Miles Davis once explained his approach to jazz improv as creating "freedom and space to hear things". The phrase is fascinating: not freedom and space to play things but to hear things - what the other instruments were doing, even the sound of your own playing, and to respond. Any of us can have that freedom and space if we're willing to listen. Whether we're giving a speech, waiting on tables, or sitting in a corporate call centre, the messier, improvised response is the one that takes in the entire context: the ambient noise, a customer's tone of voice, the reaction of an audience, even the weather. Sometimes it's only when a speaker delivers a line and sees the body language, hears the laughter, or senses the sharp intake of breath that she instinctively understands what she must do next.

• from Messy: How to be Creative and Resilient in a Tidy-Minded World by Tim Harford

(Image courtesy of David Wheater on Unsplash)