All Collaboration and no Contemplation Stalls Productivity

Here at TEDxBillings, we’re all about the collaboration.

It’s bringing people together, sharing ideas, and creating a community that is better for everyone.

That collaboration is essential to helping others know about those ideas worth spreading.  And we have to get together to find the right people to help propel the idea forward.  But there’s a lot that goes on behind the scenes that you don’t see.

We’re not talking organizer meetings, sponsor pitches, venue details… those all happen too.  We’re talking about the prep work that the presenters go through before hitting the stage is even an option.

What Goes into an Idea worth Spreading

When a presenter hits the TEDx stage, we see the final product.  The result.  The end game.

They may allude to the process they went through, or how they got the initial idea.  But we don’t really see the stress, the troubles, and the journey.  We see the result.

That result started years earlier.  The idea was sparked after seeing something that needed to be changed, or could be improved, or otherwise wasn’t quite right.

Over the course of a few years, the ideator (that’s a new word I made up for someone that has an idea) goes through cycles.  They sit and contemplate their idea, fleshing it out, adding to it, taking away.  Then they talk with friends, colleagues, and mentors.

Collaborating, the get new ideas and improve on the old ones.  So they go back into that contemplation phase, honing and perfecting the idea.  Only to come together again and discuss the idea.

This work can be agonizingly long.  It can take years with dozens of roadblocks, hurdles, and dead ends.

Only when the idea has been “perfected” do we hear about it, and how it will eventually change the world.

Science Says Solitude is Essential

What a lot of people see is the collaboration.  Those times where we get together and talk about the blossoming ideas at the coffee shop, over a few drinks, or as of late, on Zoom calls.

The real work, however, is done in solitude.

There are dozens of studies that show how things get done.  They relate to how the brain works, and how we process information.  And the same conclusions come up over and over.

Solitude leads to productivity and creativity.

Ideas are born in solitude.  They’re expanded, and furthered when we’re alone.  They grow when we have a chance to slow down, think about them, and consider them fully.

Come Together; After Being Apart

Once that idea is born, however, it’s time to talk about it.  After all, what good is an idea that nobody else knows about?

Collaboration can give merit to an idea, or strike it down as preposterous.

There must be that balance.  Solitude to generate and propel the idea; collaboration to vet and verify the idea.

We need people on both sides.  We need the ideators and the vettors.  We need people just like you to spark the ideas and help other ideas grow.

TEDx Billings provides the platform for both.

Are you in?