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Wired to Create: Unraveling the Mysteries of the Creative Mind
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.
From the Hardcover edition.
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.
From the Hardcover edition.
286 pages, Kindle Edition
First published October 6, 2015
420 people are currently reading
7253 people want to read
About the author
Scott Barry Kaufman
21 books482 followersScott Barry Kaufman, Ph.D., is a humanistic psychologist exploring the depths of human potential. He has taught courses on intelligence, creativity, and well-being at Columbia University, NYU, the University of Pennsylvania, and elsewhere. In addition to writing the column Beautiful Minds for Scientific American, he also hosts The Psychology Podcast, and is author and/or editor of 9 books, including Transcend: The New Science of Self-Actualization, Wired to Create: Unravelling the Mysteries of the Creative Mind (with Carolyn Gregoire), and Ungifted: Intelligence Redefined. In 2015, he was named one of "50 Groundbreaking Scientists who are changing the way we see the world" by Business Insider. Find out more at http://ScottBarryKaufman.com.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 210 reviews
November 16, 2018
Fun read! I was attracted to this book because I see myself as a creative person, and thought learning a little psychology behind it would be fun. It did not disappoint, I felt that most of the chapters were written just for me. I have had many inclinations about my personality and the reasons why I am the way that I am, and this book justified many of those feelings. It gave me permission to be who I am without fear. I highly recommend this book, especially if you are a creator.
April 7, 2016
I enjoyed reading this book; it is engaging, and full of intriguing information about creativity. Some of the information in this book is well-known and documented in other books. But I did learn a lot from this book, so I definitely recommend it.
The book is well organized in chapters that deal with factors that seem to contribute to creativity. These factors are: Imaginative play, passion, daydreaming, solitude, intuition, openness to experience, mindfulness, sensitivity, turning adversity into advantage, and thinking differently. I learned that creative minds are both messy and complex. Creativity is not the same as IQ. Creative writers score high in both tests for psychological health and in psychopathology! They are simultaneously mentally healthier and more mentally ill than the average person!
George Bernard Shaw wrote, "We don't stop playing because we grow old; we grow old because we stop playing.". The book notes the importance of daydreaming for incubating new ideas. Also, interestingly, solitude is also important for creativity. Creative people are more sensitive to noises in the environment than most people.
I was particularly interested in what the book has to say about meditation. Focused meditation is actually detrimental to creativity, while open-monitoring meditation (tuning into one's own subjective experience) is helpful for fostering creativity.
I thought it was especially intriguing that so many performers seem to show paradoxical behavior. When they are on stage, they appear to be extremely extroverted, but they are actually introverted, and quite sensitive. Backstage they are completely different from their onstage presence.
In 1959, Isaac Asimov a wonderful essay about creativity. In it, he wrote, "The world in general disapproves of creativity." Asimov explains that we celebrate new original ideas only after they are widely accepted. Until then, we fear creative ideas, because they push us out of our "psychological comfort zone." Creative work can be dangerous, because we simultaneously admire and fear creativity.
The book is well organized in chapters that deal with factors that seem to contribute to creativity. These factors are: Imaginative play, passion, daydreaming, solitude, intuition, openness to experience, mindfulness, sensitivity, turning adversity into advantage, and thinking differently. I learned that creative minds are both messy and complex. Creativity is not the same as IQ. Creative writers score high in both tests for psychological health and in psychopathology! They are simultaneously mentally healthier and more mentally ill than the average person!
George Bernard Shaw wrote, "We don't stop playing because we grow old; we grow old because we stop playing.". The book notes the importance of daydreaming for incubating new ideas. Also, interestingly, solitude is also important for creativity. Creative people are more sensitive to noises in the environment than most people.
I was particularly interested in what the book has to say about meditation. Focused meditation is actually detrimental to creativity, while open-monitoring meditation (tuning into one's own subjective experience) is helpful for fostering creativity.
