Jordan Sampson Creative

A Case for Collaboration

#A Case for Collaboration

Lately, I have been reflecting on the nature of my creative independence (or at least that perception) as both a strength and a potential problem. Allow me to explain.

I have a great many interests, personally, in the creative sphere. They all do tend to complement each other well, as far as skills go. I could give a brief overview of my interests, but you're not just reading this to understand me specifically. I am writing this to shed some light on the value of collaboration. Let's just say my creative interest span the visual, the auditory, and the written. In many forms. But I do (like all men and women) have finite resources. Time, attention, calories, insight, tools... These are all limited in quantity. I can only direct them toward so many things. Once you become a parent (as I have), those quantities get tested, and it forces you to take stock in every category.

So, I'm a new dad,

taking inventory of the things I have, and I am coming up short. I need more resources, and I have been very comfortable doing most things myself, as a one-person team for quite some time, but the necessity has come to change. There can be strange beliefs around collaborating with others. These beliefs could be cultural, they could be based on painful experiences, or a mix of both. The reasons we don't work with other people can feel emotionally in line with our internal equilibrium, however the reasons to work with them might also in reality be highly rewarding. So, why as creatives would we pass up on something that could, theoretically, give us in abundance what I believe we all crave: connection?

Think about it. I will refer back to our finite resources. Time, attention, calories, insight, and tools. How much of these resources do we spend specifically or indirectly in order to achieve or maintain connection with other humans? We spend time with those we love. We give them our attention. We spend our attention (hopefully) on subjects we love, and seek after people who do the same. We fuel our mind and bodies for the task. We gather insight for years in order to be proficient. We gather tools to use and use well. In the hopes of what? Hopefully for connection. Otherwise, we are simply inflating our own ego and wasting resources trying to maintain an elevated sense of self. There is nothing wrong with building confidence, but there comes a point where outputting creative work only for the sake of building personal confidence becomes less valuable over time. I am someone who prefers to prepare for things a great deal. Sometimes, I spend so much time preparing, that I fail to actually get to the task itself. This is an improper use of resource, for example.

The first case for collaboration is that it directly takes you to human connection immediately. If nothing else about the project goes well, at least you connected with another person. One day of collaborating has more human connection than 1000 days working by yourself and sharing none of it with people. They both have their place. If we are measuring connection in addition to skill, then collaboration is crucial.

The second case is a little more abstract, but I have a theory that I want to test. “What if collaboration is not just additive between individuals in value, but rather exponential?” It's been a thought in my mind for awhile. I am usually comfortable thinking in abstract terms, but sometimes, it is nice to quantify things to give sharp contrast. So for this part, let us pretend that all aspects in the creative process (including all intangibles that are difficult to describe) can be measured by something highly un-creative : mathematics.

I decided to make it a game. I thought I was making an experiment, and perhaps it still is, but it's rather fun to think of it with a whimsical yet competitive lens. Here is how the game works :

There are 4 teams.

Team 1 has one member.
Team 2 has two members.
Team 3 has three members.
Team 4 has four members.

The goal of the game is to see which team is able to reach the goal most effectively. You could theoretically place this game in a midsize park (as long as you could define a rectangle). You could have everyone playing pull out their GPS on their phone and have it track where you walk through the park. Anyways, that is actual image of the game. I simply drew it on paper.

There are 3 goals for each team. Each team is starting on the outside of a rectangle. Each team has one member at the corner of the rectangle. The teams with more members will have their members spread out along the edge of their quadrant.

Goal 1 : reach the center of the rectangle (or park) in a low amount of steps

Goal 2 : cover more surface area with your steps. Imagine with every set of steps, you are going one direction, and then for the next set, you change direction, on a grid.

Goal 3 : If you form squares with your steps, that is surface area you have covered fully. You also get points for partially touching surface area (1, 2, or 3 sides).

the game layout

I went ahead and simulated each team's play. I simply made random decisions on directions of steps, but slightly leaning towards coordinating and trying to cover more surface area, with each team. I will show the results in a second, but I can tell you how it felt with each team. With team 1, with the single member, the execution was really simple. I decided to cover the distance efficiently to get to the center the quickest. However, I did not cover very much surface area, but I finished around the same time as the other teams. Theoretically, if I had tried to cover more surface area, I would have been stepping much longer.

