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Occasionally, my clients struggle to get things done, but worry that setting themselves deadlines will make them less creative.

Is this a reasonable worry?

To find out, let’s look at the psychology literature on pressure and creativity.

There’s a classic psychology experiment called the “candle problem”. Participants are shown matches, a box of thumbtacks, and a candle as in the picture below. The experimenter then instructs the participants to mount the candle on the wall using the available materials. "The problem is considered solved when the candle can be firmly affixed to the wall, burn properly, and does not drip wax on the table or floor."

If you’ve heard of this problem before, you probably know the answer. However, if this is new to you, take thirty seconds to try solving it before reading on.

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Done?

If it’s still difficult, just imagine the thumbtacks on the table next to the box as in the picture below. Once you do that, suddenly it’s easy to guess that you should tack the empty box to the wall and put the candle inside it.

When the box is filled with tacks, our brain writes it off as a “tack holder”, instead of seeing it as a possible “candle holder.” This is called “functional fixedness.” It takes creativity to see an object being used in one way, and then break that default association to work out what other uses it could be put to.

This experiment is designed to study creativity, particularly the ability to find unusual or “out of the box” solutions to a problem. The experimenter can easily randomize whether the participants see the box full of tacks or empty (i.e. hard or easy creative thinking), plus add whatever other interactions they want to test.

Which brings us to the point of this whole experiment—how long does it take the participants to find the solution under different conditions?

In one study, the experimenters used a simple 2x2 design: participants were randomized so that half saw a picture of tacks in a box (which requires more creativity), and the rest saw tacks on the table and an empty box (which makes the puzzle easier). Half were told they’d receive a $20 bonus if they were the fastest in the group ($5 if they were in the top 25%); the other half heard no mention of a bonus.

Now, adjusted for inflation since 1962, $20 is almost $175 dollars. So, participants had a strong motive to complete the task faster when offered that bonus.

Did they?

Only when they saw the empty box. When the picture showed an empty box, participants solved the problem about a minute faster if they were offered a reward (taking on average 3.67 minutes, compared to 4.99 minutes for the non-rewarded group). If instead the participant saw the box full of tacks and was offered a reward, they took over three minutes longer than those who saw a full box but never heard about a reward (11.08 vs 7.41 minutes respectively).

What’s happening here?

The basic theory is that when you add pressure, people get better at tasks they already know how to do, but worse at doing novel tasks. This finding has been repeated in studies that use financial rewards, performance evaluation, and even self-evaluation as the source of pressure.

Think of it as tunnel vision. When you are particularly focused on one problem or motivated to get it done quickly, you get better at doing what you already know exactly how to do. But you get worse at looking around for novel solutions, because you get stuck thinking about the problem in one narrow way.

Are these findings sound?

I didn’t find any red flags: googling one of the papers plus the keywords “myth” or “replication” didn’t turn up anything damning, and the Wikipedia page on functional fixedness didn’t highlight reasons to doubt the theory. It’s a neatly-packaged theory but it hasn’t been headline news—so I’m not applying the additional skepticism I add for surprisingly interesting findings.

That said, there are some yellow flags: it’s mostly an older body of literature, which might mean worse methods. For example, the study I described included only male psychology undergrads. However, there is a 2009 study that came to the same conclusion.

Possibly we should be skeptical of all psychology findings, given that some attempts to replicate studies can reproduce less than half of the original findings. Even when studies replicate, the effect size often changes wildly. One study found that effect sizes decreased by 50% on average when replicated.

I don’t think we need to toss out these results completely, though. I wouldn’t be surprised if the effect size decreased, but I’d rate this finding as slightly more likely to replicate than the average psych study. 

Are these findings meaningful?

Even psych studies that replicate don’t always matter - the real world impact is so tiny that it’s not worth implementing. In this case, I revisited these studies because a few clients were worried that setting deadlines would make them less creative. Is this true?

My short answer? “Probably yes, but it’s still often worth setting the deadlines.”

If we can take the candle problem study at face value (which is a big assumption), then adding pressure made participants 50% slower at finding the answer. That’s pretty important, if it generalizes.

However, there are two big caveats that make me inclined to recommend deadlines anyway.

First, participants found the solution faster under pressure when it was easier to figure out what to do. Do you have a decent idea of what you’re supposed to do, but are struggling to focus on it and get it done quickly? Then adding pressure should speed you up, according to this study.

Second, while for the harder task participants in the high-pressure condition did take longer than those in the low-pressure condition, the participants in both conditions were under enough pressure to be actively working the whole time. In contrast, what if you’re a PhD student struggling to sit down to write your thesis? Or a knowledge worker struggling to make time for important-but-not-urgent work instead of answering more emails?

In that case, maybe adding pressure makes you go slower than if you were doing the task without pressure, but probably not slower than you go if you’re not spending time on the task at all.

For most tasks that you’re struggling to put enough time towards, I expect the benefits of deadlines to outweigh even working at half speed occasionally.

There’s a tradeoff between carving out time to slowly explore and setting up incentives to quickly get things done.

If you’re already working long hours, feel free to take a long walk to puzzle over a problem without pressure. Famous mathematician Richard Hamming set aside every Friday afternoon after lunch to think "great thoughts." This was his time to ask, “How will computers change science?”, “How can I change that path?”, and other big questions. Reserving that time probably helped him create the mental space needed to be unusually creative.

So if you’re constantly trying to cram eighteen tasks into fifteen minutes and wondering why you aren’t having any new ideas, then feel free to take some pressure off. Make time to be bored.

However, if you’re struggling to put enough time towards your tasks, don’t let concerns about your creativity become an excuse to avoid any pressure to increase what you accomplish.