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Warren Berger is a New York Times bestselling author and leading Questionologist - he’s written about how to ask more powerful questions to fuel innovation and creativity for years. His upcoming project is about where to take those questions - not just into a meeting or boardroom or Zoom call…but into the woods.
Warren is the author of several popular books, including A More Beautiful Question, The Book of Beautiful Questions, and Beautiful Questions in the Classroom, which focus on how questioning sparks breakthrough ideas. He also wrote the acclaimed book on innovation, Glimmer. A frequent contributor to publications such as Wired and The New York Times, he has also appeared on major news programs, from All Things Considered to The Today Show.
As he explains in our opening quote, Henry David Thoreau (whose name we’ve apparently been mispronouncing for years, according to a recent New York Times article) recommends walking into the woods and leaving the city behind, to be with our thoughts and our biggest questions.
Warren thinks it’s time to bring this practice back - since our creativity is under assault in the digital age - and AI is creating a sense of anxiety that only makes it worse - and giving us an all-too-easy place to get good-enough answers. Warren wants us to take our biggest and most important questions for a walk in the woods - for 2 hours! - and then to work, heads down for another 3 hours to achieve breakthrough results. It seems simple, but there are layers to this practice that we peel back.
This conversation also left me inspired to rethink my questions - really looking at whether my questions were grounded in the deepest empathy possible, designing them for maximum impact and depth. Warren’s Question sandwich approach also left me thinking about how I sequence questions and embed them into deeper context so my conversation partners receive them in the spirit with which I’m asking them.
Don’t have time to watch or listen to the full episode?
To learn more about leading conversations more powerfully and beautifully, watch these short clips 👇
Video Highlight Links
👀Attention is your most Valuable Asset in the AI age - nature can help you focus & think better
👀The simple architecture of powerful questions and empathy in question design
👀The Question Sandwich: The simple tweak to lead into hard conversations with ease
👀Your Next Breakthrough Idea Needs a 90-Minute Walk: Learn how Warren makes it work
👀The Science of how Nature feeds Creativity
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Key Moments:
00:00 Exploring Creativity and Nature
07:32 The Role of Questions in Organizations
11:23 The Power of Collaborative Inquiry
18:54 Designing Beautiful Questions
23:21 Empathy in Questioning
24:50 The Outside-In Method for Creativity
28:22 Nature's Impact on Creative Thinking
30:30 Balancing Structure and Flexibility in Creativity
34:15 The Commitment to Creativity
39:31 The Role of Companionship in Focus
42:57 Defining Creativity and Its Broad Applications
Key Links
Here's a recent NYT article from Warren talking about his experiences with nature's effects on creativity - specifically, an area in Ireland called the Burren.
You can find more information about the Burren Creativity Experiment here.
Here's a NYT article talking about my cousin's company Caveday that we mentioned.
About Warren
Warren Berger, Questionologist, believes questions are more important than answers.
Warren is the creator of the popular website amorebeautifulquestion.com and author of A MORE BEAUTIFUL QUESTION: The Power of Inquiry to Spark Breakthrough Ideas (Bloomsbury, 10th anniversary edition, 2024), THE BOOK OF BEAUTIFUL QUESTIONS: The Powerful Questions That Will Help You Decide, Create, Connect, and Lead (Bloomsbury, 2018), and BEAUTIFUL QUESTIONS IN THE CLASSROOM: Transforming Classrooms Into Cultures of Curiosity and Inquiry (Corwin, 2020)—all focusing on the power of inquiry to spark breakthrough ideas and improve your daily life.
Before focusing on questioning, Warren wrote the internationally acclaimed GLIMMER: How Design Can Transform Business and Your Life (Penguin Press; 2009), published in several editions worldwide. Business Week named Glimmer one of the “Best Innovation & Design Books of the Year.” (More on Warren’s many books on innovation here.)
Warren writes for a wide variety of publications, including Fast Company, Harvard Business Review, Psychology Today, and was a longtime contributor at Wired magazine and The New York Times.
Warren has appeared on NBC’s Today Show, ABC World News, CNN, and as an expert on NPR’s All Things Considered. As a speaker, Warren has keynoted at the Oracle Connect Conference, the Citrix Synergy Conference, the CUSP Conference, the Fuse Conference, the Design Thinkers Conference, the International Women’s Forum in Rome, and TEDx Portland. He has also spoken at in-house conferences hosted by General Electric, ADP, Little Caesar’s, MassMutual, Citrix, and Microsoft, among many others. The education world has particularly embraced the power of questioning. He has been a guest lecturer at the University of Virginia, the University of Oregon, University of Texas, Bowling Green State College, New York’s School of Visual Arts, and Virginia Commonwealth University, where he gave the 2011 commencement address for graduating business students.
Full AI Generated Transcript
Daniel Stillman (00:00)
Welcome to the conversation. Warren, I'm just, I'm glad you made the time. I'm really appreciative. It's nice to hang out with you.
Warren (00:04)
It's great to be
with you. I'm looking forward to talking.
Daniel Stillman (00:08)
So I feel like one of the quotes I try to remember is a line from David White where he says, start close in. And I decided to take the last question I was going to ask you and just make it the first question. And that question was like, what questions are you sitting with right now? What are the questions that you're carrying around with you these days?
Warren (00:26)
Well, right now I'm in a transition period from my previous book and my previous area of obsession to a new area of obsession. So that's kind of, so what I'm working on, the questions I'm dealing with now have to do with, know, I'm thinking a lot about nature and how nature affects our creativity. I'm thinking a lot about how...
