Frustrated at work? Maybe that’s good

FrustratedMid-semester and a lot of people are beginning to feel frustrated at work. Behind on the syllabus, dealing with unengaged students and planning for spring break, the excitement gone from the beginning of the term. Though this may simply be a natural rhythm to a semester, it can still lead to frustration.

Being frustrated can lead to anger, a desire to flee, cynicism, pessimism or a retreat into doing the minimal amount possible to get by. Or frustration can lead to change, greater creativity, invention, and new ways to teach old ideas (I’ll give you 5 teaching examples at the end of this post).

Frustration can lead to change

I’ve certainly experienced frustration at work. Most of my experiences of frustration came from wanting to change how things were done in big organizations but the inertia of a large bureaucracy made it almost impossible to make any changes from “below.”

For instance, in the past I was frustrated by the way basic research hours for legal assistants at the environmental law firm where I worked were recorded. There were frequent requests from attorneys to “figure out what the legislature is doing about x.” This involved doing basic research requested by lawyers but not done for a specific client, and legal assistants were not allowed to claim any time on these requests. There was no way to account for those hours. A legal assistant might appear to be working only six hours in a day when eight hours was actually put in.

My frustration led to discussion with a section manager who became an ally, along with several other legal assistants, to push for a change in the logging process. Eventually, the higher echelon managers agreed that billing a small portion of these hours to several clients simultaneously would help the legal assistants to do their requested work and get credit for it. It also helped the attorneys and the clients to get the “heads up” they wanted about proposed regulatory rules. Frustration, in other words, resulted in a creative change beneficial to all parties concerned.

Frustration can lead to greater creativity

There are some fascinating examples of how problems led to creative results. Tim Harford, and English economist and journalist for The Guardian has discussed some of this in his TED talk “how frustration can make us more creative.” One of his examples is how Keith Jarrett ended up creating the best-selling solo piano album of all time.

Jarrett was constrained by an inferior piece of equipment with a “tinny upper register” and black notes that got stuck when hammered and white notes that were off-key. Here’s what happened when Jarrett sat down to play a live concert recorded in the Cologne Opera House: he avoided the upper register, played from the middle tones, created volume by pounding on the keys while generating a repetitive refrain. As Harford writes, “Within moments it became clear that something magical was happening.” Within the constraints, Keith Jarrett created a stunning and beloved musical performance.

Another musical example comes from the “Oblique Strategies,” a card deck created Brian Eno and Peter Schmidt. Originally released as a 500-set limited edition of 113 cards in 1975, the fifth edition was released in 2013. Each card contains an aphorism, maxim, or enigmatic phrase intended to help break a deadlock in composing or any other creative activity. Examples include “Honor thy error as a hidden intention,” “Look closely at the most embarrassing details and amplify,” Gardening not Architecture,” “Make a sudden, destructive, unpredictable action. Incorporate,” or “Repetition is a form of change.”

The normal way to use the deck is for the stuck person to draw one card and find a way to apply the words on it to the frustrating situation or blockage. This technique is also sometimes referred to as lateral thinking, when a surprising or humorous juxtaposition of ideas leads to a new unexpected idea. Thinking obliquely, that is to say approaching a problem indirectly when frustrated, can really open things up.

One last example: Brad Bird, an outside director hired to make a new movie by Pixar was told his plot about a family of superheroes banned from doing their work would cost $500 million and 10 years to make. Rather than giving up, Bird recruited other people inside Pixar who had been frustrated and marginalized. Those folks came up with ways to simplify the animation, like using ovals sliding against one another to represent the interlocking muscles of the family members. The film was The Incredibles, only cost $100 million to make, won two Oscars, and grossed $631 million worldwide.

Frustration can lead to new ways of teaching old ideas

If you are suffering from teaching frustration, here are five ideas to change up the classroom in mid-semester:

  1. Give students control of the classroom for just one session. You can give them a desired learning outcome which will vary from subject to subject; math teachers want a different result than English teachers.
  2. Find a way to “gamify” the lesson. Spelling bees, history trivia, or “around the world” for geography are old versions of this idea. For this visual age, you could create a visual learning tool, engaging students in creating a mind map for a problem under study or a sticky note tree, where each student gets to add one idea or item as a leaf on a tree. The professor can pin or place the note instead of having students come up and do it. This allows for commentary and avoidance of duplication. Or try using the Brian Eno “draw a card” technique mentioned above.
  3. If you are not already doing it, try showing a YouTube video or pulling up an interactive website related to your topic and see where the discussion takes you. Or try using clicker technology to take an instant poll.
  4. Breaking the class into working groups answering a specific question can be different format if lecturing is the primary method of delivering content.
  5. Ask students to create a comic book (or even just a one page set of panels) study guide for the semester to date, or for one item that has been covered so far. Or give them study guides in a weird font, like Blackadder ITC or Lucida Blackletter. There is some evidence that forcing students to decipher a script will help them learn the content.

As you move into the final stretch of the semester, allow yourself to think back and think forward: Remember the good outcomes that occurred when something didn’t go as planned leading to a creative solution. Project forward and imagine a year into the future. Predict whether the current frustration is large enough to make you change everything, or just creatively tweak it. You might surprise yourself with new ideas.

 

 

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