I thought it was especially intriguing that so many performers seem to show paradoxical behavior. When they are on stage, they appear to be extremely extroverted, but they are actually introverted, and quite sensitive. Backstage they are completely different from their onstage presence.
In 1959, Isaac Asimov a wonderful essay about creativity. In it, he wrote, "The world in general disapproves of creativity." Asimov explains that we celebrate new original ideas only after they are widely accepted. Until then, we fear creative ideas, because they push us out of our "psychological comfort zone." Creative work can be dangerous, because we simultaneously admire and fear creativity.
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April 7, 2025book report book completed (finally) (!!!)
(i have 169 highlights and notes.. this is going to be such a pain to go through)
(i have 169 highlights and notes.. this is going to be such a pain to go through)
January 13, 2016
I was very disappointed by this book. I didn't learn anything new - it was basically a Cliff Notes version of all of the creativity gurus that I have already read collated into this one book. This might be helpful to you if you are new to creativity research, but if you want some practical advice on helping with your creative habits and output, go to the source material: Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (anything he has ever written on the topic), Julia Cameron (The Artist's Way), Elaine Aron (on being Highly Sensitive People).
February 7, 2017
It's a short book with a large number of quotes and extensive notes. What that means is that Wired to Create is a nice little review of a large amount of material about our current understanding of creativity.
There isn't a lot of original material here, and that's okay. But I do feel it falls short of being the inspirational source it might have been.
I want one or more of these things from a non-fiction book:
1. Tell a good story (reads like fiction, but isn't)
2. Teach me something I didn't already know
3. Challenge me to have a different perspective about something I thought I knew
4. Inspire me to try something (or inspire me to learn more about a subject)
This book had a little bit of each of these things, but less than I would have liked.
Much of the material simply confirmed what I already knew. That's not always a bad thing. Here's a quote from the chapter on "Passion":
I've always known that to be very true for me. I've heard it expressed before and I've applied that knowledge to make my work more bearable on several occasions. Nevertheless, the reminder came at a good time for me.
On the other hand, it was difficult to come up with a way to apply the facts from many of the chapters or even to extract any sort of "a ha!" moments from them. Perhaps I've just read too many other writings on creativity (and learning and brain plasticity) recently for there to be enough novel material in Wired to Create.
Another irritating bit, and perhaps more of a complaint to the publisher than the authors: there are little pull-quotes peppered all over the book. I'm sure they were intended to make the book even more skimmable than it already is. They make sense in a magazine, especially when quoting from an interview. I found them to be irritating breaks in the flow of reading. It was strange to re-read the same sentence twice on the page.
I would still recommend it to anyone looking for a quick survey of the current science because it's short and concise.
There isn't a lot of original material here, and that's okay. But I do feel it falls short of being the inspirational source it might have been.
I want one or more of these things from a non-fiction book:
1. Tell a good story (reads like fiction, but isn't)
2. Teach me something I didn't already know
3. Challenge me to have a different perspective about something I thought I knew
4. Inspire me to try something (or inspire me to learn more about a subject)
This book had a little bit of each of these things, but less than I would have liked.
Much of the material simply confirmed what I already knew. That's not always a bad thing. Here's a quote from the chapter on "Passion":
"It should come as little surprise that when we feel that our work is both emotionally interesting and personally meaningful, accomplishing a task is significantly less mentally taxing."
I've always known that to be very true for me. I've heard it expressed before and I've applied that knowledge to make my work more bearable on several occasions. Nevertheless, the reminder came at a good time for me.
On the other hand, it was difficult to come up with a way to apply the facts from many of the chapters or even to extract any sort of "a ha!" moments from them. Perhaps I've just read too many other writings on creativity (and learning and brain plasticity) recently for there to be enough novel material in Wired to Create.
Another irritating bit, and perhaps more of a complaint to the publisher than the authors: there are little pull-quotes peppered all over the book. I'm sure they were intended to make the book even more skimmable than it already is. They make sense in a magazine, especially when quoting from an interview. I found them to be irritating breaks in the flow of reading. It was strange to re-read the same sentence twice on the page.
