• Who Enters Flow is a post from Dr. Scott Barry Kaufman. In this article, Dr. Kaufman addresses the question of who enters flow (much of the article draws on results from a new paper from Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi). Interestingly, high intelligence is not associated with a greater likelihood of entering flow. My armchair theory: intelligent people have a lot of mental chatter that makes them self-conscious.
• As an English major, I noticed a definite bias among professors and snootier students against ‘genre’ fiction. Yet, as David Farland argues in this article, genres like sci-fi, fantasy, mystery, western, etc., satisfy a basic human desire: to get us high on endorphins and serotonin as a result of being drawn in to a good story. Next time somebody tries to give you hell for enjoying such works, just tell them you’re doing it for the endorphins.  (This doesn’t change the fact that I found Twilight unreadable).
• Have you ever wondered why our brains make us laugh? Turns out laughter is a reward mechanism for noticing unexpected patterns or realizing our assumptions were incorrect. Here’s a write-up on some recent research on this topic.

Have a great week!

Photo credit: anieto2k

You may also enjoy:

1. Week 45 Roundup: Building Momentum, Creativity Models, and Incubation
2. Week 43 Roundup: Muttering to Yourself, Genetics, and More
3. What is Flow?

I’m dug in and fighting my way through this year’s NaNoWriMo, bleeding out my 1,667 words a day as I make my way through a draft of the final volume of a ridiculously large project. Here are a couple observations on starting a new project and building positive creative inertia.

1. Now that you’ve finished all the fun brainstorming stuff, you’ve got to sit down and start grinding. At first it hurts like hell; you want to find something fun and distracting in order to put off the initial pain. But this is only resistance, and resistance must be defeated at every turn.

2. After a few days of hitting it hard, you get in the groove and the magic happens; your project begins to take shape, sometimes in unexpected ways, and the work itself, the work you first wanted to avoid, becomes its own reward.

3. Later you realize that you’re in the groove and good ol’ flow has stopped by for a visit or two. (Intrinsic rewards are a key condition for flow).

On to the links:

• Here’s a cool infographic entitled 9 Steps for Creative Problem Solving. While the focus is on product development in a business environment, you could use it as a roadmap for just about any creative project.
• While we’re on the subject, here’s an overview of the different models of creativity.
• Incubation is a vital part of the creative process; sometimes it looks like procrastination, other times it just looks like the actions of an eccentric. Here’s an article (itself stuffed with links) on developing creativity by staring out the window. 
• Copyblogger has a good article up on Meditation and the Art of Writing. In my own experience, even a short meditation session helps the words flow a little easier.
• Scientific American recently ran a somewhat fluffy article called Answers In Your Dreams. To quote:

“Research is beginning to suggest that dreams are simply thought in a different biochemical state…This unusual state of consciousness is often a blessing for problem solving—it helps us find solutions outside our normal patterns of thought.”

You may also enjoy:

1. Creativity and Sleep
2. Week 43 Roundup: Muttering to Yourself, Genetics, and More
3. Week 47 Roundup: Why We Read, Why We Laugh, Flow

Muttering To Yourself in the Name of Productivity

I recently read here that prolific sci-fi writer Kevin J. Anderson has dictated about 50 novels into a recording device while hiking.

Hiking and story creation all at once? Why the hell didn’t I try this before?

To test KJA’s technique, I left for a hike with only the seed of a story and a little digital recorder. When I returned, I had a reasonably well-developed first draft in my recorder. I still have to type it then run it through the revision mill, but I was happy with the results.

Some people might have an easier time getting ideas out by speaking rather than typing. Test this for yourself and let me know in the comments if this worked or has worked for you.

(A few years ago, the sight of someone walking around muttering to themselves might’ve been troubling, but we’ve all heard one half of some bluetooth user’s conversation. It doesn’t matter. Mutter away, my friends.)

More on muttering: 

Here’s an older Times article from award-winning writer Richard Powers on dictation.

If you can’t be bothered to type what you record (or you shudder when you hear the sound of your own voice) you could try Dragon NaturallySpeaking (aff. link).

Related to K.J. Anderson’s dictation-while-walking technique, this article from the Association of Psychological Sciences discusses new researh on the links between body movement and creativity. One choice quote:

“Actual physical acts appear to activate the abstract processes that overcome mental rigidity and make new connections—the nuts and bolts of creativity.”

Genetic Stuff 

How much do your genes matter in learning and creativity? Are some people born brilliant and able to do advanced calculus?  In the article How Much Do Genes Matter, Scott Young does a great job of qualifying intelligence and making a case that training and skill improvement (leveling up) are just as important as genetics.

A couple weeks ago, Tyler Tervooren tweeted something about DRD4 (dopamine receptor D4), the novelty/thrill-seeking/adventure gene. Now he has an article entitled Hack your Genetics for Better Risk Taking.

Even though genetics may play a factor in your proclivities toward car theft and sky diving, in the overall scheme of things the amount of effort you put into yourself and your work still matter more than any inherent talent. Just as important is your perseverance, or as Jocelyn K. Glei describes it in this excellent article, grit. I agree.