Creativity is under assault from our digital environment. And it's really, I think, having a profound effect on people and their ability to spend time thinking and focusing and being creative. I think it's having a big effect. We're probably just seeing the beginnings of it. But it's going to be a change. And so I'm thinking about how that
is affecting people and what people may need to do differently in order to ensure to protect their creativity and to strengthen it. so that's going to be kind of those are the questions I'm kind of focused on now.
Daniel Stillman (01:26)
Yeah.
And I feel like creativity has been a question for you for a while. Because when I think about your previous work, you think about
Warren (01:38)
yeah, my whole career. Yeah, my whole career has
been about creativity. Yeah, and in various forms, it's gone through different stages. You know, I started, you may know this, but I started as a journalist in the advertising field and, you know, like ad week, ad age, and writing about advertising. And I staked out the creative part of the business. I didn't care at all about the business part.
Daniel Stillman (01:54)
⁓ that part I didn't know.
Mm-hmm.
Warren (02:06)
or the agency mergers or any of that kind of stuff. I cared about the creative departments within ad agencies and the ad agencies that were most creative within the industry. So I would be writing about Widen and Kennedy and could be Silverstein. And these were the agencies that were doing the best commercials, the best ads. So that was my initial focus with creativity. And then I moved into writing about design. And I was
Daniel Stillman (02:06)
Mm-hmm.
Warren (02:34)
So again, creativity, and I was writing about design thinking and how designers ⁓ basically solve problems and create. And then I moved from there into the questioning books, which again, are largely about creativity because they're about how you start with questions and the questions you ask can sort of propel your creativity and your innovation and that kind of thing.
So it's always been about in one form or another, it's always been about creativity.
Daniel Stillman (03:01)
Yeah.
You know, it's funny, I appreciate you mentioning design thinking because I feel like, you know, there's been it's been declared dead so many times. And I also feel like any time someone discovers it, it is reborn because there's this moment. I've seen it so many times where somebody says, my God, there's a method for for creating things that matter that are going to resonate with people and it it lights them up and it sparks them. And I think some of it comes from.
Warren (03:12)
Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Sure, yeah.
Daniel Stillman (03:33)
This idea of there are phases and I should be thinking or asking different things at different phases.
Warren (03:39)
Yeah,
I was very interested in, I'm interested in the fact that there are processes for creativity and design thinking is one of those processes. But you can go all the way back to the 1950s and there was something called the Creative Problem Solving Institute and it was.
Daniel Stillman (03:55)
Yeah.
Warren (04:01)
think one of the people involved with it was Alex Osborne. He was from the original BBDO. so anyway, were, or maybe they were just using his work, I'm not sure, but they were putting forth, you know, five step processes on how creative people solve problems. And then if you match that up with the design thinking process, which started to surface years later, very similar.
Daniel Stillman (04:17)
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Warren (04:27)
And then, so I took that when I was doing questioning and I said, well, how can I do a questioning process that reflects what those processes are? Like, can I draw from that? And I came up with a three step process called why, what if, and how. And basically the idea being that if you look at design thinking or you look at the creative,
Daniel Stillman (04:35)
Mm-hmm.
Hmm.
Warren (04:51)
problem solving formulas of the past. You can boil it down to three steps. And the three steps are you have to understand, then you have to imagine, and then you have to do. And so basically when you're faced with any kind of a problem, the first thing you have to do is understand the problem. And I match that up with why questions. When you're trying to understand something, you're usually asking why.
Daniel Stillman (05:04)
Mm-hmm.
Warren (05:16)
So why does this problem exist? Why does it matter? Why is it here? I need to understand the problem. And then once you understand the problem, you move to imagining ⁓ possibilities. And so I match that up with what if. When we're trying to use our imagination, we tend to ask what if questions. What if I tried this? What if I tried that? And then the last.
Daniel Stillman (05:21)
Yeah.
Warren (05:41)
stage of problem solving is you have to do something, right? So you understand the problem, you've imagined some possibilities. Now, how do you make it work? What do do? How do you make the ideas real? And so I match that up, obviously, with how, right? So to me, creativity is all about asking why, then asking what if, and then asking how. And when I would look at different innovation stories,
Daniel Stillman (05:44)
Mm.
Warren (06:10)
I could trace most of the time. I could say, yeah, OK. I can see this was the why stage where they started. And usually it was with a person asking why. The inventor of the Polaroid camera is asking, why hasn't somebody? And so you can take almost any invention story and it starts with somebody asking why. But then they have to use their imagination and that's the what if stage. And then they have to actually prototype it, build it, make it real. And that's the how stage.
Daniel Stillman (06:17)
Hmm.
Warren (06:38)
But anyway, all of those things are related, know, design thinking, questioning, problem solving, and it all goes back to maybe, you know, the invention of the wheel. And I'm sure when, you know, they had to understand the problem, we need a, why do we need a wheel? Okay, this is why we need it. And then they had to say, well, what if we have the thing be round? And well, let's try that. And then they have to build the wheel.
Daniel Stillman (06:51)
Mm-hmm.
Warren (07:03)
So, you know, to me, it's a universal process that goes back to, you know, the beginning of time.
Daniel Stillman (07:09)
So, I mean, there's so many threads that I want to pull out. And one of the things that I've been thinking about was while I was reading this book is like, I know you spent years going into organizations and talking about this work. I think one of the things that I, one of the questions I've been sitting with for a couple of years is how does change inside of organizations really happen or not? And I think one of the challenges
Warren (07:32)
Bye. ⁓
Daniel Stillman (07:36)
I imagine is there are some organizations that you go into and you talk to them about the power of questions and you maybe even teach them the question formulation technique. You inspire them to think about beautiful questions and to look at the architecture of innovation as a series of Questionings. And I'm I too am a huge nerd and I get passionate about the idea that like there is a series of questions I can ask myself and.
