I have been reading Rick Rubin’s book titled: The Creative Act: A Way of Being (Rick Rubin 2023) off and on for the last few weeks. The focus of the book is on the act of being creative: the process, the discipline, the challenges and bottlenecks, as well as the ways to achieve breakthroughs. Given Rick Rubin’s success as a music producer — he speaks from experience working with artists of many type — the book is as expected, enlightening, thoughtful, and provides excellent food for thought about being creative as it applies in his forte, the arts. I would highly recommend the book without reservation.
I was attracted to the book because his perspective is different from mine. I am firmly planted in the engineering field and my reference frame revolves around the scientific method. My perspective is shaped and constrained by the legacies, viewpoints, and mindsets from engineering. Another strong focus that I have been concentrating on is as a teacher in the technology area and as a club volleyball coach, so my milieu is quite different, yet I felt that connecting the disparate viewpoints between my perspective and the book’s perspective is a valuable exercise for my own sake.
My most recent read in the book is the essay on spontaneity, which captured my imagination as my thinking goes to the perspective of taking Rubin’s thoughts about spontaneity in the arts and applying them to engineering and how to teach and coach my students to be more spontaneous to improve their performance.
Societal stereotypes are that artists are mostly free spirits who are creative and inspired by their imagination, while those who are technically oriented are not creative and thus are never inspired, by their imagination. I believe that engineering is as creative as art, that the process of design, analysis, and problem solving in engineering takes as much originality, creativity, and imagination as creating art. The difference is that the engineer is dealing with more stringent constraints because of the significant guardrails that are intrinsic to the art of engineering. This essay on spontaneity brought to the fore — at least in my mind — the possibilities for spontaneity in engineering when I read Rubin words describing the juxtaposition between spontaneity as the muse for the artists’ vision versus grinding hard work as the muse for the artist.
In the essay, Rubin states that spontaneous work in the arts are seen as being purer, more inspired, more imaginative — thus more prized in the minds of certain population of artists; their belief is that some great unknown entity had deliberately put their finger on the scale in favor of the artist who is spontaneous rather than the artist who had planned and crafted their works assiduously. While other artists, those who create works that require grinding hard work and foresight, see the artists who are spontaneous as becoming lucky, that they have been blessed by serendipity and good fortune rather than working on crafting their works, that this good fortune is not enduring. One placing faith in serendipity, the other placing faith in work ethic.
Rubin strongly states that the quality of any art is not based on the time spent on creating that art. Whether the song comes to you in an instant or whether it comes to you after working on the same music for decades, the quality of the result is independent of the time. He points out that the appearance of spontaneity is misleading, that the practice and preparation which leads up to the appearance of spontaneity is usually hidden and unseen by the crowd. Indeed, many great artists work to make their working process seem effortless, which also speaks to the belief that art should come effortlessly, even if they know better.
Which brings to the fore the question: what does it mean to be spontaneous? Which is ironic because spontaneity is everything that this thought experiment is not: extemporaneous, instinctive, and using Kahneman and Tversky System 1 responses rather than System 2 (Kahneman 2013).
If spontaneity is extemporaneous, instinctive, and using System 1, can we infer that that results from spontaneity have less gravitas as compared to the results from employing the non-spontaneous? Does being spontaneous mean casting all scaffolding and guardrails to the winds, being impulsive, and letting our emotions take off with our imagination?
What would that look like?
I don’t think that anyone who is good at what they do can ever not think about what they already know; our long-term memory, the part of our cognition that stores all our knowledge, experiences, skills, and impressions, can never be short circuited completely. I do think that we can temporarily and deliberately set aside what we already know.
We cannot rely on a completely blank slate to help us be spontaneous either, because a completely blank slate means that we have absolutely nothing in mind to draw upon. We would have no basis for the spontaneous thought. The spontaneous thought could only be that blank slate.
As Rubin pointed out: It takes preparation to be spontaneous. One must have some fundamental knowledge, experiences, skills, and impressions to be spontaneous. Indeed, the more “chops” one has the better one is at being spontaneous.