All this reminds me of a quote (and I’ve forgotten the source):

“I work my ass off so somebody with half the dedication and twice the genes cannot outperform me.”

Other stuffs

Alison Gresik has a great article about working retreats and the benefits of loneliness on Sean Ogle’s site. I’ve spent several months on solitary working retreats, and I think they’re a kick-ass way to grow as an artist/craftsman/whatever. Plus it’s pretty easy to incorporate travel into a working retreat.

I’m including this article as much for the headline as for the content: Top 9 Ways to Deal With Business Overwhelm (So You Can Avoid Thoughts of Mass Murder). I would only like to add this pro tip:

it’s not the thoughts of mass murder that get you in trouble.

Have a freaky halloween.

Seth

photo credit: goaliej54

You may also enjoy:

1. Week 47 Roundup: Why We Read, Why We Laugh, Flow
2. Week 45 Roundup: Building Momentum, Creativity Models, and Incubation
3. Week 46 Roundup: Monticello, Procrastination, and Commuting

I just finished my first month in my new position as tourist guide for the state of West Virginia.* The job is great: I spend my days helping people devise travel itineraries, find unique places to visit, and generally have a memorable trip in the mountain state.

With commute and routine work stuff (lunch packing, clothes pressing, coffee percolating, etc.), I devote about 50 hours a week to my job. While I’m happy to have an enjoyable full-time job (w/ health insurance) in the middle of a recession/depression /reset, I’ve nearly kicked my own ass trying maintain a similar standard of creative output as when I worked freelance + part-time or taught full-time.

To effectively use what creative energy remains to me and to keep producing working, I’ve had to get serious about resting and to make every minute count. Here are 14 strategies I employ to maintain my creative output during a long week. Hopefully you’ll find them as useful as I do.

1. Energy begets energy, so do something physical. While you might be utterly exhausted at the end of the day, doing something engaging (rather than zonking out) will signal your brain and body that there’s still work to do. Even a 20-30 minute walk can help with your energy, focus, and concentration. 
2. Rest your body and mind. Adequate nightly sleep isn’t enough. Short (<30 minute) naps are great; not only do naps restore your energy, they’re also shown to assist in creative thinking and problem-solving. To really maximize napping benefits, try to review your project and any creative problems before you go to sleep.
3. Rest actively. Just like active leisure beats the passive kind with a croquet racket, active resting (like napping, meditating, etc.) is more beneficial for your energy levels than an activity that simply diverts your attention; television, for example, or browsing Reddit. You must be deaf to the siren song of an evening with Netflix and the couch.
4. Find a way to make the commute suck less. I dislike driving, especially when it’s not earning me money, but here in my neck of Yankton it’s a necessary evil. Over an hour in the rolling  death box every day is enough to make a man mad, but a good audiobook makes the time fly by…as well as engages the mind (if you’re interested, I’m listening to George R.R. Martin’s A Game of Thrones [affiliate link]). Since I can’t do anything productive during this time, I can add something to my brain’s compost pile.
5. De-stress. Stress is a vampire that feeds on creative energy. Before you start on your creative work, do something to help you de-stress. My suggestions include journaling, mediation, socializing, reading fiction, hiking, gardening, and (actively) listening to music.
6. Limit the time you’ll spend on your creative work. You might be tempted to spend all evening on your project, but I think this is counter-productive. If you do this and you’re not relaxed and well-rested, you’ll have a hard time staying focused, getting into flow (link), and doing your best work.
7. Say no more often. When you only have a few hours a week, saying yes to too many inconsequential requests will sap your time and energy. Your time and energy are nonrenewable resources. Use your time to make stuff.
8. Use caffeine. Caffeine is a wonderful drug. In moderation, it can provide just enough of a boost to help you get into the zone. Just don’t drink too much.
9. Keep your notebook with you. Just because you’re away from your workspace doesn’t mean you can’t work on your projects. Throughout the day, you’ll find plenty of 5-15 minute opportunities to add to, elaborate on, or do planning for your project. This saves you the trouble of having to rack your brain later in the evening, trying to remember that thing that seemed so important at the time. Use your notebook like a ninja. 
10. Be sure your project materials & equipment are set up and ready to go. Don’t waste your prime creative time doing low-level setup and assembly work. Getting started is often the hardest part of any project, (followed by maintaining your momentum) and you want to reduce or eliminate any physical barriers that stand in your way.
11. Proactive planning makes life easier. When you have only 1-2 dedicated hours a day to work on a high-value project, you don’t want to spend that time deciding what to actions you need to take to move your project forward. Plan before you sit down to work. I usually figure out how I’ll spend my evening either first thing in the morning or during a break at work. And don’t forget about your weekly review.
12. Take a day off, from dusk to dusk, wherein you do absolutely nothing but what you want (this is the day to veg out on the couch with Netflix). No commitments (unless you want). No guilt for not working on your projects. Just sheer, unadulterated laziness.
13. Limit yourself that which is intrinsically rewarding. You may not always feel energetic and excited about your work, but if you’re pursuing projects for the wrong reasons, you will burnout. Let’s face it: some things are just more fun and rewarding than others. Working on them is its own reward, and doing so makes you look forward to more . For example, I look forward to spending my time working on fiction, but even thinking about ghostwriting content articles to earn beer money drains me.
14. Work harder.  Sometimes you’ve just got to push yourself. Nobody said this was easy.

