Creativity > Productivity

Creativity is the advantage in the world of AI

The balance is shifting. In the world of AI, the things we valued of ourselves and of our teams are becoming less important. AI can take of our productivity - that leads us to focus on becoming our best creative selves.

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For the last few years I have been immersed in the "productivity" landscape. I have read the literature, watched the productivity gurus, I have curated a second brain, I have built countless workflows in the glut of different note taking apps we have to play with.

I discovered what tools I liked best, and tweaked how I worked until I was a well oiled machine. I started building a course sharing what I had learned and how I worked in Obsidian, a popular note taking tool.

And then AI came along..

At first I was skeptical, of course. I consider myself somewhat of a purist in that I like to do as much as I can manually, shying away from slick automations wherever I can in favour of doing things by hand. Whilst people shouted about how you could seamlessly sync book notes and marginalia directly to your note taking app, I favoured writing them intentionally. Having a manual step was a better way of processing for me, where I could have visibility and control over everything I was doing. AI by nature eradicates a lot of that friction.

As an engineering leader, one of the parts of my role I consider important is to try and understand the landscape engineering teams are evolving into and get ahead of the curve. AI is an inevitable part of this. We have AI tools that can spin up and write code - sure, as many people argue, it cannot replace an engineer and I do agree. But the more I start to use AI in my daily routines, the more I am beginning to understand how much of a shift this is going to be for many of us and how we approach work. It's something that I have slowly been adopting more and more, because I don't see a future where there in an alternative.

Much of the manual productivity tasks I did are now able to be done by AI, and they can do it much more effectively and efficiently than I can. Taking meeting notes and capturing actions was a big part of my role - one that I prided myself on and figured out an ideal way of doing in Obsidian. Now an app can do it for me, and better than I could do. It took a little while to let go of how I liked to work, but ultimately the decision was made when I realised utilising AI freed up my time to double down on the things I was good at and truly enjoyed. In meetings, I can focus better on speaking to the people and presenting my ideas, than making sure I capture the context. Why would I not utilise that?

As things develop, we are going to see more and more of what we would consider "productivity" tasks being outsourced to AI. Whether that be taking meeting notes, commenting on pull requests, processing data, following up with emails. This is my prediction - and seemingly each week we are pulled closer to that reality.

Where does that leave us?

With productivity largely in hand, it leaves us with a hole. And that, in my opinion, should be filled by doubling down on creativity.

For far too long we have been focused on being as productive as possible, and we are being replaced. We need to tip the balance back and re-kindle with how we create - both as individuals but also as teams.

This is a call for creativity.

Productivity:

The ability to efficiently complete tasks and achieve goals in a way that makes optimal use of time, energy, and resources.

Creativity:

The ability to generate new and original ideas, perspectives, or solutions that are meaningful or useful to the individual or their context.

I first realised I wasn't a naturally productive person when I was going through school. Consistently middle of the pack, I had a hard time understanding and being able to prioritise the right things. This followed me through to college, where I grew frustrated with the measurement of success being more focused around recall and presentation of the correct information, rather than creative or new ideas.

I remember vividly in an English lesson, where we were tasked with writing a monologue - the upmost surprise from my tutor and myself when she announced to the class that mine was considered the best, the quiet kid in the corner who didn't hand things in on time and spent much of the lesson staring out of the window - this was one of the few true "creative" opportunities I had, and I flourished. My best subject was film studies, where my final project was an accumulation of weeks spent on inspecting Shane Meadows flicks for biographical details. It was super niche, but I loved it and excelled at it.

See, I was much more obsessive over the things I loved doing, and that was often creating. I had sporadic bursts of energy where I could close myself off for days hyper focused on the creation of something new - yet as quick as it had come it would be over. This creative frustration persisted even as I transitioned into my professional life as a software engineer.

