Creative laziness and the bored minds

"The lazier everyone else gets, the bigger the opportunity you have to stand out." This line by Parish Shane reminded me of what I shared with you last month.

In addition to the cognitive laziness I illustrated with Balenciaga and H&M, there is another type of laziness — creative laziness, or innovation fatigue — a desire to ride the wave of trends and cliches to shortcut the creation process.

Here, people start thinking about best practices of… anything: UX, brand architecture, community activations, copywriting, etc.

"But, wait!" you may object. "Best practices work!"

Absolutely yes. They are "efficient".

But think about this chain reaction:
Our overloaded minds, in order to simplify mental processing, seek patterns.
↳ Familiar patterns relax our minds even more.
↳ A relaxed mind becomes lazy and seeks more patterns.
↳ To attract a lazy mind that seeks patterns, creators follow what's been done before, strengthening the patterns.
↳ Stronger patterns attract more efficiency-oriented creators who, by following what's been done before, strengthen already strong patterns.
↳ Hyper-strong patterns become best practices and begin to dominate industry narratives.
↳ Such a monopoly over how information is presented bores our minds. Our bored minds become alert to new concepts, unconsciously seeking them.

And here is your priceless opportunity to stand out: giving your early adopters something new to live through.

Something that breaks through existing patterns.

Something that their minds are hungry for because other founders took a lazy path.

This is what Steve Jobs called "Think Different".

Stay creative,
Ira

P.S. If you skipped the issue about cognitive laziness and Balenciaga, give it a try today.