*I  forget the exact wording, but in order to stay on the good side of my employer I’m required to say that anything I say or write here in no way reflects the official position of the government of the State of West Virginia and that all opinions are those of the author. And now that I’ve said it once, I shouldn’t need to say it again.

Share with 4800+ monthly readers (and this curious blogger): How do you keep your creative energy levels high when you’re working long hours?

Photo credit: eyesplash

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2. 8 Lessons in Creative Work I Learned From My Garden
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This year I planted my first garden. By most measures, it’s an abysmal failure. Viewed from afar, the garden looks abandoned, nothing more than a fenced patch of weeds and stunted corn, but when you look closer, you can see a few crops that are thriving.

With such mixed results, I’m certainly not about to tell you how to grow a garden (unless you want to know what not to do). However, I did receive eight lessons in creative work during the time I spent playing in the dirt.

Before we start, here’s a picture of last week’s modest harvest (the bowl of wild blackberries came from the forest behind my house):

1. Inputs make all the difference. When you continue to plant the same things in the same place, eventually the nutrients are removed from the soil, resulting in plants that fail to thrive. Compost replaces these nutrients.

If you don’t know, compost is a rich, fertile, decomposed organic matter, and a cornerstone of organic/sustainable gardening. You make compost by mixing carbon (dead leaves, straw, etc) and nitrogen (fresh cut grass, veggie scraps) in a 30:1 ratio and letting it all break down.

For me, creativity works the same way.  I need brain fertilizer. Too much work without new inputs gives me results similar to my corn: wilted, stunted, and a bit yellow. My favorite brain fertilizers include

• challenging literature
• great music & film
• conversations with friends old and new
• regular hiking & walking 
• travel (international or otherwise; whatever puts me in a new place).

2. Experiments Will Surprise You. Not long after my pumpkin plants sprouted, I put down a mulching layer of cardboard + straw around half of them as an experiment. Within two weeks, the mulched pumpkin plants were about 30% larger than their non-mulched counterparts. Needless to say, I mulched the remaining pumpkin plants, but they still lag behind in size. The plant on the left wasn’t mulched until the day I took this photo:

How does this apply to creative work? During the months of April and May, I kept a daily time log. During March and June, I let my time logs slide. Also, as a part of my weekly review, I tracked my task completion percentages.

The difference in the results are striking: in March, I completed 34% of the tasks that I started. In April, I completed 65%. In May, this number increased to 74%. In June, this number plummeted to 26%.

Yes, these numbers are totally nonscientific and subject to my own moods, whims, and interests, but I can’t deny the results that are staring me in the face: I’m much more likely to finish what I start when I keep track of my time.

3. More work early makes things easier later. Overall, my garden is a sloppy mess of weeds, consisting of too much unused space and stunted yellow corn. However, a couple spots are thriving with little weeding or tending required on my part.

Why? Because I put in a lot of work early in the season, creating an outstanding soil mixture (for the raised beds) and aggressively mulching with straw and cardboard. My pumpkins and cantaloupes are threatening to take over the garden, and I have more squash than I know what to do with.

The areas where I did the least work early on are the ones now overrun with weeds.

Creative work is no different. Upfront preparation gives you a chance to really figure out what you’re doing before you really start. Preparation includes things like

• prewriting and outlining (for writers)
• journaling
• mind mapping
• systems creation
• end-result visualization

I’m a worse entrepreneur than I am a gardener, but the projects I’ve started with a nearly-complete business plan don’t fizzle out in the same way those seat-of-the-pants, back-of-the-napkin projects do.

Upfront preparation will give you the momentum required to keep going, even when you begin to lose interest, because you’ve already done most of the mental heavy lifting.

4. Start Early. Had I started preparing my garden last winter (by composting, solarization, and planting a cover crop), I’d have much higher yields from my row crops, as I’d have fewer weeds and better soil.

Had I started writing seriously in my teens and early twenties (instead of dabbling), I’d not have to work so diligently now to improve my writing. Had I learned more efficient ways to practice music a decade ago, I’d be a far better musician than I am. An early start would’ve given me that much more experience in both these skills.

Starting early also means starting early in the day; the labor of tilling, digging, planting, pulling weeds, etc., is much easier before the summer sun has turned the outside world into a sweat lodge.

When I do my creative work in the morning (as opposed to working on it late in the day), I find everything just flows better because I’m fresh and not yet exhausted by the efforts of the day.

5. Just Start. Even though I got a late start doesn’t mean my garden wasn’t worth starting. Even with a ready-fire-aim approach, I’m up to my elbows in squash and expect to have enough pumpkins, cantaloupes, and tomatoes for at least one trip to the farmer’s market.

Like your creative projects, a garden won’t grow itself. There are perfect, optimal, and suboptimal times to start, but if you find the techniques that work for you, you can start any time. The perfect start time will never come. Even now, this late in the summer, I’m planning to do another raised bed in order to have a fall crop of kale and spinach.

