Creativity

The scientific view of creativity is that it happens in our brains. Although the way ideas appear in our minds can seem mysterious, as neuroscientist Charles Limb puts it, it’s magical, but it’s not magic – it’s a product of the brain. He explains that, while we don’t know much about how the process works, brain scans have shown that certain parts of the brain are more active when people are creating.

In times gone by, however, it was believed that creative ideas came from outside of a person, like from The Muses in Ancient Greece – goddesses that visited people and gave them ideas. And perhaps because of how mysterious the process can seem, some creative people still talk about creativity in this way. For example, horror writer Stephen King talks about the muse when describing the writing process, and writer Stephen Pressfield talks about angels coming to help you with your work.

Wherever creative ideas come from, some people are more creative than others, and there seems to be a connection between our childhood experiences and how creative we are. In his study of ninety-one very creative people, psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihaly found that most had either had difficult childhoods or creative and supportive parents who exposed them to new ideas. Among the most creative, there aren’t as many people ‘in the middle’ who had normal childhoods, he says. However, many of us could be more creative, so what can we do to call on the muse or access whatever it is in our brains to increase our creativity?

One thing we can do is give something a try. According to psychologist Adam Grant, many of us don’t bother to try because of fear of failing or looking stupid. He adds that creative people (original thinkers) also have fears and doubts, but often they’re even more afraid of failing to try. In his TED talk, he gives the example of Elon Musk, who believed that Tesla wouldn’t succeed but felt that it was so important that he had to try. Grant says that the people who succeed the most are often the ones who try the most, as generating more ideas increases the chances of creating something original.

Pressfield says that (for writing) making a start on something is key. He argues that writing is not hard, but sitting down to write is hard. But once you commit to doing something and make a start, all sorts of things will happen to help you – you get out of your own way and allow the angels to come in and do their job, he says. Having a regular writing routine also seems to be important. As King says, don’t wait for the muse to give you inspiration; just make sure she knows where you’re going to be at a certain time each day, and, at some point, she’ll start showing up to help you.

Taking a break can also be helpful, especially if you’re stuck; ideas might come while you’re doing something else, like taking a shower or going for a walk. CEO Larry Kim suggests moving around, as physical activity has a positive effect on creativity. If ideas don’t come, the old tip, ‘sleep on it’, might be good advice, as it seems that dreams help with the creative process. According to sleep scientist Matthew Walker, Paul McCartney woke up with the tune for the song Yesterday in his head, as Keith Richards did with the introduction to Satisfaction. Walker explains that when we are dreaming our brains are making new connections between things, and this helps us to wake up with solutions to problems.

Other tips Kim offers for increasing your creativity include doodling, sketching, and getting outside your comfort zone by taking a class and learning something new. As a way to test your creative powers or warm up your creativity, he suggests trying the 30 Circles Test: draw 30 circles on a piece of paper, and give yourself one or two minutes to turn as many circles as you can into objects (e.g. a face, a clock). Most adults can’t get to 30, Kim says, partly because we tend to self-edit. But it might be worth trying – as Adam Grant says, if you can learn to generate more ideas, it will increase the chances of one of them being a good idea.

For me, making a start on something (often writing things down) and then doing other things seems to help. Whether from other parts of my brain, dreams or muses, good ideas often come days or weeks after writing something down. However, like what happened with this website, some ideas take even longer to fully form. Steven Johnson, author of Where Good Ideas Come From, explains that often people feel like there is an interesting problem in the back of their mind, but they can’t quite get what it is, and then it comes into view over time.