It was strange to re-read the same sentence twice on the page.
I would still recommend it to anyone looking for a quick survey of the current science because it's short and concise.
September 23, 2021
I really liked the book and would recommend it. Unfortunately I read some other peoples reviews prior to starting to write my review so I am going to be a bit influenced by what I read of their thoughts on the book. Someone else said it was like cliff notes to other peoples work on Creativity. I think that is a big reason why I liked it. There is so much out there and it is nice to have a summary of all that research. Some would say they wanted more. Well, we always want more. Often if you get the big points you can come up with a lot of the small points on your own by giving it some thought. I have fairly often seen people complain that a book is repetitive. I think in those books the author wanted to drive the point home, (and maybe fill out a better sized book and a bigger fee from the publisher.) I didn't see much repetition in this book. However, there is 53 pages of notes/references and about 10 pages for the index of the 288 pages.
I saw a quote from a review that said:
"This guide is well-documented, never pedantic, and always educational and inspiring."
—Publishers Weekly.
Well-documented was a good way of referring to the 53 pages of notes and the rest of what he said lets you now it is not too repetitive and filled with fluff.
The book did not have a lot of techniques to help come up with creative ideas. For that I turn to my favorite book on that, 'Thinkiertoys' by Michael Michalko. I like the topic of creativity and am always open to other suggestions.
I also want to say thank you for all that write longer reviews in Goodreads. It really does help when we are trying to pick the next book to read.
I saw a quote from a review that said:
"This guide is well-documented, never pedantic, and always educational and inspiring."
—Publishers Weekly.
Well-documented was a good way of referring to the 53 pages of notes and the rest of what he said lets you now it is not too repetitive and filled with fluff.
The book did not have a lot of techniques to help come up with creative ideas. For that I turn to my favorite book on that, 'Thinkiertoys' by Michael Michalko. I like the topic of creativity and am always open to other suggestions.
I also want to say thank you for all that write longer reviews in Goodreads. It really does help when we are trying to pick the next book to read.
September 2, 2017
This is like the 232nd book I've read on creativity, but it definitely stands out among the oversaturated genre. Unlike the others I've read, this one is not a quick read, nor is it filled with variations of the same exercises/advice to be more creative. No, this is filled with anecdotes backed by research and just the perfect amount of neuroscience. I'm so here for this.
Unlike the others in the genre, I didn't finish this in one afternoon. (It took several months, but only because I kept having to return it when people would recall it from me at the library). I suppose I could have, but it's much more dense (it's only 186 pages of actual book -- the other 100-ish pages are acknowledgements/references, which goes to show the depth of the research that went into writing it). I wouldn't have absorbed it all if I sped through it.
Is this book going to kick-start you into being more creative by giving you that lightbulb moment of motivation? Probably not. It's not supposed to, and if that's what you're looking for you'll probably think "wow, that was a useless book." Will it give you something to think about regarding the potential of the human brain to create something from nothing? Absolutely. It's a refreshing change from the others I've been reading.
Unlike the others in the genre, I didn't finish this in one afternoon. (It took several months, but only because I kept having to return it when people would recall it from me at the library). I suppose I could have, but it's much more dense (it's only 186 pages of actual book -- the other 100-ish pages are acknowledgements/references, which goes to show the depth of the research that went into writing it). I wouldn't have absorbed it all if I sped through it.
Is this book going to kick-start you into being more creative by giving you that lightbulb moment of motivation? Probably not. It's not supposed to, and if that's what you're looking for you'll probably think "wow, that was a useless book." Will it give you something to think about regarding the potential of the human brain to create something from nothing? Absolutely. It's a refreshing change from the others I've been reading.
February 26, 2016
If you've never read anything about creativity, this book is a pretty good start. However, if you've read any articles on this subject, you will be disappointed. Each chapter is an interesting overview, but they are all a bit incomplete, all leave you with the feeling that there are so much more to explore.