And even now, with a baby on the way and full-time employment looming, I’m working hard to launch a new fiction website and cobble together some kind of performance mini-career.

6. Choose Your Projects Wisely. I planted about 50 cabbage plants, 6 in a raised bed and the remaining 44 in rows. I still have all my cabbage in the raised beds, but only about 10 row cabbage remain, and they’re all sickly.

Why? Because I am not excited about cabbage, (Is anyone?) Yes, I look forward to making kimchi and sauerkraut, but come on: I’m not going to put that much effort into cultivating cabbage. On the other hand, my pumpkins and cantaloupe are all thriving because I’m excited about eating them.

If your creative work doesn’t excite you, it will suffer from neglect and disinterest.

When I was a more active freelance writer, I took a couple jobs only because they paid well, not because I was excited about them, and needless to say the results were sub-par. My client was satisfied, but the results weren’t anything I’d want in my portfolio.

7. Sometimes it’s better to let things go. In both gardening and creative work, it’s easy to get too ambitious and find your projects getting away from you. When this happens, the best decision is to simply abandon that which drains you.

In my garden, this includes entire rows of jalapenos, cabbage (again, poor cabbage), and basil.  Had I tried to keep up with these crops, I would’ve exhausted myself (probably to the detriment my favored crops).

I have a couple websites that have gone the way of the cabbage: neglected and untended, potentially profitable but just not that exciting.  I’ve also abandoned writing projects of the same reason:  the input and energy required far exceed the potential payoff, especially with other Shiny Objects beckoning.

8. Good Fences Protect Your Work. My garden is surrounded by an electric fence. This fence does a reasonably good job of keeping deer and other critters out (it’s just low enough to shock the ears of bunnies). Building it required a lot of upfront work, but the payoff is nothing eats away at my crops.

Think of potential distractions like email, text messages, web browsing, reactive work, etc.,  as deer and other woodland crop-munchers. They want to eat away at your time, attention, and focus. Your projects will die from a thousand tiny nibbles if you let these in.

Build a fence around your creative time, ideally one that shocks intruders. If you (and others) respect your fence, you can be sure that whatever you’re working on will be able to grow to its full potential.  Let nothing in.

Finally…

Next year, I’ll keep a garden, but with a few key differences. I will…

• only plant crops I’m excited about (sorry cabbage)
• expand my raised beds and maybe setup a drip irrigation system
• hire someone to help me with some of the upfront work.
• focus on methods that give me the best results

Update: I start full-time employment next week. Excited!

Leave a comment and tell us…

What are your inputs?

What experiments do/could you use to measure your creative output (against a control)? 

If you have a garden, what are you growing? 

You may also enjoy:

1. Temporary Insanity: 10 Lessons Learned from NanoWriMo
2. 14 Ways to Maintain Your Creative Output (During a 50 Hour Work Week)
3. 7 Lessons Learned from Laziness

The manic artist who spends weeks splattering paint on canvas long into the night. The musician who locks himself in a cabin for a winter and writes an amazing album. Kerouac and his bennie-fueled manuscripts.

Great works often come out of circumstances like these. Perhaps I’m mythologizing here, but these bursts of output are fascinating. Like an ocean wave, creative bursts roll in (often quickly), peak, and recede often as quickly as they appear. Periods like this can last for days, months, or longer. They come in waves, and the people I mentioned in the intro are riding the wave.

Wave riding is a conscious decision to best utilize the gifts of a particular wave. You recognize the wave type and determine how to make the most of it. Many people already do this when they plan their daily routine. They know at what times of day they function best on a task, and choose to work on it at that time. Why can’t we do the same for waves?

Why Ride a Wave?

Like a meteor shower, waves are a rare and mysterious gift. Use them to help you reach your goals, or just enjoy them for the sheer hell of it.

• Waves increase your base levels of focus/creativity/energy. Think of them like power-ups found in video games. Power-ups have many different properties. They can increase your health or magic points. Sometimes they make you immune to ice damage. As with power-ups, some waves help you focus, others nearly drown you in creative energy.
• When a wave comes, you have instant inertia. Inertia is hard to increase and easy to lose, but on rare occasions it falls in your lap.
• Often, when a wave recedes, you’ll be at a higher base level than before. For example, a writer has a burst of creative output and starts cranking out 3,000 words a day. Before, she struggled to hit 1,000 a day. After the wave recedes, 3,000 is tough, but 1,200 is easy. Her base level increased. Over time, she rides more waves, pushes her limits, and gradually increases the ceiling on what she can accomplish.

What Causes Waves?

Frankly, I have no idea. I’ve searched fruitlessly for studies on varying energy and creative output levels. That doesn’t mean they don’t exist, and that doesn’t mean I can’t speculate about the causes.  Here are some armchair hypotheses.

• Big emotional changes. Romantic troubles are a perennial favorite.  An exciting development on your big project.
• Lots of new input. Check out (Inspiration Binge Link).
• A new environment. Our surroundings influence us profoundly.
• A good conversation, especially when it stirs up lots of new ideas or connections.
• Varying the conditions for creativity often result in waves. Check out Creating Conditions for Creativity for more.