It is rather ironic is that spontaneity gets better with practice, or non-spontaneous work.
All that beginning musicians know how to play is scales, their exercise in spontaneity would be basic and probably uninspiring.
The spontaneous work from any beginning artist is probably going to be less than luminous because of their lack of fundamental knowledge, experiences, skills, and impressions to implement and execute their vision. There must be both: a vision and the “chops” to implement that vision.
In the essay, Rubin advises artists to be neutral, to take the middle way: to just do work and see what comes out. In other words, the artist needs to appreciate the work that results from their process if it is honest work, it doesn’t matter if it comes from spontaneity or comes from hard work. He also advises against complete attachment to either approach; although he also wrote the essay to endorse being spontaneous.
The next question is: what takes the artist to the point where they are able, technically, to be spontaneous? I believe the answer to be that there shouldn’t be a threshold, the quality of the spontaneous decisions become better and more evolved as the artist’s ability within their art also spiral ever upward, the process feeds on itself.
It is a familiar symbiotic loop: the more you do and learn, the better you are at doing and learning, the milieu does not matter. In the case of the artist, the more you learn and practice, the better you become at being spontaneous; conversely, the more you make spontaneous decisions the better you become at your art.
Put in another way, the more the artist work at their art; the better they are at their art; the better they are at their art their art the more effortless their art; the more effortless their art, the clearer their vision of their art; and the clearer their vision of their art the more likely that they will be better at being spontaneous and more likely to be spontaneous.
The next question would be: why is the preference for spontaneous approach versus the non-spontaneous approach? One can infer from Rubin’s essay that there seems to be dichotomy of feelings from the artists. It is my experience that engineers prefer the non-spontaneous approach, not a surprise; but why?
Thinking about the differences in the opinion about being spontaneous between artists and engineers, I thought about whether the artist’s training for their art is so different from the engineer’s training for their art.
Both have spent uncountably many hours practicing their craft and artistry; both for those practitioners that have requirements for their accreditation, and for those practitioners that have sought to better themselves. The dedication that it takes to be an artist, whether it is in the visual arts — painting, sculpting, etc.; or in the performance arts — acting, music, etc. is immense. The same kind of dedication that it takes to become an engineer, mathematician, physicist, chemist, or biologist.
It also seems that the process of betterment in art, and in engineering is infinite for both, as it is for all worthy human endeavors. The practitioner chooses when to stop improving their arts.
The engineer’s attitude towards their problem-solving approach tend to lean in the direction of the overly planned and overly practiced; they are irrevocably vested in the tried-and-true dictums of working harder and longer. Partly because engineering practices are rooted in being practical and extremely risk averse: engineers value the tried-and-true process because we have a deterministic view of the world. Our approach is to methodically carve away the unknown, the ambiguous, and the random to minimize risk, because risk in engineering could mean loss of property, resources, and ultimately life.
Another reason for the preference for the non-spontaneous is the legacy of a specific mindset in engineering. The mindset is that that the work needs to be worked over and methodically planned and executed completely, once again the deterministic approach. This is the pervasive mindset even though engineers know rationally that it is impossible to completely negate uncertainty and account for every single contingency. Any spontaneous decisions seem frivolous, not planned out and introduce the specter of uncertainty into the process. Even though engineers extensive use probability on our work, and we understand the value of using stochastic tools, something like spontaneous decision-making repulses because spontaneity is too unpredictable.
As I am an engineer, I should preternaturally be inclined to be non-spontaneous, as I have been so for most of my life, but the idea of spontaneity in certain instances appeals to me despite my training. Why?
Perhaps being spontaneous reminds me of one of my favorite phrases: Leaving room for the divine. (https://polymathtobe.blogspot.com/2016/04/leaving-space-for-divine.html). Specifically:
“Leaving room for the divine” means two things: one involves how we act or react and the second is how we view our reality. In the former meaning, the sole word that comes to mind is spontaneity; while the second meaning, the world is random.
