Embracing creativity in the Year of the Rooster

Embracing creativity in the Year of the Rooster

Kung Hei Fat Choy, Happy Chinese New Year! Last Saturday marked the start of the Year of the Rooster, or to be more precise, the Red Fire Rooster. What creative inspirations can we draw from roosters, hens and young chickens to help us flourish in the coming 12 months?

Follow the ways of the rooster: Chinese astrology ascribes characteristics and behaviours observed in an animal to sum up personality traits of people born in the corresponding year of the Chinese Zodiac. People born in the Year of the Rooster are said to be hard-working, active and responsible. They are social, gregarious and communicative. While they can be boastful and presumptuous, they are generally trustworthy and honest. Roosters are also praised for their punctuality and sense of timeliness.

Inspiration: In the Year of the Rooster, do as roosters do. Work hard and be active. Make an effort to go out and socialise with other businesspeople to offer your services and help. In your communication, strive for the safe middle ground of being confident without coming across as arrogant, honest without coming across as blunt. If you're a night-owl like me, experiment with rising in the wee hours as roosters do, to gauge whether an early start positively affects your life and work productivity.

Aim for hen-like productivity: Hens tirelessly produce eggs, as many as 300 or more per year, or roughly one egg per day, six days a week.

Inspiration: Emulate the high productivity of hens by producing a lot of outputs. Depending on what you do, a tangible output might be a sale that you close, a presentation you design, an article you write, an account you audit, a spreadsheet you create, or an investment that you enter into. Imagine the progress if you produced a tangible output on 300 of the next 365 days.

Be on the lookout: A rooster guards the nests of his hens, often from a high perch (hence the term "rooster") and attacks other roosters that enter his territory. If he spots predators nearby, he warns the group with a special alarm call.

Inspiration: While the turbulent Year of the Monkey has come to end, the Year of the Rooster may still feature a lot of market uncertainty and political and economic discontinuity. Make it a habit to regularly "sit on a high perch" to observe the wider environment for potential dangers and risks. When you sound the alarm on imminent danger, don't forget that opportunity hides in every difficulty.

Incubate for ideas: Domestic hens lay eggs only until a clutch (usually about a dozen) is complete, and then "go broody". A broody hen sits on the nest and incubates its eggs, and rarely leaves the nest to eat, drink or dust-bathe. At the end of the incubation period of about 21 days, fertile eggs hatch and a young chicken enters the world.

Inspiration: Do as the hen and experiment with "incubating" ideas. Incubation is the most advanced -- and most challenging -- creative thinking strategy. To make this process work its magic, you must first immerse yourself for a substantial amount of time (several weeks or months) with a creative challenge that is really important and cognitively stimulating. This may be a specific scientific or technological challenge, or a broader personal challenge you'd love to tackle (such as what you should do in your life other than working only for money).

Once you feel you've worked exhaustively to find "the right answer", stop all mental striving. "Sit on" the challenge and incubate it. Focus on something else and allow your subconscious mind to breed out the right idea. Have the courage to trust in the power of the incubation process -- and all of a sudden, a breakthrough idea may appear in front of your eyes.

Embrace other viewpoints: One of the most distinguishing features of a true rooster is his unique shout. Roosters crow in the early morning but they often crow on other occasions throughout the day as well.

Have you ever noticed how different cultures describe this sound? In my home country Germany, we hear and say "ki-keri-ki". The Italians (chicchiricchi) and Spanish (quiquiriqui) hear a similar sound -- unlike the French (coceri-coc) and the Swedes (kuekeli-kue), as well as the British, Aussies, Kiwis and Americans (cock-a-doodle-do).

How about Asia? In Thailand, the rooster goes "eg-i-eg-eg", while the Japanese describe the sound as "ko-ke-kok-ko". In China, we even find two rooster calls: "ko-ko-ko-ko" in southern China and "o-o-o-o" in the rest of the country. Given so many different names for the same sound, we may wonder: Who's right? They all are -- or aren't, depending on your point of view.

Inspiration: Flexibly shift your perspective. Instead of insisting of your point of view as the "absolute truth", realise that on almost every issue, there are many alternative viewpoints. Mental flexibility and the ability to entertain other people's viewpoints are a hallmark of a true creative mind, so become more flexible, open and emphatic in the Year of the Rooster.


Dr Detlef Reis is the founding director and chief ideator of Thinkergy Limited (www.Thinkergy.com), the Innovation Company in Asia. He is also an assistant professor at the Institute for Knowledge & Innovation-Southeast Asia (IKI-SEA), Bangkok University, and an adjunct associate professor at the Hong Kong Baptist University. He can be reached at dr.d@thinkergy.com

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