Warren (08:01)
Right.
Daniel Stillman (08:02)
I can
Warren (08:02)
Yep.
Daniel Stillman (08:03)
shift gears and bring myself and a team through that. And I also know that sometimes when we leave, some organizations take things up and some don't. And this is sort of maybe separate from the questioning question, but like, what do you think actually separates organizations that learn to make questioning part of their DNA and those that just sort of like go back to the way they were doing things before?
Warren (08:28)
Yeah, I think it's,
I think it depends on whether they're really a learning organization or not, you know. I mean, there are some organizations that are geared to learn and it's in their DNA and it's in their leadership and it's in their methodology. So it's all part of the system, you know, and the system says, if we're going to succeed, we're going to have to constantly be evolving, adapting and learning.
Daniel Stillman (08:34)
No.
Warren (08:56)
and taking in new information and trying new things. And so ⁓ I think startups tend to be better at that because they are still, you know, they started by innovating and, you know, breaking the rules and doing things differently. And so they're used to it and they're comfortable with it and they, and so they're better at taking in new information, new, approaches
Daniel Stillman (08:59)
Mm-hmm.
Warren (09:22)
and they're willing to try it out and they'll say, hey, let's try this next week. ⁓ older organizations or more established bureaucratic organizations, they have trouble with that because they've got really ingrained processes and ways of doing things. And so where is this, you're bringing some new thing in and they have to figure out where does this fit in our whole system, which we don't change that often.
Daniel Stillman (09:27)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Yeah.
Warren (09:52)
And how are going to do this thing, this different thing? So I find a lot of organizations, they listen, they like the idea, they see something there, but they really don't know where to put it. They don't know how to enact it and how to get it as part of the process. And they could do that if they wanted to. And very rarely they do. But they'd have to put someone in charge of it. They'd have to almost.
Daniel Stillman (10:02)
Mm-hmm.
Yeah.
Hmm.
Warren (10:21)
They'd almost have to create a department for it. Yeah, they would. And I say that when I go. said, look, if you really want this to work, you would have to take someone here and put them in charge of it. Whoever's the nerdiest about it, whoever comes to you and says, wow, I love that presentation, they can be your chief question. It's not like they need special training. They don't. They just need the passion for it. And then they could be the person that leads that effort.
Daniel Stillman (10:23)
chief questionologists, if you would.
Mm-hmm.
Yeah.
Warren (10:49)
But if you don't put someone on it, it won't go anywhere. As soon as the speaker leaves, the idea goes away, basically.
Daniel Stillman (10:53)
Yeah.
Yes.
You know, I appreciate you highlighting the idea of being a learning organization because I think recently I was working with a team where the home or the main homework I gave them was at the end of their big leadership team meeting that they're having every week is to say it's to carve out some time to say, how was that meeting? You know, we wanted to make things different. Like what was good about it? What wasn't good? You know, what are things that are emerging? And in your book, you talk about
the enemies of questioning, which are it's a great list. Fear, knowledge, the illusion of knowledge, which is, guess, is hubris. The idea that I have. So fear, knowledge, bias, hubris and time. And I think when you use that term, the digital assault, I think about one of my favorite phrases, which is the tyranny of urgency. There's this idea that we just don't have time for anything. And questions do take time. And they slow things down, which I feel like so.
Warren (11:30)
Right, right, is, yep.
Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah. Bye.
They slow things down, yeah.
Daniel Stillman (11:52)
I want to talk about the new experiment and we're almost at the halfway point. So I think we should shift gears in just a second. But I first want to dig into like I was flipping through the book and I don't know, I stumbled on this question that I just used because it blew me away, Warren. And I just want to say thank you for the question. How might we form a stronger partnership? And I think it's a really wild question. And I want to talk a little bit about the
Warren (12:15)
Yeah.
Daniel Stillman (12:19)
the question formulation technique, but also like your addendum to it, because you use words like sharpen, soften, neutralize to make a question more beautiful, however we would define beauty. What I think is so interesting about that question is that it's asking questions, but it's also telling somebody something. It's actually broadcasting. Well, I would like to have a stronger partnership.
Warren (12:44)
Yeah,
yeah, right, right.
Daniel Stillman (12:46)
And so I feel like sometimes I think about this ask tell tension that Ed Shein tells us about and it's like, yeah, we should be asking more and telling, you know, like less as a leader, certainly. But I think it's such an interesting because a question has a dialectic. It frames things differently. And it's not saying like, yeah, sorry, that's I could.
Warren (12:50)
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah. Well, and the
there that's really also really powerful is the word might, which is the secret sauce behind how might we questions, And the reason why it works is just because instead of saying how should we or how can we, ⁓ how might we is a very ⁓
Daniel Stillman (13:23)
Yeah.
Warren (13:26)
expansive word. It opens up possibilities. It basically when you're saying might, you're saying, well, there's no one way to do this. Anything is possible. And there's a lot we could try. And because we're saying how might we, it means we can, you know, we can do anything. And then as far as the idea of the partnership, you know, and I like to use the term collaborative inquiry, which to me means you are
Daniel Stillman (13:35)
Hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Warren (13:55)
working on questions together with other people. So when you say to someone, might we form a better partnership, you're using collaborative inquiry. You're putting a question there that's all about working together on that question. So the collaboration or the partnership could begin with answering that question. mean, that question has to be answered as a partnership.
It's like one person can't answer it. Both parties have to answer it. So yeah, think that's really important. I always feel, you I really like what Daniel Pink, when he did his book about selling. Did you know that book from a few years ago? Daniel Pink did a book, I think it was called To Sell as Human. And one of the main points he talked about was that good salespeople
Daniel Stillman (14:36)
Mm-hmm. Sure.
