The quick answer to the question, “Can we choose to be creative?” is no. We can only choose to facilitate creativity. And strange as it may sound, the best way to do that is to get your brain out of the way. If you want to write that book, redecorate the house, solve that problem before you — turn off your brain.
Three concepts appear to suggest that to initiate creative work constraints need to be removed. These are the dots I’m trying to connect:
- explicit vs implicit learning
- lobes of the brain, especially the frontal lobe
- analysis as a post-mortem activity
Let’s start by explaining what I mean by that last one: analysis is post-mortem. I don’t believe we’re ever aware that we’re being creative as we are being creative. It’s afterward that we nod and say, yes, we were creative.
In the moment of creativity, are we aware of it as creativity? I don’t think so. If we’re aware of anything it is of what we are creating, the solution we’re coming up with, not the activity of doing it. When we talk about it, we are always looking backward.
It’s in your head
1) Explicit vs. implicit learning: An article by Malcolm Gladwell called The Art of Failure looks at the difference between panicking and choking. It talks about explicit learning (a very conscious activity) and implicit learning (unconscious). Speaking to Daniel Willingham, a psychologist at the University of Virginia, Gladwell writes:
“Willingham says that when you are first taught something–say, how to hit a backhand or an overhead forehand–you think it through in a very deliberate, mechanical manner. But as you get better the implicit system takes over: you start to hit a backhand fluidly, without thinking. The basal ganglia, where implicit learning partially resides, are concerned with force and timing, and when that system kicks in you begin to develop touch and accuracy, the ability to hit a drop shot or place a serve at a hundred miles per hour.”
This speaks of mechanics but I wonder if something similar doesn’t happen when we are being creative? Do we know why or from where we get the ideas we do? They seem to come out of the air (some artists actually speak of it that way). “Out of the air” is really a part of our brain we’re not consciously aware of.
2) The brain: Alice Flaherty is a Harvard Medical School neurologist and writer, author of the book, The Midnight Disease, a book about creativity. An article about her and the book, “The brains behind writer’s block,” says:
The limbic system, a ring-shaped cluster of cells deep in the brain, provides the emotion push. Many nerve fibers connect it to the temporal lobes, areas behind the ears that understand words and give rise to ideas. Finally, the frontal lobe, behind your forehead, serves as a critical organizer and editor, penciling out bad phrases and ideas.
I think the problem we have when we are stuck is the frontal lobe. When we are stuck, the frontal lobe is running things and, as well-intentioned as it may be, it prevents us from being creative. When we’re stuck and need to be creative “Right now!” the frontal lobe is in the driver’s seat. And the frontal lobe is a control freak that likes things neat and perfect but that tends to impede the flow of ideas.
Stop thinking
All of our strategies for being creative are about one thing: the need to short circuit the frontal lobe, to find that part of the brain responsible for “just doing it.” This means fooling the frontal lobe so it gets out of the way.
“Repeatedly failing at the same attempt is probably a frontal lobe malfunction that makes it hard for someone to give up a faulty strategy,” Flaherty says. “This condition is best treated by taking a break.” John Keats, the English poet, treated his writer’s block by stopping and getting dressed in his best clothes.
When you fool the frontal lobe into feeling it doesn’t have to run things it relaxes and allows the rest of the brain to go to work on the business of coming up with ideas.
Look at what Saint John artist Jessica Doyle says in a Thoughtwrestling interview when asked about her approach to problems:
Over the years I’ve found the only way to approach a problem is to actually do it. Trying to solve it doesn’t work. One must actually begin the work to finish it. If I’m having a major issue with a custom piece sometimes I’ll try working with a different medium or go for a long brisk walk regardless of what the weather is outside around the neighborhood to get my body feeling energized and return home with a clearer head.
The emphasis is mine. Does it sound familiar? Does it sound like the quote just above it that refers to John Keats? In both cases I think it is essentially fooling the frontal lobe to stand down and get out of the way. They are both about producing the conditions that facilitate creativity.
Being creative is something the brain naturally does – except when the frontal lobe wants to edit the results to make it more presentable and useable. That’s good, but not as you are being creative. It’s jumping the gun. It’s allowing the referees to decide a game rather than letting the players play.
No, we can’t choose to be creative. We can only choose to allow it to happen. Ironically, the way many creative people and problem solvers facilitate creativity is by not trying to be creative.
It’s like love. You usually find it once you stop looking.
Bill Wren is a writer-editor, social media enthusiast in Fredericton, New Brunswick. He has worked for traditional broadcast media, worked freelance and spent about 15 years with a very large telecommunications company where his writing focus was marketing, technical, web sites, newsletters and so on. He also writes fiction, humor and (gasp!) poetry. He has two blogs: Writelife and Piddleville.
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“Fooling the frontal lobe” sounds about right, Bill. It’s seldom productive, in my experience, to try to act as both writer and editor at the same time – in any single point in time, you can only be one or the other (putting the analysis part in post-mortem, as you say). A writer can’t enter that peculiar hyper-focussed state where the best creative stuff happens, if the editor is looking on and clearing his throat in a meaningful manner…
The trick, of course, lies in each individual finding a way to make that editing-obsessed frontal lobe step out for coffee, so the creativity can happen. And, some days, that’s a trick indeed.
Yes, I find the editor interferes a lot. I find what I often end up doing is a kind of stop and start thing. I physically move around a lot – computer to computer to paper back to computer … it’s kind of odd but seems to work. And of course, there’s literally just stopping and walking the dog. I think I’ve left some of my best work in the park on the trails.
G’Day,
I’ve known very few genuinely creative people in my life. But one friend was such a person. I once asked him how he became so creative. “Creativity,” he replied, “is merely inventive plagiarism.”
And I forget who it was who said “creativity is thinking about doing new and different things; innovation is actually doing them.”
I’m not sure that there’s much value in trying to be creative. But I think that learning to ask new and different questions can be most enjoyable and rewarding.
Regards
Leon
I’ve often found most people are creative, they just don’t see it that way. They think of creativity as something artists and inventors do.
I’m not sure I distinguish between creativity and innovation. They overlap a lot. But one of my favourite examples of creativity is Shakespeare. He didn’t write an original play in his life (except, perhaps, The Tempest). Every play was an old play, story, history or folk tale. His originality was in how he wrote them.
And that reminds me of a book I read about Steve Jobs. The iPod was simply an mp3 player Apple bought from another company. It was how Jobs imagined the player that made it the iPod.
There’s an old line similar to your friend’s that goes, “Good artists borrow; great artists steal.”
Fantastic examples, Bill: I hadn’t heard the Job/iPod one before…
Regarding the perception of “creativity” as something special for artists and inventors, yes, I think that’s widespread and unfortunate. Maybe why so many people use the phrase “creative problem solving” in a semi-apologetic tone… huh. As if problem solving by its very nature were not a creative act!
Creative… you know, much like my typing/spelling at times. That should have been “Jobs” of course.