Are you a Cowboy, Farmer or Monk?

Just one of many photographs of me as a kid channeling the spirit of The High Chaparral.

When I was a kid I desperately wanted to be a cowboy (alas, there were no ranches in 1970’s Leeds). So when I recently stumbled across this conversation between Rick Rubin, legendary producer and author of ‘The Creative Act’, and the equally revered musician, artist and thinker Brian Eno my ears pricked up. They were discussing the creative process and how we arrive at new ideas. According to Eno …

‘Artists are either cowboys or farmers really. And both ways of being an artist are fine. A farmer wants to find a piece of territory and fully exploit it. The other kind of artist is the one who just wants to find somewhere new … the next frontier, the next piece of territory.’

Eno went on to describe Piet Mondrian in his later period as a good example of a farmer: the way he worked and reworked those same blocks of white, red, yellow, blue and black, again and again. And it’s true - do a Google Image search on Mondrian and you have to scroll a long way down to find paintings by him in any other style.

By contrast, Eno regards himself as a cowboy, someone who is constantly on the move and endlessly curious, exploring new territory and seeking fertile ground (though he does, knowingly, concede that anyone listening to his work may well say, “But Brian, it all sounds the same”).

I liked this distinction between cowboy and farmer when I first heard it. It makes sense. It’s a simple way to encapsulate two important but distinct parts of the creative process: exploration and exploitation.

But maybe it’s just a little too simplistic?*

It invites us to see ourselves as either a cowboy or a farmer, when perhaps it would be truer to say that it’s better to be a little bit of both. Surely our ability to come up with original and exciting ideas depends on us first roaming the plains of possibility before settling on a territory that feels fertile, and then working that territory until we arrive at the right execution? After all, you can’t become a farmer until you’ve first found a plot of land to farm. Exploitation follows exploration.

There’s a fascinating research paper that looked at the careers of several high achieving artists, film directors and scientists, and in particular their golden periods, when they landed on a particularly fruitful run of ‘high impact works in close succession’ or, as the researchers put it, ‘hot streaks’.

These hot streaks - which typically accounted for just 20% of the subjects’ careers - tended to follow ‘a particular sequence of exploration followed by exploitation … individuals tend to explore diverse styles or topics before their hot streak, but become notably more focused after the hot streak begins.’ The paper goes on to explain how ‘Exploration engages individuals in experimentation and search beyond their existing or prior areas of competency,’ whereas ‘exploitation allows individuals to build knowledge in a particular area and to refine their capabilities in that area over time.’

So to create great work, the kind of stuff that could make your name, you have to be both cowboy and farmer. The challenge is to find the balance, because most of us tend to one way of being at the expense of the other.

If you feel perpetually frustrated in your creative endeavours, if you mooch around trying on different styles never able to make significant progress in one direction, then you’re probably too much of a cowboy and you need to settle. You’d benefit from devoting more time to iteration, execution and craft.

Whereas if your work tends towards the conventional, if you never quite manage to do anything ground-breaking or your portfolio exudes a dispiriting sameness, then you’re too much of a farmer and you need to jump on your horse, leave your genre and your heroes behind and go off in search of subjects and approaches that can change the way you think.

Our pull towards being a farmer or a cowboy can probably be mapped onto the progress of our careers too. When we’re starting out we’re generally more adventurous and open to new experiences and stimuli – though we may lack the craft and the focus to make the most of them. And then, as we progress, we have some success in a given direction and it’s only too easy to settle and grow comfortable there, without realising that an overworked plot can only ever deliver diminishing resources.

I’m guessing that by this point in the article – and if you’re still here, thanks – you’ve begun to form a view on whether you tend towards cowboy or farmer, so I’m going to make Eno’s analogy a little more complicated by throwing in a third role.

You see if you want to have great ideas then I don’t believe it’s enough to be a cowboy and a farmer. I think you have to be a monk – or nun – too.

The most important part of the creative process is, counterintuitively, the part where we are least active. For a long time we used to think when we were resting, our brains were resting too. Due to advances in neuro-imaging we now know this is not true; quite the opposite in fact. When we’re not actively engaged in problem solving or a mentally demanding task, different regions of our brain are able to network together in all kinds of unpredictable ways, and it’s during these moments of mental downtime when our most original insights - those ‘eureka moments’ - are most likely to occur.

Neuroscientists refer to this state as ‘spontaneous thought’, which is very different to ‘analytical thought’ – the thinking we do when we know we’re thinking. The latter is controlled by the brain’s executive centre and is good for advancing in small, rational steps but unlikely to throw up any ‘Aha!’ moments. This is why you probably have your best ideas not when you’ve been stuck behind your desk or easel, bashing away at a problem without a break, but when you’re in the shower, or you’ve gone for a walk or you’re doing the washing up.

Though it’s contrary to our 21st century work ethic, if you’re struggling to find a really innovative solution to a thorny problem then very often the best thing you can do is to stop and do nothing, to engage in a period of quiet contemplation without stimulation … to become, for a little while at least, a monk.

So, if my hunch is correct you’re probably not a cowboy, or a farmer, or a monk. You’re probably a little of all three, though maybe too much of one. The more you understand these three very different ways of creative being, the more able you are to balance them. And the more you balance them, the more likely it is that the great ideas will flow.

Although it’s not quite the high plains drifting I envisaged at 6 years old, if all this means I get to be a cowboy - of sorts - at 50 then I’ll take it. Hi ho silver.

* And sexist. I hope you understand that when I say cowboy I’m building on Eno’s metaphor and referring to role rather than gender.