EDITORIAL

Stop signs.

A2007 analysis of top football goalkeepers published in the Journal of Economic

Psychology found the best strategy to save a penalty was to stay in the centre of the goal. If they could avoid the urge to lunge left or right, they had a 33 percent chance of making a save. And yet, the goalkeepers in the study stayed put only six percent of the time. The reason being that they felt compelled to act, even when they knew it wasn’t necessarily the best strategy. Lunging at least felt as though an effort was being made.

Work is also like this. It’s easy to get pulled into the daily grind, poring over details on a glaring computer screen for hours on end without addressing any of the problems you initially set out to solve. The West’s inheritance of the Calvinist ideology, which abhors idleness, has caused us to be addicted to the very concept of busyness.

Even the word we use most often to describe the management of a business implies the exertion of energy. Business owners are said to run their businesses. Since when have calm, assertive strolls or even stationery contemplative stares been so inadequate? Those who aren’t busy lunging left or right are almost scorned for their inaction.

Nowhere is this more damaging than in a creative endeavour like marketing. The act of forced busyness could, in fact, lead to the best ideas never being found. An oft-quoted anecdote, in which creatives were asked to place a pin on a map where they last came up with a good creative idea, showed that ideas were rarely found in the artificial glow of a laptop screen.

The road, the beach, the bar across the road, the restaurant and even home all received more pins than the agency office. The point here is that stopping for a few minutes and walking away from a project can be infinitely more productive than staring into the procrastination whirlpool of the internet.

And remember, creativity isn’t only about drawing pictures and writing puns. Running a successful business has always been a creative exploit, demanding a constant search for new ways to solve age-old problems.

This search doesn’t always have to be active. Sometimes taking a moment’s reprise gives you the freedom to pause and reflect on where your business actually is. You can’t see where you’re going if your focus is constantly oscillating between the distractions around you. And you don’t realise how fast you’re moving until you hit the brakes.

There’s something to be said for pausing, staying centred and taking note of where your strategy is headed. And while the value of entering awards is questioned – often fairly – by the more cynical voices in the industry, it remains important because it forces us to stop, even if just for a moment.

Beyond the booze-fuelled pause that occurs on the celebratory night, the actual process of entering also offers a somewhat less obvious value in that it requires you to step back and consider the contribution you’ve made over a longer stretch of time. In doing this, it should become evident that your job is more than an endless series of passiveaggressive emails. Maybe Jack Johnson was onto something when he said: “Slow down everyone, you’re moving too fast. Frames can’t catch you when you’re moving like that.”

Congratulations to everyone who paused long enough to be caught in the centre of the winners’ frame at this year’s edition of the TVNZ- NZ Marketing Awards.