How to Inspire Creativity and Focus at Work

Creativity often requires quiet and concentration–elusive qualities in today’s full-time-access multimedia world. To foster creativity, this entrepreneur created a quiet space at his company’s headquarters where employees must leave their gadgets at the door. From Wild Creative: Igniting the Passion and Potential in Work, Home, and Life.

An entrepreneur like Brian Faherty, founder and creative director of Schoolhouse Electric & Supply Co., knows the power of cultivating a quiet space. Faherty founded his wildly successful company on the premise of returning to a handcrafted industrial lighting and home aesthetic. In a few short years, his company grew out of a small storefront into a 125,000-square-foot headquarters. He created a “digital-free zone” in his offices and named it the “Fire + Water room.” Faherty found that balance between his digital and analog world was crucial to being a more effective leader and creative thinker. “I only have so much bandwidth myself, and if too much of it gets used up doing digital things, then I don’t have any room left for the other areas that are more important to me.” With a wood-burning stove set against a weathered brick wall and couches sporting wool blankets, the Fire + Water room is designed as a retreat for “the creative mind to work unencumbered by technology.” Anyone who enters must leave digital devices behind, but they are welcome to add wood to the fire.

Consider finding quiet space in your own way each day, with electronics set aside. Setting down distractions and nurturing a connection with your inner creative space is a loving act toward the creative potential within. If this inner place has been neglected, it may feel awkward at first to be in this stillness, requiring effort not to be pulled by outer distractions. But in the quiet is where you reconnect with your own creative impulses. Build in creative space and time in your life—even schedule it on your calendar—in order to reconnect with the inner muse and wellspring of your creativity. And once you find the inner stillness, stay in contact with it. In the words of Deepak Chopra, “Wherever you go in the midst of movement and activity, carry your stillness within you. Then the chaotic movement around you will never overshadow your access to the reservoir of creativity, the field of pure potentiality.”

Where is the quiet space in your home?
Where is the quiet moment in your day or week ahead?
How will you carry your stillness with you?

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