Warren (14:45)
are not on the other side of the desk trying to sell to you. They come over to your side of the desk and they make it about us. we're doing, instead of me selling to you, we together are trying to solve a problem that maybe your companies haven't. And maybe the solution is this product that I'm trying to sell you, but that's not the way we're approaching it. We're approaching it as
Daniel Stillman (14:52)
Hmm.
Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Warren (15:12)
the two of us together are going to talk about what is the problem and how does it get solved. And if it happens that my product is the solution, great, but I'm not going to try to sell it to you. So I thought that was really profound way to think about selling, you know, and it's a way to think about all kinds of business communication, you know, is like, instead of trying to convince somebody of something or sell somebody or browbeat somebody, this is a great lesson for all managers, all business leaders.
Daniel Stillman (15:22)
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm,
yeah.
Warren (15:40)
If
you can turn it into a how might we collaboration, if you're having a problem with one of your people and you can turn it into a collaborative question of how might we together figure out how to solve this problem that you're having. If you can do that, that's such better leadership than going and yelling at the person, how you keep screwing up on that problem. It's so much more effective if you can turn it into a collaborative inquiry exercise.
Daniel Stillman (16:08)
Yeah. I mean, in a way, I've been thinking about this question, reviewing your book of like, what does a beautiful question mean? And how do we know if it's if it's beautiful? And one of the things that I think for me is like, from my background in design, we talk about utility, in form following function, there's this there's a beauty of utility when something works well, you're like, ⁓ God, that's a that's just beautiful, isn't it?
Warren (16:30)
But yeah,
Daniel Stillman (16:34)
And I think
Warren (16:34)
yeah.
Daniel Stillman (16:34)
a great question seems to leverage a fundamental understanding of human nature, which is to say a question that evokes more from someone that's going to create more juice is going to be just like you could say juicier. You could say beautiful.
Warren (16:39)
Yep.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Right. Right. Yeah. And but you also have to design a question. A question is designed. And you have to design it with the potential pitfalls in mind and all kinds of things. Because there are downsides to questioning. Questions, if they're asked the wrong way, they can be confrontational.
Daniel Stillman (17:06)
Yes.
Mm-hmm.
Warren (17:13)
And they can be off-putting to people. Why are you asking me that? They can look as if you're challenging authority. So if you're asking someone who's above you in the hierarchy, ⁓ they might take your question as some type of a challenge to their authority. So there's all kinds of things you have to watch out for. People sometimes ask questions insincerely, where they're
Daniel Stillman (17:15)
Yeah.
Yeah.
Mm-hmm.
Warren (17:40)
One of the things people do a lot is they take criticism and they dress it up as a question. Like, what were you thinking when you did that? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So it's like, so you have to design quite, if you want to get the maximum effect of questioning, which can be really powerful, you have to design it so that it's well received by people. And that means you have to get rid of a lot of that junk, a lot of the judgment.
Daniel Stillman (17:48)
How did we screw that up so royally? Take me through your process.
Warren (18:08)
and the tone that can be sort of confrontational, you have to work on that. It's a complex design project in itself, making a great question. But it's also simple at the same time, because if you think about it, kids ask great questions. They ask beautiful questions. And it's not like they're sitting around designing them for two days. The question's just coming out of them.
Daniel Stillman (18:21)
I love that you used.
Mm-hmm.
Yes.
Warren (18:34)
So a
great question can be instinctive as well. But I do think as adults, what we should do is maybe a great question comes to mind while spend some time analyzing and thinking about it. Make sure you've got it worded the right way. Make sure it's got the right tone and you're asking it the right way at the right time.
Daniel Stillman (18:54)
When you I love to use the word design, because obviously that's, my my axe to that I like to grind, you know, conversations can be designed. And I think if we're designing our questions to me, the question behind that question is like, how do we design them? And that's one of the things I liked about these words like soften, sharpen and neutralize. Is there is there a sort of set of heuristics or, you know, design principles that you're using these days? It's just
Warren (19:15)
Yeah, yeah, sure.
Yeah, I don't think so. I think a lot of it is in. I think
with questioning, ⁓ it's instinct and it's trial and error and it's thinking about the question and thinking about how you would react if that question was asked to you. And so that's how you work on questions and shape them. I don't think there's necessarily a formula for it or a methodology. I think that questions are so different.
Daniel Stillman (19:24)
It's gone from there.
Mm-hmm.
Warren (19:46)
and you're asking them in so many different types of contexts and so many different ways that there is no formula that could apply to all of that. So the main thing you have to do to me is thought. ⁓ Thought has to go into it, right? oftentimes we ask questions without thinking. We ask questions as soon as they come into our head. We kind of throw them out there. And so I think if you do that,
you're gonna have a lot of hits and misses. You're gonna have some questions that you asked that you shouldn't have asked or that you asked in the wrong way. So it's simply to me a matter of slowing down, treating your questions like the important thing they are. And that means you spend a little time on them and you think about them and you noodle around with them a little bit and try different wording, try different ways of framing the question and try to think about the tone you're gonna ask.
with that question. know, there's a really important thing you do with tone and questioning, is just to, you can just ⁓ start by saying, you know, I'm curious about something, Daniel. I was wondering about something. Okay, now that, just by doing that, you soften the question, just by doing that one little thing, because that does all kinds of things. It tells people you're curious, and that's the reason you're asking the question.
Daniel Stillman (20:54)
Mm-hmm.