August 16, 2019
O carte despre ce, cum și de ce fac oamenii creativi, de la inovatori și până la scriitori, pictori, muzicieni. Recomand!
April 23, 2016
I requested this book from the library after reading an exerpt in an online article (Huffington Post, maybe?). I'm interested in psychology and sociology, but prefer less academic books on the subject. This was a perfect melding of informational and engaging to the average reader.
In Wired to Create, Kaufman and Gregoire give insight into what makes creative people different. Citing a wealth of books and articles on the neuroscience and psychology of creativity, they've have broken down, by chapter, all the different components.
Apparently, creative people have 'messy' minds as well as 'messy' emotions. There also seems to be a correlation between creativity and mental health problems. Oddly enough, they also show a greater depth of joy and a higher degree of savoring life.
Some of what I read came as no surprise. Creative people engage in imaginative play more often than those less creative. They daydream, enjoy solitude, and depend strongly on their intuition. They tend to have a higher degree of sensitivity, are open to new experiences, diversity of thought and expression, and have a tendency of 'thinking differently' than the average person. In short, creative people are united by their unwillingness to abide by conventional ways of thinking and doing things. The common strand in all the answers was the idea that creative people reject popular, conventional ways of thinking and instead support new and fresh ideas.
I found the whole book very interesting, but it was the last chapter that really struck me. In it, the authors touch on the societal contradiction of hailing creativity as important while, at the same time, discouraging it. Even in the field of science where the norm is open-mindedness, it is suggested that scientific peer-review systems are designed in a way to discourage innovation and instead rewards research that reinforces existing paradigms.
In short, it's not always applauded or pleasant to be a creative individual, but the rewards can be vast if you're wired that way. More interesting still, Kaufman and Gregoire say there is hope for those who weren't born that way. It is possible to re-wire yourself to cultivate creativity using mindful exercises. All that's needed is to work on the mind's flexibility and create as often as possible. Even the greatest artists an (Beethoven, Edison) show a body of mediocre creativity with peaks of greatness.
In Wired to Create, Kaufman and Gregoire give insight into what makes creative people different. Citing a wealth of books and articles on the neuroscience and psychology of creativity, they've have broken down, by chapter, all the different components.
Apparently, creative people have 'messy' minds as well as 'messy' emotions. There also seems to be a correlation between creativity and mental health problems. Oddly enough, they also show a greater depth of joy and a higher degree of savoring life.
Some of what I read came as no surprise. Creative people engage in imaginative play more often than those less creative. They daydream, enjoy solitude, and depend strongly on their intuition. They tend to have a higher degree of sensitivity, are open to new experiences, diversity of thought and expression, and have a tendency of 'thinking differently' than the average person. In short, creative people are united by their unwillingness to abide by conventional ways of thinking and doing things. The common strand in all the answers was the idea that creative people reject popular, conventional ways of thinking and instead support new and fresh ideas.
I found the whole book very interesting, but it was the last chapter that really struck me. In it, the authors touch on the societal contradiction of hailing creativity as important while, at the same time, discouraging it. Even in the field of science where the norm is open-mindedness, it is suggested that scientific peer-review systems are designed in a way to discourage innovation and instead rewards research that reinforces existing paradigms.
In short, it's not always applauded or pleasant to be a creative individual, but the rewards can be vast if you're wired that way. More interesting still, Kaufman and Gregoire say there is hope for those who weren't born that way. It is possible to re-wire yourself to cultivate creativity using mindful exercises. All that's needed is to work on the mind's flexibility and create as often as possible. Even the greatest artists an (Beethoven, Edison) show a body of mediocre creativity with peaks of greatness.
January 7, 2024
I had to read this book as part of a CBT program. The authors have collected some of the traits that are dominant in highly creative people. Of course, I think they have commercialized it a bit. It's not nearly as clear cut and organized as this when people are looking at creative human beings.