As I developed in my career, this disparity became more obvious to me. I was great at the creative aspect of the role: bringing ideas to the table, making prototypes, writing proposals - but less consistent with the productive side: activities like note-taking, scheduling, updating tasks lists, managing emails, and maintaining documentation. I got the same feedback in performance reviews that I received at school - generally whilst everything was fine, there was always room to improve around the art of efficiency. Following up, seeing things through - being more productive.

Moving into people management I saw the same thing. Smart and creatively brilliant engineers who were stuck from progressing in the system because they were not taking care of the operations side of the role as effectively as others. These are people who can solve the most complex of problems, or build stunningly beautiful UI's - give them some direction and then the freedom to tackle problems in the way they see fit and they will excel - but all too often companies don't know how to handle these folks.

This lead me into the productivity rabbit hole, where I have been actively burrowing since. I have gotten better at "being productive" by trying to simplify as much of it as possible, yet it has never felt innate to me, it has never been something that I enjoyed. I envy my colleagues who it seemingly comes naturally to - always following up, always getting shit done, always on top of the multiple plates they have spinning at the same time. They seem consistently in tune, effortlessly in check - and it takes me a tonne of effort on that front for me just to get by.

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Perhaps as a society we overvalue productivity. Success at school is measured by productivity, success is work is more often than not measured via productivity - and I get that, it is tangible, you can measure the outputs. The narrative for so long has been "you must get more productive". But why should that carry more weight than creativity?

See the team is a sum of two parts. Yes - things need to get done, and delivered on time in an efficient way. But the things that need to be done are there in the first place because someone had a creative idea - a creative vision. Without creativity, none of what we consider true innovation or art would exist.

Designers, engineers, executives - they all need to find the balance between creativity and productivity. It is not just about delivering on work, but a big part of the puzzle is defining what that work is in the first place, and that is purely a creative venture. I strongly believe we have been tipping the balance of emphasis for far too long on one side and not the other.

This means we have teams and individuals who run like clockwork, with workflows, project management tools and to-do lists that help them achieve everything with efficiency. We employ people solely to ensure this cadence is maintained. So much of what I read online is how to be more streamlined, or how to get stuff done quicker - but there is so much less focus on HOW or WHY to nurture creativity and excellence.

Creativity is something to be cultivated, both individually and as part of teams. You need space to be creative, you need inspiration, motivation and vision. But we are losing the space and ability and maybe the willingness to be creative. Perhaps because it often means slowing down, thinking deeply, asking difficult questions, putting pen to paper, collaborating - none of these things feel particularly like they are moving the needle.

There is fear and unrest in the tech industry around AI, and the unknowns around job security for many. Yes, it is unsettling to see.. but from what I have seen so far AI excels at one thing - and that is productivity.

You see, sure AI can write code and create pieces of artwork - but no Chat GPT or Claude can come up with the idea in the first place completely on it's own. It is an operator. A more productive version of yourself. The most productive team member. But it is in no way a creative. It doesn't have the concept of creation - sure, it can produce impressive results that mimic creativity, genuine creative insight and intentionality still remain distinctly human. AI is only ever acting on what it has been told to do, and is trained from the creative outputs of humans. If humans had not created, AI would not exist.

Creativity is going to become more valued in so many different industries. It is the new in-demand quality. Whilst AI gets better at writing code, organising our tasks, transcribing and doing the operations side of our jobs - our time will be freed up to do more creation, to think deeper, to collaborate more. To chase beauty, quality and excellence. To solve problems that impact or better the lives of others. The most productive individuals who lack a creative mindset are going to lose their edge in a world where productivity is largely going to be handled by AI. AI is your productivity tool, creativity is your human advantage.

I want to change the narrative, for both teams and individuals. Let's stop thinking in how we can be more 'productive' and let's start thinking about how we can be more 'creative'.

It's time to correct the balance.

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Cultivate is my personal passion project—a way to share ideas that matter to me. If you enjoyed this piece, tapping the heart below or sharing it with someone who might find it interesting means more than you know. Thank you <3