Warren (21:04)
It gives the person a second to prepare for the fact that a question is coming at them. So it's doing a lot of work, that little phrase of I'm curious. But there are things like that you can do that will make your questioning more effective.
Daniel Stillman (21:18)
Hmm, that's ⁓ it's I sometimes I frame this as it's like positive hedging and I could get this wrong like but I'm thinking about a couple of things here like tell me more about blank signposting
Warren (21:23)
Yeah. Exactly. Exactly. And then if you want
to really add on to that, you do what I call the question sandwich, which is like, you started with that little preliminary thing. You know, I'm wondering about something, or I may be wrong about this, but that's the beginning. Then you ask the question. And then after you ask the question, you do rationale. So.
Daniel Stillman (21:50)
Hmm.
Warren (21:50)
You say, I was wondering about something, Daniel, blah, blah, blah. Here's my question. And the reason I ask you that is because I've been having some issues at work myself with this thing, so I'm wondering about. So what you're doing now is you're doing the preparation thing up front where you say, I'm curious. Then you're asking the question. And then you're giving rationale just to drive home. There's a good reason why I'm asking you this question. I'm not just asking it out of the blue.
It's not a stupid question. It's not a confrontational question. It's based on my needs. I need to know about this question. So that really, by the time you do all three of those things, now the person, there's almost no chance they're going to be offended by your question or put off by it, whatever, because now they really understand, okay, this is really coming out of curiosity. It's really coming from a good place. Therefore, I'm going to really try to answer this question.
Daniel Stillman (22:47)
And it sounds like you've also given people time to settle into there's a question being asked. I know why. And they don't feel like they have to answer immediately, which is seems like it's just creating safety. The thing that I heard and I think it's just really important to outline this is that you're paying attention to what you think of the other person's psychology, which is just another way of framing empathy. Like I'm just I'm empathetic to the
Warren (22:56)
Right. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Daniel Stillman (23:14)
the impact this question could have on them. And I'm designing not just the question and the words, but the approach and how it, and I.
Warren (23:21)
yourself on the
other side of the question because that's what a lot of people don't do. I've been around and worked with people who are very proud of the fact that they will badger people with questions and they see themselves as almost the devil's advocate of the company or whatever and that's fine. You need some of that in a company. You need people who are willing to ask questions but
Daniel Stillman (23:39)
Mm-hmm.
Warren (23:48)
I think sometimes what those people fail to do is be respectful in their questioning and be mindful of the fact that if you're firing questions at somebody, that's not necessarily the most comfortable position that you're putting them in, right? And so I really want people to be, yeah, to put themselves on the other side of that and say, well, how would I react if someone came at me with five questions in a row like that? I mean, would I be?
Daniel Stillman (23:55)
Hmm.
Warren (24:16)
comfortable with that or would I be a little put off by that? So, you know, always have that kind of empathy in mind.
Daniel Stillman (24:25)
Design thinking to the bone. I want to transition to this next project that you're working on and the experiment. And I can share a little bit about my experience with it. I'd also be sort of curious, how there was this other question that I found in the book that I just was like, am I willing to kill the butterfly, which is like this. And I was thinking about, like, well, what's Warren's creative process like now?
Warren (24:37)
Yeah, that'd be great.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Yeah. Yeah.
Daniel Stillman (24:51)
and you are a writer and
I'm wondering how you sort of questioned your way into this experiment and what question you're trying to answer. We talked a little bit about the assault, the digital assault on creativity, but maybe you can put it in a little bit more context.
Warren (24:59)
Yeah.
Yeah. Well, so
it all started, I went on a trip to Ireland. I went to this amazing place in Ireland called the Burren which is a great rocky landscape. A lot of artists have gone there in the past and spent time there. It's a very inspirational place just because it's just beautiful and it's solitary, it's quiet. And so I went there and it had a pretty profound effect on me. I felt like I was more creative when I came out of that place.
And so then I started looking into the current science on how places can affect us, how places can affect our creativity. And I discovered there's a whole branch of science that's looking at what nature, when you put yourself out into nature, what it can do to your brain patterns and your ways of thinking. And it can really open up a lot of creative thinking, turns out, that's sort of discovering this scientifically. So that became the basis of my new work, which is to say, OK, if we know that
going out into nature can possibly stimulate creative thoughts. What if we were to try to make, to try to systematize that almost, to try to make practices out of going out into nature and what would we do then if we go out into nature? How much time would we spend? And then what would we do after that? Because when you're walking around in nature, you're not necessarily creating anything, right? You're sort of, you're not in a mode.
to create, you're in a mode to think and to have ideas, but you're not really working. So then I thought, well, there has to be a second part to that equation, which is that you go out into nature and you spend time, and then you go into a closed space and you try to bring to life whatever might have come into your head while you're out in nature. I think of that as the cave. go into a, it could be your office, but.
Daniel Stillman (26:38)
Hmm.
Warren (27:01)
I tend to like to pick places that are even more detached than my home office. Like I'll go into a coffee shop and cut myself off with headphones, or I'll go into a library and find a desk in the deepest corner of the library that's the most isolated spot. You know, I'll rent out a motel room. I'll do things like that. And so ⁓ I want to find ⁓ these places that are dedicated spaces where I'm just going to work for hours on end.
Daniel Stillman (27:10)
Mm-hmm.
Warren (27:28)
And so I've developed this as kind of a two-part process of, you go outside, then you go inside. And that's going to be one of the basis, main things I talk about in my book. I'm going to go through that experiment, my next book, I'm going to go through that experiment lots of times myself. I'm calling it the outside in method. And I'm going to see how it goes and what comes of it.