How to Ride a Wave

• Figure out what kind of wave you’re experiencing…and how to use it.  Don’t squander your wave by working on something that doesn’t take best advantage of it. The middle of an energy wave probably isn’t a good time to sit around and read. Don’t waste your creative wave by clearing your inbox and backing up your hard drive.
• Re-arrange your schedule then milk it for all it’s worth. Figure out how to use the wave energy for your most important work. Ignore the other stuff. Some things can be skipped, others delayed.
• If you realize you’re riding a wave, don’t delay. A wave is a gift, but it has a shelf life. Set to work as soon as you can. Use it or lose it.

Finally, let me clarify something: I’m not suggesting you only work on your amazing project when you’re in the mood to do so. You should already be taking consistent daily action towards your goal. A wave just helps speed things along.

Waves. Ride them.

Over to You

• Any ideas for calling or inducing waves?
• What do you think causes waves?
• What was your most recent wave?
• Any examples of work you’ve completed after riding a wave?

Photo credit: lrargerich, artotemsco

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Nanowrimo: a crazy event for crazy people.

Writers, are you ready? Nanowrimo begins soon.

If  you don’t know, Nanowrimo (National Novel Writing Month) is a free, unpretentious marathon writing session  The goal is to write 50,000 words of a novel in–you guessed it–one month.

Participants spend a couple hours every day working on something that will most likely remain on their hard drive. A majority of people who join this event drop out by December 1st. Many report they quit because their head exploded.

Those who continue don’t care that they’re not producing great art. They’re happy to be at least producing something…and lots of it. Improved writing habits are a side benefit.

I suspect that, for those who finish, pre-writing is key. Gallons of coffee and the work habits of a demented grad student also help.

Here the Nanowrimo people tell FAQ-readers why they should participate:

The reasons [to participate] are endless! To actively participate in one of our era’s most enchanting art forms! To write without having to obsess over quality. To be able to make obscure references to passages from our novels at parties. To be able to mock real novelists who dawdle on and on, taking far longer than 30 days to produce their work.

Besides helping people write better, Nanowrimo brings together a great community. People on the forums are usually willing to provide input on ways to bring realism to your novel. For example, on the Reference Desk,  forum participants give input on topics like ‘bizarre roadside attractions,’ ‘home cooked dishes from around the world,’ and ‘stabbing someone from behind.’

Though I’m sitting out this year, I’ve done and won Nanowrimo the past two Novembers. The results weren’t pretty, but both years I learned priceless lessons. I’m not saying Nanowrimo made me a great writer (long way to go there), but it definitely made me a better writer.

Nanowrimo is a crazy event, but don’t underestimate it: Nanowrimo is damned hard work!

I wrote about Nanowrimo last year. To read more, check out Temporary Insanity: 10 Lessons Learned from Nanowrimo.

Over to You:

• Have you ever participated in Nanowrimo? Do you want to talk about it? (Nanowrimo can be rough)
• Ever done something for 30 days just for the sake of improving? If you finished, how awesome were your results?

Photo credit: Nina Matthews Photography

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1. Temporary Insanity: 10 Lessons Learned from NanoWriMo
2. Week 42 Roundup: Updates, NaNoWrimo, and More…
3. How I Became a Better Writer…and You Can Too!

“Sleeping is no mean art:  for its sake one must stay awake all day.”  Friedrich Nietzsche

Creativity and sleep are like pothos plants (Epipremnum aureum) and sunlight. The former is influenced by the latter, sometimes in surprising ways. Deprive a pothos of sunlight and it withers away. Too much sunlight produces a similar result. Creativity and pothos plants have another similarity: you can neglect them for a long time, but with care they’ll eventually recover.

Even the most sad-ass, half-dead pothos can be brought back with a little water and a reasonable amount of sunlight. Creativity, I believe is similar: even a person who feels like they couldn’t create a pile of sand can, with knowledge and practice, build a stupendous sand castle.

Maybe I’m stretching this comparison, but I feel like this is an apt way to think about the relationship between creativity and sleep.

Both creativity and sleep are mysterious but studied subjects. How are they related? How dependent are they upon each other? Does sleep promote creativity? Does creativity promote better sleep? How can we use sleep to increase our own creativity?

Sleep recharges, replenishes, and, in a way, defragments our brain. The events of the day are processed and rearranged. Our inputs and experiences are sorted out, organized, categorized, and tagged. New connections and associations form. Since creativity is all about new and novel connections, it’s reasonable to assume that sleep affects creativity. But what do the serious researchers say about creativity and sleep?

Call in the Scientists!

A recent New York Times article featured the work of Dr. Jeffrey Ellenbogen, a neurologist at Harvard. Dr. Ellenbogen found sleep makes people 33% more likely to make new connections between previously unconnected ideas. Dr Ellenbogen said,

“Sleep enhances performance, learning and memory. Most unappreciated of all, sleep improves creative ability to generate aha! moments and to uncover novel connections among seemingly unrelated ideas.”

The article goes on to mention that most of these connections are made under the radar. During sleep, new ideas percolate.  These ideas are freshly brewed by the time we awake, but we’re not necessarily smelling the aroma.

