Projectivity

"If you have the time to whine about something, then you have the time to do something about it."
Anonymous

Everybody complains.

But one trade secret that creative people know is that there is a crucial step after complaining.  That is when you turn your complaint into a challenge.  In ordinary life, we focus on the problem but in creative life we go beyond that to turn the problem into a project.  Joan Baez, the singer and activist, said that action is the antidote to despair and we could add that it is also the cure for gripes.  It relies on a creative habit we can call Projectivity.

Projectivity is the art of turning a whine into a how. 

To do it, you have to go from understanding the problem to figuring out how to fix it.  The solution is in there, even if you cannot see it right away.  This is the case because if you can understand a problem well enough to be frustrated by it, then you are that much closer to finding a solution to it.  But you have to remember to try, not just complain.  You have to turn the frustration into action.

The story of Bill Gillman demonstrates this.

Back in the 1970s he was having a terrible time learning tennis.  He simply could not hit the ball in the middle of the racquet, that sweet spot that gives you the best shot.  Most people frustrated like that would give up and move on to golf.  But Gillman apparently knew this secret we call Projectivity.  He turned his problem into a project by asking himself not why he couldn’t hit the ball (what’s wrong with me) but how he could make the ball easier to hit (what’s wrong with the world).  The answer he came up with was to make the whole racket head bigger.  Bigger racket head, bigger sweet spot.  That was the start of the Head Tennis Racquet company, which completely revolutionized the game of tennis.  This is Projectivity in action…making the transition from not being able to do something to finding a way to do it.  The stumbling block becomes a stepping-stone.

During World War II, the War Production Board asked General Electric to come up with a cheap substitute for synthetic rubber.  After a great deal of research one of their engineers named James Wright finally succeeded.  But in tests, his substance had no advantages over ordinary synthetic rubber.  Still, with a new product on their hands, in 1945 the company distributed samples of the stuff to other engineers.  They were hoping someone would come up with a practical use for it.  No one did, until Paul Hodgson got hold of it.  Hodgson, it seems, had one advantage over the eggheads; he was not an engineer.  He was a toy store operator and that made him look at the problem and think projectively…not why is this not working but what practical uses can I find for this useless material.  And specifically, how can I make a toy out of this?  The rest is Silly Putty history.

This kind of thing is not easy since it leads down the path of most resistance.  Effort is required.  It is the “if life hands you a lemon, make lemonade” approach but the real trick is an emotional one.  You have to get into the habit of using frustration as an impetus, the starting point rather than the end point.  And that means stepping back from the immediate problem to take a wider view.  What is your overall goal, what are you actually trying to do, what is the answer to the question not being asked? Like most creative secrets, Projectivity is a matter of habit and it is that habit that we put into the Ingenarium.

This does not mean that life will get simpler; in fact, the opposite is usually the case.  But it does mean that you give yourself the chance to achieve where defeat seemed imminent.  Perhaps not in exactly the way you planned but maybe in a better way.  Gillman, after all, never became a Wimbledon champ.  He simply revolutionized the game.
 And that is what inventors, designers, and other creative people do…they don’t blame themselves, they change the world.