Knowing when to punt is an important part of creativity. Sometimes, some ideas don’t work out how you expect them to and knowing when to let them go can be the difference between going stale and going forward.
Knowing when to punt is an important part of creativity. Sometimes, some ideas don’t work out how you expect them to and knowing when to let them go can be the difference between going stale and going forward.
Recently, we had a project in the lab that looked promising from various angles. We had good data that hinted at something going on that would be worthwhile to report. Though the experiment was designed to show one thing, it was not designed to show this effect happening gradually. Rather, it would be a cumulative effect that we would see at the end. Unfortunately, the desire to see this effect happening gradually became a tantalizing result-to-have and, as we kept digging deeper, we found that we were doing more digging than uncovering. There’s a difference in science between digging and uncovering, massaging and revealing, and so on.
So, it looks like we’ll have to punt on this one, but just keep this in mind: you’ll get the ball back from the other team eventually to drive down the field again. Just make sure you change your strategy to get to the end-zone this time.