Sleep is divided into rapid eye movement (REM) sleep and non-rapid eye movement (NREM) sleep. There are three categories of NREM sleep, categorized according to brain waves frequency.

Though people experience dreams in both REM and NREM stages, REM sleep seems to be the key to making new connections. A study from the University of California San Diego found that REM sleep “enhances the integration of unassociated information for creative problem solving.”

In other words, REM sleep makes connections that weren’t there before. Further, Sara Mednick, PhD, lead researcher of the study, wrote says  “We found that – for creative problems that you’ve already been working on – the passage of time is enough to find solutions,” said Mednick.  “However, for new problems, only REM sleep enhances creativity.” (Source)

The Lesson: If a new problem or project lands in your lap and you want to do your best work, make sure the deadline is far enough out to give you at least one night to sleep on it.

Dream Mining to Generate Ideas

“You never have to change anything you got up in the middle of the night to write.” Saul Bellow

“It came to me in a dream.” I’m sure you’ve heard this a thousand times. I don’t have any hard numbers, but I’d say just about anyone who makes anything has dreamed of their work, often in beneficial ways. Besides increasing connections, dreams can help you generate ideas, especially if you enjoy the absurd.

That’s also a problem. Sometimes dreams are so ridiculous that they’re useless. But often an underlying image, theme, or emotion can be a springboard you can use to leap into an exploration of a subject and maybe turn your rough material into something useful.

Consider the way spooks gather intelligence: they compile tons of raw data, sift through it, and attempt to make something useful from their findings. Sometimes this provides high-value information, other times it leads to an unnecessary war, but I digress. The key is being honest with yourself and asking whether or not you can turn your raw material into something valuable.

Here are two examples of creative works that sprang from dreams:

• Paul McCartney said he woke up from a dream with the melody for ‘Yesterday’ in his head. He wasn’t sure if he had accidentally plagiarized it, but after checking with several people he concluded the work was indeed the work of his subconscious.
• The Twilight series makes me ill, but Stephanie Meyer says the idea for her glittery vampires came to her in a dream. Of course, she spent years writing the books (I think), but it worked out for her.

Perhaps this is a case of mythologizing the creative process, but it’s still cool, and provides a great example of how powerful dream mining can be. To read more examples of this phenomenon, check out 12 Famous Dreams of Creativity and Inventions.

To use dream mining as a way to generate ideas, you’ll need to make an effort to remember your dreams. Start by keeping a notebook or digital voice recorder by your bed. The recorder might be easier, since you don’t have to switch on the light.

Dreams fade faster than a starlet’s career. If you awake from a crazy dream, write it down immediately. Don’t expect to remember it when your feet hit the floor in the morning.

The more you write down your dreams, the more dreams you’ll begin to remember.

A side benefit of becoming more cognizant of your dreams: the possibility of experiencing lucid dreams.  For more on lucid dreaming, check out the Wikipedia entry. Or watch ‘Waking Life,’ a Richard Linklater film about the topic. Way cool stuff.

The Lesson: Use sleep as a time to generate ideas. Recognize that some ideas are silly but still potentially useful.

How to Sleep Better

I rarely have trouble sleeping, though sometimes I sleep too long. If you’re not blessed with such a luxurious affliction, perhaps these resources can help you.

• Start with this article from Psychology Today on How to Get Great Sleep
• Try meditation. A study entitled “Effects of Mediation on Sleep in Individuals with Chronic Insomnia” says meditation improve quality of sleep
• Understand sleep cycles. Here’s a good article from the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke.
• Try listening to podcasts, audio books, or talk radio. For some reason, these knock me out (assuming it’s not the bombastic right-wing radio. That stuff just gives me nightmares).
• Avoid caffeine in the evening…unless you’re a caffeine junky. It’s 10pm and I’m drinking coffee, but I’ll still be asleep by one.
• Understand your own sleep needs. Depending on your age, psychological state, and personal physiology, you may have good results by adjusting how long you sleep.
• Other tips: stick to a sleep schedule, keep your room as dark as possible, take adequate exercise, use melatonin, etc., etc.

Over to You

• Do you practice any kind of dream mining?
• Do you record your dreams?
• Can you think of examples of great works resulting from dreams?
• How would you describe the connection between sleep and creativity?

Photo credit [in order of appearance] iwok_ktr, state-records-nsw, walkadog

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People create for a thousand highly individualized reasons. They desire self-expression, an emotional release, or maybe some monetary reward. But beyond the desire to create something, what are the necessary conditions for creativity? How can we consciously create and foster those conditions?

The following article isn’t an exhaustive summary, but I think it works something like this: once your basic needs are met, you must develop the necessary mindset, receive quality input, and have a place to work.

Needs

Here’s a popular image: the creative type who struggles to keep food on their table…if they own a table. They sleep on a different couch every night, live in a whirlwind of turbulent relationships, and still manage to produce great art.

Circumstances like this make fascinating historical anecdotes or smashing marketing copy, perpetuated by a salivating press starved for stories. The un-stated assumption is this: they created their amazing work because of their rotten circumstances.

I call bullshit.

