2005 by Jennifer MuellerTeresa Amabile and colleagues, collecting thousands of daily journal entries from 222 employees at 7 companies.
By analyzing the contents of the diary entries, they were able to determine what types of activities were being carried out that day and whether people had noted any moods, feelings or actions that indicated they had been creative.
And the results were clear: time pressure makes people less creatively productive.
In this Harvard Business Review 2002 article providing an overview of some of the findings, the authors noted:
When creativity is under pressure, it usually ends up being killed. Although time pressure can cause people to work harder and achieve more, and even feel more creative, it actually causes them, in general, to think less creatively.
According to the study, the average worker felt moderate time pressure every day. This can slowly but surely lead to them feeling overworked, fragmented and exhausted.
In the short term, other studies have also shown that low levels of stress can help people come up with ideas. However, above a moderate level of stress, creativity drops quickly. Science has shown that people are more creative when they are happier and to have Better sleepnot when they are stressed.
Other research conducted in 2006 also showed that in teams and environments strongly supportive of creativity and innovation, the relationship between time pressure and creativity is an inverted U-shaped curve. Small time pressures can help focus and improve creativity, but moderate to large time pressures are bad for creativity. In environments where creativity is low, there is only a strongly negative correlation, where any time pressure is worse for creativity.
Another 2017 study showed that time pressure can help team members focus, but also makes it more difficult for team members to collaborate and share knowledge.
When it comes to decision-making, a different approach 2022 study in Nature found that time pressure makes people less likely to engage in exploratory activities and repeat what they have done before more often.
And to make matters worse, in today's work environment we are constantly surrounded by interruptions and distractions. Whenever we are interrupted (whether by someone else or by our own desire to change tasks), it can take up to 23 minutes to get back on track and concentrate on work. This results in people having less and less time to complete their productive work each day, and even if they eventually complete it, they feel more pressure on time and the quality of the work suffers.
Based on their research, Amabile et al. established the following time pressure and creativity matrix showing the impact that high or low time pressure could have on a person's ability to think creatively:
![Time pressure/creativity matrix - Amabile et al, 2002](https://i0.wp.com/www.ideatovalue.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/time-pressure.gif?resize=585%2C586&ssl=1)
Time Pressure/Creativity Matrix – Amabile et al, 2002
Their research here shows us that it is not impossible for people to be creative while under severe time pressure. However, this requires that people feel like they are on a mission, that they feel like they are doing important work, and that they have the ability to do work without being disturbed to actually progress towards goals.
When people are under high time pressure but don't get these benefits, they can feel like they're on a treadmill because the work they're doing is low-value, fragmented, and constantly changing.
At the same time, just because a person doesn't suffer from time pressure doesn't mean they will automatically be creative. If anyone feels like they're on Automatic pilotnot doing challenging work and attending meetings with groups rather than individuals, they are also less likely to come up with creative solutions.
So if you want you or your team to be able to do your most valuable creative work, do what you can to reduce the time pressure you feel.
Simple steps you can take include:
- Block out time in your calendar to focus and make progress on difficult tasks. Treat this time as sacred.
- Try to schedule this time as early in the day as possible
- Track your specific, SMART goals and tasks, and celebrate progress by checking them off and marking them as complete as they are completed.
- Limit distractions. Tell people not to disturb you during this time of concentration and turn off notifications from your phone, email, and chat systems to limit the impacts of task switching.
- Do a meeting audit with your team. Check which meetings in everyone's calendar may be redundant and can be replaced by asynchronous updates like an email or recorded video message, or which recurring meetings can even be canceled or shortened
- Learn to say no to activities that don't align with your most important or challenging activities, and find members of your team who can help you by delegating work to them.
Creativity and Innovation Expert: I help individuals and businesses develop their creativity and innovation capabilities, so you can develop the next revolutionary idea that customers love. Editor-in-Chief of Ideatovalue.com and Founder/CEO of Improvides Innovation Consulting. Coach / Speaker / Author / TEDx Speaker / Voted as one of the most influential innovation bloggers.