Walt Disney’s Three-Stage Creative Process

Creating and Editing require different mindsets, so you often don’t want to mix the two activities.

Walt Disney agreed with this idea. He would break up the process of thinking up and refining ideas into three distinct phases, focusing on only one stage at a time:

1. Dreamer
   1. For fantasizing, creating raw ideas without any filter
   2. This stage is about “why not?”
2. Realist
   1. Re-examine dreamer ideas and rework them into something more practical
   2. Not about the reasons it could not be achieved, only about what could be done
   3. This stage is about “how?”
3. Spoiler/Critic
   1. Shoot holes in the refined ideas from the realist stage

Ideas that survive this three stage process are the ones you should work on. By compartmentalizing the stages, you gain distinct advantages:

1. You can come up with ideas without letting reality or criticism get in the way
2. You can refine ideas without the harsh filter of a critic
3. You can criticize and examine a well-thought out idea, something with a bit more structure.

The problem is that most brainstorming meetings (or meetings in general) involve a group of people with mixed roles/focuses – a combination of dreamers, realists, and spoilers. In a mixed environment, dream ideas don’t stand a chance.

Physically Representing the Stages

This process is best implemented physically. You can do this in multiple ways.

The simplest approach is to work in the different stages at different times, whether that is times of day or days of the week. Alternatively, you can steal another lesson from Disney and compartmentalize the stages in different rooms in your office or house. For example:

• Conference Room A in your office can ONLY be used for the dreaming stage. No filtering, realism, or spoiling is allowed in this room.
• Conference Room B can only be used for the realist stage. The only activity allowed is finding ways to convert dreams to reality.
• Conference Room C can only be used for the spoiler stage – being a critic and editing to find weak spots before an idea goes live.

Another way to physically embody this is to associate each of the roles with different pieces of clothing. You can take the “wearing different hats” metaphor literally, putting on a different hat (or no hat at all) depending on your target role. You could also use shoes, slippers, or other accessories as a trigger for the specific mindset.

By consistently following these rules, you will find it much easier to trigger the desired state of mind.

References

• Disney Brainstorming Method: Dreamer, Realist, and Spoiler
• The Practice by Seth Godin
  

  Ideas hate conference rooms, particularly conference rooms where there is a history of criticism, personal attacks, or boredom.

• Building a Second Brain by Tiago Forte
  

  There’s a name for this phenomenon: the Cathedral Effect. Studies have shown that the environment we find ourselves in powerfully shapes our thinking. When we are in a space with high ceilings, for example—think of the lofty architecture of classic churches invoking the grandeur of heaven—we tend to think in more abstract ways. When we’re in a room with low ceilings, such as a small workshop, we’re more likely to think concretely.