Maybe these are the necessary conditions for a few psychos on the lunatic fringe, but the vast majority of us need a roof over our heads, food in our bellies, and stable relationships with the people around us.

Let’s be honest with ourselves: creating art is, for the most part, a middle-class and up pastime. Most people in the world are understandably more concerned with the basic necessities of life.

So, if you’re reading this, you probably have the basics covered: food, shelter, water, security. You have an internet connection. You may even have a job. Don’t think for a minute you need to live out of your car to write a damn good novel. To believe you need chaos to create is just another (potentially self-destructive) way to procrastinate and avoid work.

At the same time, unmet higher-level needs may be a motivator to create great art.

Mindset

To create the conditions for creativity, you need to find flow. Flow and creativity are like peanut butter and jelly. Time disappears, the Self fades into the background, and good things happen. Flow occurs when a person has “a good balance between the perceived challenges of the task at hand and his or her own perceived skills. One must have confidence that he or she is capable to do the task at hand” (Wikipedia).

To achieve flow, then, you must have a combination of high skill and high confidence. How can you simultaneously build your skills and confidence? The same way you get to Carnegie Hall: practice your ass off, and know that you have a right to create amazing things. Everything in the world that is amazing resulted from its creator investing years of practice to build their skills, often in the face of great self-doubt and external pressures.

Besides building your skills and developing confidence, you usually need a clear idea of what you want to create, as well as a way to get some feedback on your work. Some activities have built-in feedback (competitive sports and video games, for example). However, for most of us, interpreting feedback is a balancing act between closely scrutinizing our own work while keeping our inner critic from running amok. (Read more about How to Manage Your Inner Critic)

Input

You’ve heard the phrase ‘garbage in, garbage out.’ I believe that sensory input and creative output may be similar. In a way, the stuff we create is a remix of years and years of integrated sensory and cognitive information. Our outputs are a mashup of our inputs. If you’re going to put your own mashup out there, at least draw from excellent sources.

I’m not saying you should be plagiarizing or stealing work. That’s ridiculous and reactionary. Instead, I’m saying that great works inspire, enlighten, and improve us. Most of all, great works shape us into who we are, and who we are determines what we create.

How much stimulating sensory information do you receive on a daily basis? Are the things you experience a cause for excitement or stimulation?If not, seek out fascinating and challenging works of all types: art, music, literature, film, even award-winning television shows. Talk to everyone you can and hear what they have to say.

Listen. To people. To music. To the wind rustling the willows.

Workspace

Now that I’ve hit on some marginally esoteric points, I’ll conclude with something decidedly mundane but excessively helpful: your workspace, the physical environment in which you create stuff.

I won’t say you need a clean, minimalist work space, a corner office in Manhattan, or a dugout under a coal furnace. Why? Because I don’t know you that well. I don’t know what you like. All this stuff is personal preference. If you do your best work in a dirty coal hole, who am I to stop you?

However, I will say that you need a workspace of your own. You need a place you can think, a place you can escape distractions, a place that’s conducive to work but not soulless. Inviting but not snooze-inducing. A flat surface with room to move things around. For me, this means a reasonably tidy desk, good tunes, a comfortable chair, and a closed door. Not much but more than enough.

Finally, a caveat: your workspace isn’t your storage area. If you have to move a bunch of shit to do anything, then you probably won’t do anything. You can check out this post on Removing Physical Barriers, or I can give you the summary: the less resistance you have to starting your work, the more likely you are to start.

Over to You

I want to hear what you think about this topic. What are your necessary conditions for creativity? What gets you going? What slams you to a dead stop?

Photo credit: adrian_wallett

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Creativity myths are as common as carbon, but in the popular imagination, creativity is like the rare element aether: it’s invisible and it flows through living things. Hard to pin down, impossible to bottle and sell, a little spooky, and frequently misunderstood. Creativity is quite similar: definable, but tough to quantify.

Let’s consider the definition of creativity:

Creativity (from an old Random House dictionary):

1. the state or quality of being creative.

2. The ability to create meaningful new forms, interpretations, etc.; originality

In the first definition, the word state is interesting. Why? Because this implies that creativity is a mindset, a mood, whim or emotion. The second definition implies action; having the ability to create or reinterpret things.

Take these two keywords out, and you have a state of ability. And what is an ability but competence based on natural skill, training, or other qualification?

Looking at creativity from this perspective, then, creativity could be defined as the way a person uses their talents, natural and acquired, to create, reinterpret, and improve upon things in the world. Note that none of these definitions implied creativity was limited to artistic fields of human endeavor (visual art, literature, music, etc.).

In my opinion, this is where the problem comes in. Obviously, creativity is vital in these fields. Without innovation and reinterpretation, we’d be living in a world of tourist-destination art dealers and commercial radio. Each of these has their place and appeal, but they don’t really push the boundaries or explore new territory. They play it safe, give the people what they want, etc. Yes, they’re expressions of creativity in their own regard, but if you were to ask Seth Godin, he would say ‘they’re not remarkable purple cows. They’re boring old brown cows.’

But let’s back up. The point is this: creativity needn’t be applied only to the arts. Everyone has inborn creative abilities and skills. No one starts from zero. The difference is in how people perceive their own creative abilities as well as their regard for creativity and innovation in general.

