Gravity problems vs tangible and intangible issues
I use the concepts of tangible and intangible all the time when I teach creativity. They’re not unusual concepts, but I borrowed the way I think about them from the concept of gravity problems, which I’ve incorporated from Bill Burnett and Dave Evans (the Designing Your Life guys, who got their ideas as design thinking professors from Stanford).
Gravity Problems
Gravity exists. Unless some pretty serious shit goes down in the space-time continuum, gravity will continue to exist. Go ahead — try to lift it, shape it, change it, improve it, make it go away. You can change all sorts of things having to do with gravity (see also: the $44.5 billion cosmetic surgery industry), but you can’t change the gravity problems themselves. Like chronological time, how the world or society generally operates, or — yes — aging (sigh).
When you get stuck in a gravity problem, you’re stuck permanently, because there’s nothing you can do. … If it’s not actionable, it’s not a problem. (Designing Your Life; chapter 1, Start Where You Are)
They go on to talk about riding a bicycle uphill, expecting to make a fortune as a poet, or not wanting to go through ten years of medical school and residency to become a doctor. Also, unless the world radically or unexpectedly changes, you can’t change gravity facts like being a parent to six kids, the average wage of your industry or career, or how hard it would be for me to play WNBA basketball.
Tangible vs Intangible Problems
I loved their concept so much, I kept going. How could you categorize non-gravity problems? Everyone walks into my workshops and methodology with their creative blocks and problems — not enough time, too much work, no private space. Everyone (hopefully!) walks out with the insight that their creative blocks are just as (or even more) related to their intangible blocks, and how to tell the difference. Lemme explain.
Life is probably as busy, overwhelming and chaotic as it has ever been in the history of planet Earth. Put someone from the years of the Black Plague onto Twitter, and within an hour, they could conceivably experience more second-hand worldwide death, anger and cruelty than in their entire nasty, brutish, short, and probably extremely pus-filled lives in 1623.
And therein lies the difference: having the plague is a tangible problem. (Or, you know, any other globally spread illness.) Feeling miserable after reading about misery is an intangible problem. Both are actionable, but in very different — and very important, for creativity’s sake — ways.
How does that relate to creativity?
Ooh, I’ll express myself through my favorite medium: Lists!
Tangible blocks to creativity: Time. Health issues. Work. Kids. Jobs. Connections in an industry. Mental health issues. Having a wireless keyboard that is a giant pain in the ass and fails about 22% of the time (which I literally am solving today). Lack of knowledge about how you would like to express yourself creatively. (That’s on the line, but it’s still tangible.)
Intangible blocks to creativity: Not knowing where to begin. A terrible teacher telling you you’d never become a professional musician/actress/writer. Doubting yourself. Procrastination. A loud inner critic or Imposter Syndrome.
Can be both/either (depending on the day): Exhaustion. Overwhelm. Self-confidence.
You can absolutely improve all of the issues from both lists, but it helps to know which mindset to employ. Are you coming to this issue from a tangible or intangible place? It also helps to know what is gravitational and what isn’t. In other words, you can’t make your kids disappear, but you can come up with a creative project to do with them, or you can find a creative partner to take turns babysitting each others’ kids. You can’t elongate time (gravity), but you can create a way where you write one single line of poetry during each lunch break (tangible). And you can find a timer app so you don’t procrastinate when you’re in that moment (intangible).