The first context, making space for the divine, means to allow the spontaneous to happen, by itself and in its own time, without undue pressure and rigorousness.
This belief in the leaving room for the divines also reflects my own belief in the Taoist belief of Wu-Wei (無為), or “not trying”, “inexertion”, “inaction”, or “effortless action”. In essence, letting things happen rather than trying to force it. The essence of Wu-Wei aligns with what we know about our cognitive process, that is: if we become overly focused on a problem, several counterproductive things happen. First, we tend to focus on what we know, the various constraints, the imposed structure that we put on the problem, and we treat the assumptions that are imposed to simplify the problem as real constraints rather than as simplifications. Second, we are too familiar with the problem, so much so that we continually think in circles around the known solutions in hopes of breaking out of that cycle. “Insanity is repeating the same mistakes and expecting different results.”
This is central to David Epstein’s argument in his book: Range Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialist World (Epstein 2019). Often, it takes a generalist, someone who is not intimately knowledgeable, nor emotionally invested in the procedural methods of solution to see a way out of the unproductive cycle. Someone who can be spontaneous because they don’t know any better.
I believe spontaneity plays an important role in our everyday existence and how we navigate the problems that come to us. But the question is: how to unlock our preference to be steadfastly procedural?
We know that willing it won’t make it so; paraphrasing the Field of Dreams: “If you built it, they probably won’t come”. The mathematician Paul Erdös always opened a collaboration session with his many collaborators by stating: “My mind is open.” An enviable and admirable trait for someone so deeply entrenched in mathematics where constraints and guardrails abound, but where the ability to playfully experiment with the constraints and guardrails often means success in breaking new ground, an ability to not only accept spontaneousness but revel in being spontaneous.
How to do this? How to overcome the resistance? How to open everyone’s minds?
In art, spontaneity seems to be deployed at the beginning, at the inception of the project. An artist searches for a subject for their art and then they proceed to work on it to create something from nothing.
A painter thinks about how to paint the subject, what the finished painting should look like. A sculptor does the same, what should the finished sculpture look like. As they work, they adapt, improvise, and overcome the challenges to improve upon and execute their vision, but they must first have that vision, which is where spontaneity plays a part.
A musician composing music can be spontaneous with the tune and the lyric. They use the tools that they have mastered to create music from nothing.
The work can spontaneously feed their impulses as their mastery of their art reinforces and evolve the subject they began with into the finished work.
In engineering there exist initial conditions and constraints due to the nature that we are using which preclude spontaneity at that level: the beginning of the design, analysis, problem solving processes have guardrails. The engineer is constrained our natural world: the material properties, the specifications for the application, the laws of physics, chemistry, and biology. Indeed, the initial subject for an engineer has been chosen and the guardrails have been placed to tightly constrain their conceptual workspace.
But, it is when engineers are beyond the initial selection of their subject and are working to solve the problems that spontaneity plays a vital role. The engineer can make the choice to deliberately suspend the assumptions and make disappear the imposed guardrails to make room for the divine. It is when the engineers ask “what if” questions based on the suspension of the assumptions that spontaneity can affect the process, it is when the engineer asks the “why” question about the old approaches that spontaneity can seek to begin a discussion about the “how” challenges. It is also when the engineer asks the “why” questions about whether the guardrails are even warranted that spontaneity can help shape the process towards a solution.
Spontaneity should ideally dominate the idea generation process as the engineer is casting about for solutions during problem solving. Idea generation is necessarily a “ Mind is Open” activity, which requires spontaneity because idea generation should be free form, serendipitous, and be beyond logic. The emphasis should be to keep minds open, not self-censor, and not rejecting by rote reflex. Idea generation is the activity where spontaneous ideas are allowed to germinate and grow. The focus is on how to engineer “the what” rather than finding “the what”.
Admittedly, the space for spontaneity is limited and narrow for the engineer. It is not so limited or narrow as to warrant being lost in engineering activities. One should never lose something as vital and full of promise as being spontaneous.
