Wired to Create: Unraveling the Mysteries of the Creative Mind
Scott Barry Kaufman, Carolyn Gregoire
Language: English
Pages: 288
ISBN: 0399174109
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
Is it possible to make sense of something as elusive as creativity?
Based on psychologist Scott Barry Kaufman’s groundbreaking research and Carolyn Gregoire’s popular article in the Huffington Post, Wired to Create offers a glimpse inside the “messy minds” of highly creative people. Revealing the latest findings in neuroscience and psychology, along with engaging examples of artists and innovators throughout history, the book shines a light on the practices and habits of mind that promote creative thinking. Kaufman and Gregoire untangle a series of paradoxes— like mindfulness and daydreaming, seriousness and play, openness and sensitivity, and solitude and collaboration – to show that it is by embracing our own contradictions that we are able to tap into our deepest creativity. Each chapter explores one of the ten attributes and habits of highly creative people:
Imaginative Play * Passion * Daydreaming * Solitude * Intuition * Openness to Experience * Mindfulness * Sensitivity * Turning Adversity into Advantage * Thinking Differently
With insights from the work and lives of Pablo Picasso, Frida Kahlo, Marcel Proust, David Foster Wallace, Thomas Edison, Josephine Baker, John Lennon, Michael Jackson, musician Thom Yorke, chess champion Josh Waitzkin, video-game designer Shigeru Miyamoto, and many other creative luminaries, Wired to Create helps us better understand creativity – and shows us how to enrich this essential aspect of our lives.
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128–34 as undesirable trait, 134 and visual attention, 133 sensory filtering, 88, 91 sensory processing sensitivity (SPS), 126–27 sensual overexcitability, 138 serotonin, 135 Sexton, Anne, 150 Shakespeare, William, 180 Shaler, Nathaniel, 7 Shantaram (Roberts), 148 Shavinina, Larisa, 5 Shaw, George Bernard, 11 Shekerjian, Denise, 183 showering, insights gained while, 37–39 signatures/seals, 186 Simons, Daniel, 67–68 Simons, James H., 96–98 Simonton, Dean Keith, xix–xx, 94, 96,
the dreams we have at night. When most of us fall asleep, the brain network that involves attention to the outside world (the executive attention network, which consists primarily of the lateral frontal and parietal cortices) deactivates and our deep storehouse of personal thoughts and memories takes over. There is a great continuity between night dreaming and daydreaming, as both involve an exploration of various aspects of who we are, including self-representations, strivings, current
unconscious creativity and intuitive wisdom and then bring that deep insight to the surface of the mind and onto the paper or canvas. Intuition The intuitive mind is a sacred gift and the rational mind a faithful servant. We have created a society that honors the servant and has forgotten the gift. —ALBERT EINSTEIN A “Peculiar Presentiment” Even after five years had passed, young chemist Albert Hofmann still couldn’t stop thinking about one seemingly useless chemical compound that he had
Creativity benefits from an outsider’s mind-set. While expertise is an important aspect of excellence in any creative discipline, one risk of being a seasoned pro is that we become so entrenched in our own point of view that we have trouble seeing other solutions. Experts may have trouble being flexible and adapting to change because they are so highly accustomed to seeing things in a particular way. For this reason, the newcomers to a field are sometimes the ones who come up with the ideas that
(FA) meditation, which encompasses Zen and mindfulness meditation—may have some undesired effects on creativity. When mind wandering is suppressed in order to completely focus attention on the present moment, mindfulness may actually prevent us from reaching our highest creative potential. University of California psychologist Jonathan Schooler’s research has found a correlation between increased focus on the task at hand and lower scores on tests of creative problem-solving.38 Schooler showed