Teams 2 and 3 were actually similar. Having 2 members made it easier to form shapes around surface area, and the weaving of their pathways definitely made more sense. Having 3 members was a bit awkward, yet still effective. It was hard to decide what the third person was supposed to do in order to add value (sounds familiar to me. The age-old “third wheel” concept).

Team 4 felt very intuitive, the most intuitive out of the bunch. If the goal was to make shapes with 4 sides, and the most you could in a span of time, then this team format worked very well. Visually, it looked confusing at times, but with the common goal of getting to the middle of the park, no one got lost, and we were all able to arrive and plot the surface area in a timely manner.

Alright, so that is the general feel of the game. Now I will explain the points breakdown. For every side covered on surface area, we add an exponent value to the base points.

Each side covered is valued at 2 points baseline.

1 side covered is normal value.
2 sides covered is set to the power of 2.
3 sides covered is set to the power of 3.
4 sides covered is set to the power of 4.

I'm talking about a lot of math here, but let's step back to creativity.

Imagine that each of these fully enclosed squares is an inspirational creative idea. The kind that could expand in all directions, if given the proper care. Now imagine that you could potentially have 1, 2, 3, or 4 different perspectives surrounding that idea? Do the numerated perspectives add value and growth potential to the idea? If so, how does that work? Ok, back to the math.

Here are the final results for this first test round of the Game.

Team 1 scored 546 points.

Whoo hoo! Great job. It's hard to know if that's a lot or a little, but it's something.





Team 2 scored 70,320 points.

Whoa. That is way more. Imagine the scoreboard right now. And the jaws dropped.




Team 3 scored 62,640 points.

After the shock of team 2, this is relatively disappointing. And weird. I mean, what was that third teammate doing?








Team 4 scored 132,836 points.

Wow. I mean, that is just beyond words. How many times does 546 even fit into that number?






So, I made this game. It's a silly little game. I'm not even proving a point. All I am doing is illustrating how exponential growth works, and how that might work in a game setting. But it is giving me hope, and helping me shift my mindset.

Let's ponder this for a minute. Think of all the creative ideas you've ever put resource into. Now, just pick out 4. Using this exponential growth picture, if you took 4 creative ideas and allowed them to grow exponentially, you would gain a value of 16 creative ideas. Now, at that scale, I'm sure many of could be thinking “well, if I just did 16 projects by myself, I could still achieve that value output.” But now scale it up, to the scale of the game. What if you put resource into 500 of your own ideas, and worked alone on them. Your output, at best, would be a value of 500 thriving ideas. But what if you made a team of 4, pursued 500 ideas together, and actually created a cumulative value equivalent to 130,000 thriving ideas? The resulting impact would dwarf your individual efforts so drastically, it begs the question, why work alone at all?

One reason to still work on projects alone is just to practice and gain confidence. So there is still a role to play with individual work. But as I'm a dad now, my resources are more stretched. I don't know if I have 500 ideas, but right now, I have been barely able to work on one or two. My daughter is one year old now, so I am growing my workload slowly. I regularly am cultivating around 3 to 4 ideas in my schedule. But I am also seeking collaboration much more.

So, let's say I have my 4 ideas. I keep practicing and building confidence, and releasing out into the world.

I find another person working on 4 ideas. If we collaborate, we theoretically have the creative potential to output the equivalent of 64 thriving ideas. And I find 3 more people (that would be 4 total), who all have their set of 4 ideas they are each cultivating, that group of 4 people would have creative potential, when collaborating, to output the equivalent of 65,000 thriving ideas. Wow. And did I drastically shift my workload? Some. I would need to practice communicating and sharing and responding and giving to my collaborators. It would indeed take work. But I believe that effort will be monumentally more worth it than me putting in extra time to add more ideas to my schedule that I am working on alone.

I hope these illustrations have helped you have a different mindset around seeking out collaboration. It is has helped me a great deal. As a recovering overthinker myself, sometimes a certain of deep thinking in a positive direction can help me behave simpler and healthier.

What's next? I know what I am going to do. I am going to keep practicing my 4 ideas, and then I am going to find my 3 collaborators. And then hopefully, make a legacy with that.

Here's to creating with others.