Turning the focus on sports and coaching, human execution is where spontaneity is not just desirable but necessary. Just as in music performance, excellence in sports performance depends on the split-second decision that the music performer and the sports performer make in real time. Decision making in the musical and sports performance context is overwhelmingly spontaneous.
The music performer is constrained by the written music and lyrics, and the space they have available to them with which to be spontaneous is limited by the type of music that they play. Classical music performers are the most constrained, but their spontaneity manifests itself in what they do in the moment between the notes, in the volume of the sound that they produce, and in the rhythm and timing that they choose to use in their performance. Jazz musicians and rock musicians are much less constrained, they are allowed more space to be spontaneous to be divine; in other words, they allowed to jam. Their ability to “jam”, to be spontaneous, is predicated upon the skills, their “chops”, which is predicated upon their non-spontaneous practices.
For the athlete, there are also no scripts, none of their action is pre-planned. They are constrained by the rules of the game as well as by their interactions with their opponents and the officials, but there is more space in sports performance than there is in music performance. Athletes act and react spontaneously as they are executing during games. There will undoubtedly be strategies, tactics, and constants that are a part of the larger team philosophy, but if one asks an athlete whether they plan the execution of their actions and reaction, the answer is no. Because they must process a massive amount of sensory inputs, inputs that are unknown and uncertain emanating from the intricately coupled interactions between many different moving parts. The athlete must solve execution problems spontaneously, they don’t have a choice.
How do musicians and athlete cope with the incessant need to be spontaneous? Practice.
Musicians rehearse their pieces under friendly conditions in their rehearsals, they can vary the parameters available to them, both to experiment with the results while varying the parameters while also training their decision-making abilities to be prepared for being spontaneous.
Athletes practice under friendly conditions at a slower pace so that they can also hone their decision-making ability, and their ability to be spontaneous under game conditions. They too vary the parameters available to them, both to experiment with the results from their exercises in varying the parameter while also training their decision-making abilities. The difference is that the execution in the sporting field is not only required but also critical. Making the best decision spontaneously in sports for the athletes is the key to success. The focus is to give the athletes as many opportunities to learn to execute spontaneously. This practice can be pre-determined, i.e., creating contingencies for the athletes to accrue experiences for recall as the need for spontaneity requires; or it can be completely random, in the spirit of the nature of the sporting games.
One of Rubin’s points towards the end of his essay is that spontaneity gets better with practice. In my mind this means that both practice emphasis needs to be used. The pre-determined contingencies practice and the completely random practice both need to be deployed. As stated in the expertise-reversal effect in (Lovell 2020)’
The expertise-reversal effect suggests that learners need differing amounts of support depending on their level of expertise.
The pre-determined contingency practice is particularly useful for the beginning athlete, while the pre-determined contingency practice is more productive for the experienced athlete because they can experiment with different solutions to the decision that needs to be made, enriching their arsenal of spontaneous responses, i.e., they can learn to “jam”, just like the musicians. This does not preclude employing the completely random practice for the beginning athlete because the completely random practice is also valuable for the beginning athlete because they are forced to deal with the difficulty of making the spontaneous decision in hopes that their abilities will stretch and expand to accommodate the expanded difficulty — although one must be careful to not overwhelm them to the point of non-response. The pre-determined contingency practice can be valuable for the experienced player as they can explore and innovate new solutions to the known contingencies, it allows them to explore new solutions for the same problems. The key is to keep both kinds of practices challenging.
My personal exploration of Rick Rubin’s thoughts, which ironically is only four pages long, has allowed me to figure out what I really think, as Joan Didion so famously stated.
I enjoyed writing it, it forced me to think. I hope that you have read the whole thing, since you are reading this sentence at the very end. I also hope that you have enjoyed reading. Thank you for reading. I welcome all discussions, suggestions on alternate positions etc.
References
Epstein, David. Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World. New York: Riverhead Books, 2019.
Kahneman, Daniel. Thinking Fast and Slow. New York City: Farrar, Strau, and Giroux, 2013.
Rick Rubin, Neil Strauss. The Creative Act: A Way if Being. New York City: Penguin Press, 2023.