And I'm also going to talk about the kind of places you might want to do this. You know, what are good places both for your outdoor experiences and then what are good places for your cave experience. And if you're setting up your own cave, how might you want to set it up? And so basically that's where I'm at. that's kind of what I'm working on. And what I'm discovering is it's very good. It works really well for me. And I'm starting to see from results coming in of getting other people to do it.
Daniel Stillman (27:56)
Hmm.
Hmm.
Warren (28:22)
I'm starting to see pretty good results, not 100%. You know, some people are not quite getting it right. It's not quite working for them. But for lots of people, it's working really well. ⁓ And what it does for me, all I can say is it gives me focus. It gives me, first of all, the outdoor part, I think, gives me a chance to really think and clear my head and...
Daniel Stillman (28:31)
Hmm.
Hmm.
Warren (28:47)
sometimes amazing ideas will come to me while I'm out there, sometimes not. But in any case, it feels like I'm resetting, I'm getting a clear head. And then when I go inside, by the way, I'm doing this all offline, no social media, no digital nothing, right? So I'm going ⁓ unplugged into the closed space and I'm forcing myself to stay there for like three hours. And when I do that, the productivity is...
Daniel Stillman (28:51)
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.
Warren (29:15)
is pretty remarkable. It's not that maybe it's not dramatically different from what I was doing before. But before I was taking more breaks, I was being interrupted more, I was going on social media more, and I never got quite into the deep, deep, deep flow that I'm getting into now. so anyway, I think it's a great kind of method for people to try if they want to sort of jumpstart their creativity a little bit.
Daniel Stillman (29:23)
Mm-hmm.
Warren (29:43)
Particularly if you've got a project or something that's you're either in the midst of or you're just starting or you're thinking about you It's been on your back burner and you're wanting to you know work on it I think this is a nice way to just sort of force yourself to go really deep into it right away
Daniel Stillman (29:56)
Hmm.
Yeah, well, I actually would push back for two reasons. One, the word force always wakes up something in me because when we go to the formula for your question asking, I see is the entry that softens and the exit that softens that makes the question sort of sit well in a space. And so my experience with doing the experiment a couple of times is that
Warren (30:23)
Right. Sure.
Daniel Stillman (30:30)
Those two hours are this low pressure opportunity.
to just marinate with whatever questions I'm going into. And I think that sort of loose space. Yeah, well, that's the thing that I'm trying to think about. It's like the broad question is sort of like, here's this topic that I'm thinking about. Like, here's this thing that I'm feeling like I want to write about.
Warren (30:39)
Right, right.
Yeah, yep, yep.
Did you bring specific questions with you?
Yeah.
Daniel Stillman (30:59)
I was thinking about, know, I'd read your guidelines and I was thinking to myself like, well, what would it, what would I want to walk out of this with? You know, what can I make in three hours? Like, so in a way it's like, I'm, you know, making this loose architecting and it feels like there's this buildup of thoughts and inspirations that when you sit down at the desk allows a lot more to just flow out.
Warren (31:07)
Yeah. Right.
Daniel Stillman (31:26)
I think the other thing that's interesting is the three hours, the two hours and three hours, because yeah, two hours is like a big commitment to like, just wander the hell around nature. ⁓ And three hours is a slightly uncomfortably long period of time to be, to do work.
Warren (31:26)
Yeah.
Yeah, yep.
It's a lot. It's a lot. Yeah, well, you know,
yeah, yeah, yeah. I've said to people, you know, you may need to adjust this because some people, might not, this is the formula that works for me, but it might not be right for everyone. And then I started to think, especially like, think about maybe older people, you know, maybe asking them to go and walk for two hours in nature, you know, might be a little unrealistic, you know, or even unhealthy, you know, so.
Daniel Stillman (31:59)
Hmm.
Warren (32:08)
It's like, think people are going to have to adjust that formula. ⁓ How did you find? Did you find in the end that the two hours seemed long?
Daniel Stillman (32:11)
Hmm.
Well, you here's the thing. Like this is the other. You know, so that was in August. And since then, I've kept put. Well, this is the thing. August, my my my wife and I for the last several years rent out a tiny little condo pretty close to the beach in the Jersey Shore. And I can just like walk a block to the boardwalk. And so going for a two hour walk on the beach, not the worst thing to do in the world.
Warren (32:22)
Yeah. And where'd you do it, by the way? Okay.
No, no, no.
Daniel Stillman (32:47)
Although, know, yeah, so it's you know one Sure
Warren (32:47)
I do it a lot. And boardwalks, by the way, can I just say boardwalks are great, especially if they're not too crowded, especially if they're like, if you're going off season, which is something I do, I do that on the Jersey Shore. There's this area called Point Pleasant Beach that I go to. And they have a famous boardwalk, it's Jenkinson's boardwalk. But if you go off season, the boardwalk is abandoned.
Daniel Stillman (32:55)
Sure.
Hmm.
Yeah, by no point pleasant. It's beautiful.
Warren (33:14)
I love that. mean, I love walking on an abandoned boardwalk. There's something about it that speaks to me. But anyway, go ahead. I'm sorry.
Daniel Stillman (33:21)
The
beach off season has got a beautiful melancholy that I have always enjoyed. But I found that walking for an hour away from my house on the beach and then an hour back was, you know, it's not a big lift plus the transition from walking to writing was very low. I feel like as I've, you we were just talking before we started about like, and I've thought this in my head, it's like, Oh God, it's like, I got to get in.
Warren (33:25)
Yeah, exactly. Right. Right.
Daniel Stillman (33:49)
get on the Metro North, you know, and go to Tarrytown. And then I could, but then I'm basically spending like a day, I'm committing a day to retreat to working on this writing, which is also, think, the space and time that may be required for real creativity, which is what you're also asking and offering people is like, if you want to break through creativity,
Warren (33:53)
Yeah.
