The creativity drought
Your creativity is doomed: stacks of books, scribbles, curls of eraser shavings, wasted ink, bleak white papers, and a dry skull staring into the wall. Creativity lurks in the nigrostriatal pathway, a brain region near the center of the brain that is involved in divergent thinking. It’s the spawning ground for new ideas and combinations, synthesizing logical and illogical or even distant concepts. For instance, take an object as mundane as a chair. With divergent thinking, you would come up with as many purposes for the chair as you can. A logical answer may be to sit at a dinner table, while a more distant answer could be stacking chairs to reach the 2nd story window or using the chair as a weapon against a robber. Divergent thinking is exploration, but a cloud of ideas is useless when it is an agglomeration of random combinations.
The second mode of creativity, convergent thinking, involves putting ideas together in a way that makes sense. It’s a form of testing: if all you have is wood, strings, and a carving tool, you could make a wooden stick wrapped in string, but that would useless and uninteresting. Convergent thinking could stimulate the creation of a violin or bow and arrow, for example– both handy contraptions. The mesocortical pathway is a chain of neurons in the brain that facilitates convergent thinking, working synergistically with divergent thinking to create a prerequisite state for creative flow.
Rick Rubin, founder of American Recordings, co-founder of Def Jam Recordings, and a creative mastermind who popularized hip hop and won eight Grammy Awards, shares a tip he used to optimize creativity in music production. However, this tip is so fundamental that it can diffuse to any area of work.
Tip 1: change an aspect of the environment
When feeling stuck and unable to construct a creative idea, change an element in the environment. Sit in a different room. Work at a different time of day. Turn the lights off.
“It changes everything,” states Rubin. “It’s not take seven. It’s the first take in the dark.”
In his book The Creative Act: A Way of Being, Rubin writes changing an aspect of the environment “can create a shift in consciousness and break the chain of sameness from performance to performance.”
Changing the environment does not mean avoiding the task or wastefully distracting oneself. It is a portal to new, stimulating ideas that would never have happened while sitting in the room, staring at the laptop. Furthermore, this can lead to greater focus and submergence in the project. While recording Red Hot Chili Pepper’s 5th album, instead of recording in a studio – the previous four times were regarded as poor experiences – Rubin and the band rented a mansion to record in a novel environment. Some members didn’t leave the premises until they finished the album.
Examples of aspects of the workplace to manipulate:
- Where you sit: indoors, outside, facing window/wall,
- How you sit: stand up, sit on the ground, lie down
- What you see: rearrange items on desk, add antique items, change lighting
- What you hear: add/remove background music, white noise,
- Time of day: sunrise, morning, afternoon, evening, sunset
Tip 2: stimulation and mind wandering
Another way to leverage the environment to unveil creative thought involves leaving the workplace altogether. Go for a walk or drive. Nature is animated by external stimuli: visual, auditory, olfactory, and touch. The significance is not that trees or birds will inspire the project but that logically, while walking, different brain regions will be active. The most important aspect is to always keep in mind the project because the brain will be in a state of activation that prompts more thoughts and solutions. Moreover, the nigrostriatal pathway that characterizes divergent thinking is inextricably tied to movement. Professor of Neuroscience Andrew Huberman depicts that bodily movement, eye movement, and even thinking about movement trigger the nigrostriatal pathway. Therefore, by moving, the same region of the brain that is active during movement is also active to facilitate creative thinking.
As for convergent thinking, the mechanisms are more discrete. The mesocortical pathway paves the way for emotional and motivational components, sharpening focus and persistence. This chain of neurons connects to the prefrontal cortex, the frontmost part of the brain that is involved in thinking. In the context of creativity, the prefrontal cortex suppresses some choices, sifting through all the possible combinations to select a viable solution that is creative and interesting.
The relevance of taking walks for enhancing convergent thinking is not definite; however, a study published in the Journal of Psychological Science revealed that professional writers and physicists reported that their most creative thoughts occurred during mind wandering, during the time they were “(a) engaging in an activity other than working and (b) thinking about something unrelated to the generated idea.” Furthermore, the participants conceived more “aha” moments that overcame problems during times of mind wandering than when on task.
A solution to blunted creativity: if you cannot come up with any more ideas, instead of slaughtering the laptop, try changing an aspect of the environment or temporarily leaving the workplace. Let the mind wander; ideas will come.
Is interacting in a social environment a good stimulus for creative thought? Or does it serve as a distraction, and is better to participate in the activities described in the article by oneself?
A convoluted social environment can generate ideas when it is not procrastination or avoidance from the task. Plus, you can get ideas from other people. Distraction is actually really good when it stimulates other brain regions, even unrelated to the topic. The most important part is deep focus. You have to sit down and think really hard, and pay attention. You don’t have to work by yourself. Sometimes this can be easier to create things with another person, like Rick Rubin working with the bands. Sometimes writing an essay is better by yourself.