We all know people such as Einstein and other innovative thinker are more than just creative. They are big ideas people, not only dreaming big but posses the intelligence to calculate options and apply fuzzy logic. Einstein also had a reputation of being funny. For many, he was a joker.
According to Einstein: “anyman who can drive safely while kissing a pretty girl is simply not giving the kiss the attention it deserves”. He is not a fan of multi-tasking I suppose. Here is another of my favorite quotes from him: “he true sign of intelligence is not knowledge but imagination”. He had also given us lesser known formula such as “If A equals success, then the formula A=X+Y+Z, where X is work. Y is the play and Z if keep your mouth shut.”
American physicist Richard Feynman, who was a joint recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1965, was credited with the concept and early exploration of quantum computing. He also had a very well developed sense of humor. Here is how he is described: "As well as being an inspirational lecturer, bongo player, notorious practical joker, and decipherer of Maya hieroglyphs, Richard Feynman was regarded as an eccentric and a free spirit. There are so many examples that being a joker is almost a key element of success.
Studies out of several universities have confirmed that humor is a great way of increasing creativity. The researchers had two groups of people complete an idea generation task. The first group listened to comedian tape before completing the test, while the other group performed the test with no pre-test activity. You know what the results looked like.
Jens Foster and his colleagues at the University of Amsterdam recently researched the concept of "sex and creativity." They are interested in the idea of thinking about being in love and thinking about sex would improve people’s creativity. Won’t bore you with the research mechanics, the net results are people who thought about love performed significantly better than those who thought about sex.
The researchers explain that “love’ triggers “global’ or holistic” thinking. The thought of sex limited the thinking to “local” processing that leads to more analytical thinking. OK Now I understand why many senior SEC folks were reportedly surfing porn in the middle of the financial crisis, it helps them to improve their analytical capability.
Jens and his colleagues specifically suggested that love makes us think long term while sex is a very short term thing. Like any business strategy planning, it needs to take care of both long terms and short terms needs. So you need both love and sex.
So why company HR policies like to discourage workplace romance? If it is supposed to be a super creative place, it can always use more love.
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