No, it's a commitment.
It's a commitment. Yeah.
Yeah.
Daniel Stillman (34:15)
You might need to do things a little differently, but I don't think this is something I can do every week. I certainly haven't been able to make it happen for the last two months.
Warren (34:17)
And no, probably not. Yeah. Although I
will say this, know, people get really hung up sometimes on the time and the two hours. And I just want to say to them, sometimes document how much time you're spending in a day on social media. And I'll bet you it's going to be pretty close to two hours. so, you know, if you think about it,
Daniel Stillman (34:37)
It's fair.
Warren (34:43)
Or just think about the fact that we think nothing of watching a movie in last two hours, right? So it all depends on how you look at it. Like two hours might seem like a lot, but it's not that much, you know? And so, especially for something that could potentially have a big return, it's really not a lot. But it is hard for people to do, and especially when I have them paired up with the three hours in the cave, now it becomes a five-hour commitment. So that...
Daniel Stillman (34:47)
Yeah.
Totally.
Warren (35:11)
is serious. mean, that means you've got to devote the better part of the day to it. And I know it's hard and that's it's a challenge for some people and some people are really busy. And but I do think even if you could only do it once every couple of weeks, you know, if you could block off five hours, maybe you start really early in the morning and you go till three in the afternoon or two in the afternoon or something. But I think it's worth it because I think
it will get you in touch with something that you maybe haven't been in touch with, you know, and it's important.
Daniel Stillman (35:44)
That's,
that's the thing that I think is really true about this process is that like, the negative space to just noodle, as it were, is surprisingly effective. so like, I can definitely attest from my own experience that like, not like, just trying to sit down and write is a much harder proposition than walking away and thinking about what I want to write, and then writing, like,
Warren (35:52)
Right, right, right, right. Yeah.
Right, right,
right. Yeah. Did you find it hard to stay in, in when it got to sort of the cave part or the writing part? Did you find it hard to stay with it for three hours? Did you have the urge to walk away? And how did that all?
Daniel Stillman (36:24)
Yeah, well, I think this is another question about like the skill or the discipline of writing, which is to say research versus writing and editing versus writing. And I think sort of like all of those things kind of take me or take one out of the process. And I feel like the first time I did it by two hours, I was like getting itchy. I think it is a muscle. We talked about this when we were hanging out in person back in March that
my cousin's company, Cave Day, literally provides a sort of a distraction free digital space for people to get some companionship to focus on their work. I think one of the things that's Yeah, so they cave day. like one of the things that I find very useful with it's called Cave Day.
Warren (37:11)
Tell me about that again, because I don't remember that. Cave Day? That's fantastic. That's what it's called? It's called Cave Day?
Daniel Stillman (37:19)
like you sign up
Warren (37:19)
⁓ wow.
Daniel Stillman (37:20)
and then you spend like maybe five minutes just like talking to three other people saying like, Hey, here's what I want to work on today. And here's what I'm going to leave outside of the cave. And then you kind of work for 40, 45, 50 minutes, it's really up to the facilitator. they say here, Hey, it's time for a break. Stretch. pee, be back in three minutes. So I feel like
I've been tempted.
Warren (37:46)
While this is going on, you're seeing the facilitator on your screen.
Daniel Stillman (37:51)
Yeah, you can
have zoom up on the other window. Some people call it body doubling where there's like, OK, I will stay focused because I can see all these other people are staying focused. And so I've been tempted to pair the walk with a digital cave day so that I have the the support to stay focused for three hours, because I find when I work with when I sign up for a cave, I can definitely it's not a full three hours because the three hour cave includes, you know.
Warren (38:07)
That's interesting.
Daniel Stillman (38:19)
two, four minute breaks and, you know, four minutes of like checking in and checking out with people. So I find that like that companionship helps with the focus because it is a muscle and you're 100 % right that I think we we've had such an assault on our our ability to focus and be creative that it is very, very hard to do. I will 100 %
Warren (38:29)
Yeah, interesting.
you've got to send me the link or whatever for that because
I am definitely going to look into this is going to be in my book for sure because I think it's a little different from what I'm talking about because it's really about companionship, you know, and I'm actually talking more about solitude. That's more my focus. But I think it's really interesting that if someone has trouble with solitude,
Daniel Stillman (38:54)
Yes.
Warren (39:06)
if they have trouble doing the cave experience by themselves, this could be a great solution because they may just need, know, yeah, exactly right. And just the idea, they may just need a little bit of, it's almost like a little bit of supervision, right? Just to make sure you're not screwing off, just to make sure you're, you know, you're actually working. And it's just enough supervision maybe to keep some people from drifting off or walking away, right?
Daniel Stillman (39:06)
Hmm
Yeah, because we're alone together in a way.
Yes!
Yeah.
Warren (39:32)
And that's the big fear or the big challenge here is how do you keep yourself from walking away? I'm saying to someone just recently that I think worse than walking away, what we do nowadays in the digital age is we go online. We don't walk away. We don't walk. We don't actually leave our desk and go somewhere else. We just walk away from.
you know what we're working on and go into the virtual world. We go into the online world and that's the escape, right? That's the way we escape and we check emails and we check the blogs and we go through the politics of the day and we go through the news and we go through all that stuff, you know, and that's how we walk away. That's how we walk away from our work because all of that is an escape. It really is. I mean, I'm not saying the news isn't valuable. I'm not saying we shouldn't be.
Daniel Stillman (40:06)
Yeah.
Hmm.
