Being able to relax into ideas is one of the key tenets of creativity that people forget as they become more and more “professional”. Unfortunately, a dichotomy is created where people are either in full-professional work mode or full-relaxed goofing off mode, forgetting that the most productive time is spent being creatively focused. There are many paths to get to a goal, and you have to be open to taking several of them at once, while having the focus to ditch the ones that aren’t working, bringing that knowledge on the path that does.

Much like people forget to breathe when doing exercise, people forget how to be creative when they are working. There has been a backlash against being professional lately, because people become focused on it to the detriment of common sense. There is even a backlash against Malcolm Gladwell, because people are taking his findings as an ultimatum instead of inspiration.

On the other side, people begin to view creativity as unbridled wackiness with no productive value. Companies have retreats to blow off steam and set up cafeterias with wacky uncomfortable furniture, ostensibly to provide places for employees to relax. At best, all this does is pull focus away from creativity that is actually productive. At worst, this creates office wastelands employees are afraid to enter, lest they be labeled a “slacker”.

Don’t be afraid to relax at work. Just because you are in an office doesn’t mean it can’t be fun. Tear down cube walls. Bring in movable desks that can be a meeting table, a prototyping station, or whatever you need to get your ideas out into the world as soon as possible. Bring in things that actually inspire you, and display them prominently. Be your own cheerleader, doing what it takes to make sure the work you do engages you and makes you want to create the best possible solutions.

Because if you don’t do it, there are some brightly colored hand-shaped chairs they are waiting to bring in that are sure to inspire you.

Distinguishing Expert Intuition from Lay Intuition is the latest in a series of IDEO articles in GOOD Magazine. It does a wonderful job of laying out what the standard blind spots are for judging the quality of intuition, as well as how to compensate for them when talking to people. People can’t say how often their intuition is correct, as the successes stay with them and the failures are just chalked up to being bad guesses. This is the same reason that people still tune into TV shows where people claim to talk to the dead. There may have been a million bad guesses, but that one successful hunch somehow proves amazing insight and intuition to the people watching.

The catch is that in order to become truly good at deciphering other people’s intuition, you need to develop that immediate intuition yourself. Unfortunately, the only way to do this is by putting in the prerequisite 10,000 hours it takes to truly develop your intuition to the point where you can trust it. Once you reach the point where you easily and comfortably intuit your conclusions as well as the reasoning, you have also reached the point where you can no longer teach someone else how to do it, as you no longer remember what it was like to not simply know.

It’s easy to tell a bad interview from a good one from a great one, even to the most clueless person watching. The only way to move from bad to great is by getting in there and doing it yourself. Make mistakes, try new things, and learn from your successes. Talk to people you admire and learn from their work. It won’t be an easy journey, and there will be a lot of failures. One day, however, you will simply know, and wonder how you ever didn’t.