the hour-glass of day-dreaming

I have come to LOVE bus rides. Looking back I realize they are my ONLY uninterrupted time in the whole day. No phone calls - too noisy for that, no internet, I feel a strange sense of privacy in that noisy overcrowded vehicle! Its become my reading time, my daydream time, my crazy ideas time, everything.

Coincidentally I had a time management training at work in which the we discussed 'interruptions' for a long time. We discussed multi-tasking, collaborating, and all the buzz words of the new healthy flexy work culture. Our trainer was convinced that multi tasking was a myth, and that people can only do one thing at a time. It was just that some people might be good at masking the transition time as they switch from task to task - but it was still ONE task at a time. And that multitasking was actually reducing their efficiency at every individual task. While this could be debated endlessly... it got me thinking.

Working with no interruption (the black box) being on one end of the scale, and embracing interruptions as a means to step out of the black box being on the other end of the scale, is difference between my bachelor's degree in design and my masters degree in design. Let me explain this. I began studying design in the year 2000 in India. The style of working was intensive and immersive. Only ONE course was taught over two weeks/four weeks, the assignments were individual, and towards the end of the course all students would be thinking and dreaming and spending every second on only ONE problem/solution. There was no major use of the internet, and very few students had cell phones. The periods of time spent working were clear cut capsules of uninterrupted flow. The final results/design solutions were often fantastic and equally often just plain old ridiculous.

When i came to the US to study design research for my masters, things had changed. The model of design education was completely different. It seemed to be based on interruption(in a good way). We were taught four or five courses at a time and these courses stretched over a quarter, everything was team work. So now at any given time, I had five things to think about and the opinions of 20 people to consider. And I immediately saw the difference: it was SAFER. No result was ever too ridiculous. The law of averages was mitigating the one thing that scared businesses away from designers: craziness. But at the same time, The number of spikes in absolute brilliance/freshness also reduced. It didn't vanish, don't get me wrong, - we sometimes saw projects that were clear examples of multidisciplinary thinking gone right :) where the answers far exceeded the capacity of one individual.

The stark difference between the two approaches makes me wonder. We now are so busy trying to make design appear risk-free and methodical and almost predictable so that we get green signals that at times i can't help but think - are we loosing that black-box, missing that 'bus' where we meet our own ideas?

Time will tell...