Lunch

In losing our lunches, we’ve also lost respect for that fragile, fertile process on which the entire ad industry is supposedly grounded : creativity. The noontime salivation is the creative mind’s salvation. As chairman Jimmy reminds us, “We must eat to create.” And indeed, it is no accident that “eat” is situated at the heart of “create.”

Taking a proper lunch (liquid lunch doesn’t qualify) forces us to shift gears. It relieves stress, renews our connection with the real world and real live people and in the process, gives us reason to return from it to labor in the creative assault mines we call ad agencies.

Lunchtime affords us the opportunity to eat just at the point when our brains are screaming for fuel. Yet eating is only the tip of the iceberg lettuce in the creative salad. Accordingly, lunch isn’t just about a meal. It’s about escape, release, diversion, respite, and liberation. My son Brett’s 6th grade classmate, Tim, propounded what he called his “philosophy of lunch.” And while I don’t subscribe to his particular philosophy (which, as I recall, had to do with helping himself to the lunches of others when he forgot to bring his own), I agree with young Tim that lunch is worthy of its own philosophy. Because lunch is not simply the noontime meal, it is an essential phase in the daily creative process. We must not only eat to create. We must break to create. Break patterns, break molds, break rules. And most importantly, to create, we must break from the process of creating.

Not to contaminate this speculation with fact, but recent studies on the creative process indicate that the most productive creative thought occurs in ninety minute chunks, give or take 30 minutes. Any brain-intensive activity, “[has] to be long enough to enable the mind to build up a rhythm, and short enough to prevent it from having too large a sag in the middle.”, according to Tony Buzan. Why do you think brainstorming sessions tend to last only an hour or two?

Given this creative curve, you can get about one good push in before lunch approaches. By 11:30 or so, the creative aperture is rapidly slamming shut. These days, that’s about the time you’re summoned to a “lunch meeting” -- often one of those above-mentioned brainstorming session, a client work session or some other ill-timed intrusion. After which you grab a quick bite and spend the rest of the afternoon, and often evening, trying to squeeze out a spark.

I urge you to resist this insidious noontime imposition on your brain. Don’t let them milk you dry, leaving you numb, dumb and plumb out of gas, with the afternoon looming ahead. Asking you to push on through lunch disrespects you as a creative person, and reflects the ignorance of those who choose to use this precious part of the day so ineffectively and, (literally) thoughtlessly.

But wait. What about all of you who choose to work through lunch, running to some carry-out joint and bringing a bag of food back to your office? Is there some perverse, martyrmaniacal work ethic going on here, whereby skipping or skimping lunch is supposed to mean you’re working harder or smarter? Who are you kidding? When you enter lunch-deficit, the creative juices have long since dried up, and you’re on auto-pilot. Not the ideal conditions for generating that next big idea.

This business should not reward the idea of pacing yourself evenly over 8 or 10 or 12 hours. That’s what assembly lines are for. In order to dig really deep, reach really high or wide or whatever you do to make a truly new, interesting conceptual connection, you have to not be digging or reaching much of the time. Your goal -- no, your duty -- is to replenish those juices by doing precisely nothing creative. Your brain needs to take a deep breath and a long drink. Eat food. Drink liquid. Then take a walk, a run or a swim, read, nap, talk with your cohorts about anything besides the immediate task at hand, shop, watch TV.

By now the din of dissent is deafening. “Today’s pace has hit warp speed, the pressure to produce is far greater, we simply can’t afford the luxury of 60 or 90 minutes off-task.”

Hippo crap, I say. The faster this business moves, the more vital lunch becomes. We must be vigilant in preserving the integrity of the creative process on all fronts, because that’s all that stands between us and some Hoover ad.
The ad community has stopped going to lunch. Advertising is in a trough. Is this connection causal? Of course it is. Short-shrifting lunch short-sheets the creative process. Let us all remember to worship at the altar of Lunch. And while we’re at it, let’s lobby for a cot in every office to accommodate that much-needed midafternoon nap. Seriously.