Warren (40:26)
I'm not saying social media doesn't have a role. I'm not saying all those things, they're good in a way, but they're also an escape. They're also, and they're being used more and more as an escape by people. And I think people don't even realize they're doing it. It's a kind of a escape hatch that they don't even realize they're using. And so anything that will keep us from doing that, and if it involves this cave day person, you know, that's great.
Daniel Stillman (40:34)
Mm-hmm.
Yeah.
I feel like it is a muscle that is atrophied for many of us to have sustained focused attention. And so I think what's what I love about this process is that it allows a softening, a soft entry into that process. And ⁓ I'm inspired to try it now that I know that I don't, because you know, I too like a good process to follow. And I think that two hours has been like,
Warren (41:07)
Yeah, yeah, I think so.
Daniel Stillman (41:17)
I don't know if I can do it all and so I love that, you know, you're I'm you're getting permission from the designer himself to say hey an hour 45
Warren (41:22)
Yeah, I mean, you can try an hour. Now, the only thing I would say
is if you do it for an hour, you won't get quite as much benefit because there is a thing that happens, know, Thoreau ⁓ used to walk around Walden Pond, right, Henry David Thoreau. And he said this great line, he said, it takes me like a while, like 15 minutes or half an hour just to leave the village behind.
Okay, so what he's saying there is, you you have the world that you're in and all the stuff that's in your head and all the online stuff and the stuff that's going on in your house and all that stuff, it's gonna follow you into the woods and it's gonna stay with you for a certain amount of time. And it's gonna take a while for that stuff to go away and for your brain to really clear and really be in nature and be fully immersed in nature. And I'm not sure how long that takes.
Daniel Stillman (42:03)
Yes.
Warren (42:17)
So that's why I try to get people to do two hours because it might take them a half an hour just to leave the village behind. And then they've only got a half hour left if they're doing a one hour walk. So I want people to do a substantial walk, let's say an hour and a half at least. If you can't do two hours, try to do an hour and a half. Because then you have the time to get really detached, get your brain immersed, and start to get the juices flowing.
Daniel Stillman (42:17)
Yeah.
Warren (42:45)
And that's what you're trying to do.
Daniel Stillman (42:48)
So if folks who listen to this are excited to give the experiment a try, where can we send them and what else can we share about your work if there's anything else you'd like people to...
Warren (42:57)
Yeah.
So I would say there's a website that I put up. I recently did a New York Times article about the Burren and creativity. The Burren is the place in Ireland that I went to. So there's a website you can go to that I set up at the same time I was doing the New York Times article. And it's called Burren Creativity Journal, all one word. And Burren, I'll spell that for you. Burren is spelled B-U-
R-R-E-N, Burren. It's sort of like the word barren, know, but with a U. Burren Creativity Journal. And ⁓ that will take you to this site that I set up after I came back from the Burren. And within that site, you'll see, as soon as you go on there, you'll see the experiment. You'll see for people interested in doing the experiment, click here. And when you click on that, there's some instructions.
Daniel Stillman (43:49)
Mm-hmm.
Warren (43:52)
But it's pretty basic. I mean, it's what we've been talking about. It's about going out into nature for a couple of hours and then going into a closed space for a couple of hours and then seeing what comes out of it. one thing to keep in mind is you want to go in with a goal, with a project or an idea, something in mind. Don't go in totally blank. Think beforehand, before you do the experiment, think about what you might want to work on and what's important to you.
and then take that with you when you go do the experiment.
Daniel Stillman (44:23)
Who do you think shouldn't do this experiment? Like who is this not for?
Warren (44:27)
Well, you know, there's some people that they just don't have anything. They don't have anything really that they want to think deeply about or work on. Maybe they're different type. There are definitely people that I can think of that I know would not take well to this experiment. You sometimes they're overly practical. They're people that they're very conscious of their time. They don't want to waste any time.
They're the kind of people who always want to be doing, doing, doing, doing. And I think for people like that, this might be a challenge, too much of a challenge, because I think that they might get too restless. They might go a little crazy with the downtime, with being in nature and not knowing exactly what I'm doing here. So I think, yeah, people like that, this could be an issue.
Daniel Stillman (45:17)
But it sounds like anybody who wants to have some breakthrough creative output on any kind of challenge, as I say, it's great to walk away from your problems as long as you walk back to them at some point.
Warren (45:22)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah, yeah, exactly.
right, right. Yeah. And by the way, when I define creative and creativity, I use a very broad definition. So this is not geared to artists or writers necessarily. Creativity to me, people in business need to use their creativity. Creativity is just about allowing your imagination to go to work on something and then trying to bring that to life in some way.
That's what creativity is. It's like a two part process. know, part one is just allowing yourself to imagine, think of possibilities, think of new ways of doing things, and then just putting that into some kind of form, even if it's writing it up or creating an outline or creating a proposal, a business proposal. It could be all kinds of things like that. So that's what creativity is. So anyone who wants to take that approach and that's who this is geared for.
Daniel Stillman (46:29)
I think I'm really grateful, I don't think, I am very grateful that we made this time for this. I know we're at time and is there anything we haven't talked about that we should talk about? I feel like we covered the bases.
Warren (46:39)
I don't think so. think we've covered it all.
yeah, I hope people will check out the site and think about doing the experiment and give it a try. It's a lot of fun. If nothing else, you come away with a different feeling about spending time in nature. I mean, that's what people have been telling me too. They never spent that much time.
Daniel Stillman (46:57)
Yeah.
Warren (47:01)
walking around in their local park or whatever, and they see it differently after they do it. They just really, it changes the way you look at something.
Daniel Stillman (47:05)
Mm-hmm.
Yeah,
I'll look for that next time. So I will call scene. I just heard the beep.