Fear and Innovation
Anxiety is firmly rooted in the most ancient parts of our brain. These prehistoric parts might not always work to your benefit, as modern culture has evolved somewhat from a savannah hiding sabre tooth tigers.
When confronted with abnormal circumstances or crises, our brains are hardwired to go for either a freeze or a flight response. The freeze response is often illustrated by a deer in the headlights; while this kind of catastrophe is less common in human beings, we do have a structural challenge in dealing with sudden change. Called ‘Normalcy Bias’, our brains are having trouble accepting change or danger, reassuring itself that things will remain ‘normal’. That can lead to examples like people continuing their dinner after the Titanic hit an iceberg or 9/11 survivors that started conversations with others before attempting to leave.
The internet is filled with advice on how you can quiet your mind, relax and stop worrying. That can prove life-saving advice in case of stress or overwhelm, but there can also be good uses for these emotions.
In its best and most productive use, anxiety or discomfort can fuel action. Whether that action leads to beneficial change is another question, but more often than not, action is the better strategy. In our brain, thinking and doing fight for the same resources, but doing gets you usable feedback to learn from. When our ancestors noticed our hunting grounds were becoming less productive, we often packed up and left. Leaving behind the certain, forced to move into uncertain territory.
In our brain, thinking and doing fight for the same resources, but doing gets you usable feedback to learn from.
Productive use of anxiety can be applied to innovation as well. Sure, innovation is also about having ideas, but innovation is just as much about deciding and acting. This past decade, the experimentation part of innovation has received increased attention, leading to a surge in agility frameworks. Given the complexity and unpredictability of our modern world, trying things has become the gold standard for any form of successful change.
As long as anxiety does not cause you to freeze up (remember ‘fear is the mind killer’), you can use it as a powerful wind in your sails. Framing it that way can help in boldly going where no one has gone before.
Some entrepreneurs even go as far as to make this discomfort a way of life. Intel CEO Andy Grove once wrote a book on his philosophy called ‘Only the paranoid survive’, warning of the dangers of complacency. You might feel this is not your preferred way of looking at life, but as an ingredient to a healthy balance you might consider experimenting with this mindset every once in a while by creating some artificial paranoia to use as fuel. Try brainstorming competitors moves, cultural changes and customer behaviour that might ruin your business.
Just as there is a fine balance between ‘being out of your comfort zone’ and ‘stress’ for learning new things, there is a balance to strike between useful and crippling anxiety. If you feel you’re up to it, try seeing your anxiety as a powerful change-agent and ride the wave. What’s the action, the experimentation that you could be doing? On the other hand, if you haven’t felt any discomfort in years, you might try to poke up the fire yourself and create some.