Perhaps because the use of the adjective creativity has been used in limited scope to describe artistic achievements, a number of ideas myths have taken root in the popular imagination regard the creative state of ability. Let’s look at some of those myths.

1. Being creative means having big, profound ideas.

Some creative ideas are indeed profound, but most big advances build upon a thousand little innovations and reinterpretations. These little innovations are easy to overlook, easy to discount, because they themselves are not spectacular or age-defining. Henry Ford’s assembly-line business model was built upon thousands of tiny little innovations: advanced lathes, interchangeable parts, ball bearings, improved files, etc. Without the little ideas that led to these staples of industry, the big ideas wouldn’t be possible.

2. Some people are born creative. Everyone else is S.O.L.

Every individual has some degree of creativity and capacity for innovation, but only some people engage in these traditionally ‘creative’ pursuits. These folks are labeled creative to the exclusion of everyone else (going back to the fundamental misunderstanding that the label ‘creative’ should only be applied to these pursuits).

Yet, anyone who has thought ‘I can do this better/differently,’ or ‘I can make this’ and has followed through on that thought has shown creative ability.

3. Creative thinking cannot be learned or taught.

This relates to the last point: the idea that some people have it and others don’t. And for those that don’t possess the ethereal qualities of a ‘creative person,’ no one encourages them. ‘Don’t bother trying,’ people say. ‘They’re just going to be fry cooks.’ It’s a self—fulfilling prophecy, like the one described in this study

4. Great ideas, creativity and inspiration are like lightning.

They only strike in random flashes of brilliance. This is partly true. Truly innovative ideas can strike at any moment. But some people have far more ideas than others. Is it because they’re born creative?

No, far from it.

The reason? These people are already working diligently in their field, on their craft. They’re not waiting for inspiration to strike. They’re already doing the work, putting in the time, holding that lightning rod.  The more they work, the more they gain an understanding of their own creative process, and the more they eventually create.

When an interviewer asked acclaimed songwriter Leon Russell about his recent outpouring of new material, Russell said

“I finally learned how to write without inspiration, and can write whenever I need to. It only took me about twenty years to figure that out.”

5. Creativity originates entirely from outside ourselves

Muses, genetics, the  holy spirit, whatever you want to call it; this idea that creativity is dependent on outside forces limits people. Maybe this is partially true. We as people derive a majority of what we think, feel, believe and do from the world around us. And isn’t one part of the definition of creativity to ‘create meaningful new forms’ (implying the new form is based upon an older one)?

Maybe creativity does come from some Jungian collective-consciousness idea stew, but to rely wholly on that supposition may lead a person to look into the stewpot and one day find it dishearteningly empty. If ideas come from outside ourselves, that’s fine, but this view neglects two crucial details: somebody has to keep adding ingredients to the stew, and that stew is worthless unless someone is around to ladle it out.

When creativity is attributed wholly to outside forces, it’s also quite easy to shift the responsibility for not creating to those uncontrollable forces. As if it’s the muse’s fault that one’s ass is not in their chair, working on that big project.

I should add that if the idea of mythical muses makes it easier to write that memoir, great; set up an altar and burn some incense for the daemons in the walls. But ultimately, only one person is responsible for their won creativity and creative work.

6. Creativity just means having ideas.

This myth is half-true. Yes, ideas are required for creativity, but so is the development of these ideas into something tangible. An idea without action is like a horse without legs; fun to talk about, but unlikely to do anything useful.

I’m not writing this to be exclusionary. Everyone should have ideas. Lots and lots of ideas, practical and whimsical. But to be creative you need to do or create something with those ideas.

7. Creative people are, by nature, self-destructive.

This myth has an understandable basis: a list of ‘eminent creative people with probably mood disorders’ reads like a who’s who of artistic overachievers: Hemingway, Faulkner, Woolf, Twain/Clemens, Dickinson. More than one of these folks offed themselves. Further, according to Maureen Neihart (Psy.D), mood disturbances (madness) are more likely to appear in people who demonstrate high levels of artistic creativity. Neihart writes:

“Both by their nature and by their identification with eminent artists, creatively gifted individuals may put themselves at risk for serious emotional disturbance.”

This leads us to a problem when people apply a strange logic and take this finding to its terrible (and false) converse: engaging in self-destruction as a means to enhance or increase creativity.

While self-destruction may be a symptom of extremely high intelligence and creativity, being self-destructive for the purpose of increasing intelligence and creativity is moronic…and dangerous.

If you want to learn more about this fascinating topic, check out Neihart’s excellent article Creativity, the Arts, and Madness

Forgive me if this post is a little heavy, a little too serious. But in years past, at one point or another, each of these myths inhabited some nether region of my brain. I believed them consciously or otherwise. Now that I’ve learned a little more, I realize they’re mostly bunk.

Finally, before you go thinking that I’ve gone all serious-confessional on you, I’d like to close with a quote by Edward Albee, a playwright best known for the excruciatingly funny play ‘Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?’

“Creativity is magic. Don’t examine it too closely.”

Image credit: Helga Weber, h-k-d

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