I'd say the key word to a highly creative person is "Flexibility." And this word works in many ways, from how the brain can shift from task to task, from mode of thinking to mode of thinking, from how one thinks of success and failure. Highly creative people are totally flexible. And I do not think this is stressed enough. The really important topics found in this are Imaginative Play, Daydreaming, Solitude, Open to Experience, and probably the most important one, Thinking Differently.
For example, Leonardo da Vinci never really saw failures and he also abandoned many projects. He was literally known by his contemporaries as an artist who might not finish. Laughing. He was an outsider who thought very differently. No group think, no tribalism, no thinking of success and failures in the ways other people do. Solitude was his friend. He was driven to do art, he was happy in the doing and focused more on the doing than the outcome, one of the tiny details mentioned in this book like "flexibility" but not focused on enough. Outsiders are not people pleasers. And nearly all highly creative people are outsiders, they are rarely in fashion, and many of them are not even acknowledged in their lifetimes. They are just doing art, all kinds. Their brains look differently. The author Kaufman knows this but he did not talk too much about it.
I enjoyed this book. It's one of the few books that show just how messy highly creative artists are. Creativity is still kind of a mystery. Psychologists are always wanting to study people, hoping to discover some key to the craziness that is not fully understood. I do know this, creatives have rich inner lives, connect dots that others do not see, and often self-absorbed. Most of them don't care what others think. They are curious human beings. They have great executive skills. Many people are creative, but that is not what this book is about.
I think we all can be artists, but we all cannot be "highly creatives" in the way some people are. They were born that way probably. Really I don't know. But when you meet one, you really know it.
I'd say the key word to a highly creative person is "Flexibility." And this word works in many ways, from how the brain can shift from task to task, from mode of thinking to mode of thinking, from how one thinks of success and failure. Highly creative people are totally flexible. And I do not think this is stressed enough. The really important topics found in this are Imaginative Play, Daydreaming, Solitude, Open to Experience, and probably the most important one, Thinking Differently.
For example, Leonardo da Vinci never really saw failures and he also abandoned many projects. He was literally known by his contemporaries as an artist who might not finish. Laughing. He was an outsider who thought very differently. No group think, no tribalism, no thinking of success and failures in the ways other people do. Solitude was his friend. He was driven to do art, he was happy in the doing and focused more on the doing than the outcome, one of the tiny details mentioned in this book like "flexibility" but not focused on enough. Outsiders are not people pleasers. And nearly all highly creative people are outsiders, they are rarely in fashion, and many of them are not even acknowledged in their lifetimes. They are just doing art, all kinds. Their brains look differently. The author Kaufman knows this but he did not talk too much about it.
I enjoyed this book. It's one of the few books that show just how messy highly creative artists are. Creativity is still kind of a mystery. Psychologists are always wanting to study people, hoping to discover some key to the craziness that is not fully understood. I do know this, creatives have rich inner lives, connect dots that others do not see, and often self-absorbed. Most of them don't care what others think. They are curious human beings. They have great executive skills. Many people are creative, but that is not what this book is about.
I think we all can be artists, but we all cannot be "highly creatives" in the way some people are. They were born that way probably. Really I don't know. But when you meet one, you really know it.
April 3, 2017
I enjoyed this book a lot, but I usually find this genre to be manipulative. So either this book is actually useful or it has successfully manipulated me into thinking I am a unique sunflower of creativity. Both outcomes look the same from my perspective, so I'm subtracting a star to compensate for my lack of objectivity. Four stars are being awarded for either being good at conveying true information, or for being good at manipulating me. I am a pawn! Or a genius!
May 27, 2016
An amazing book regarding the human mind, and more specifically, the creative mind. Artists of all kinds will find this book informative. For those who are not artists, it is a wonderful exploration on creativity. As an artist myself, it gave me greater understanding of myself, my creative process, my own self-exploration and self-expression through art. 5 stars.
Want to read
February 10, 2019[Sounds like an interesting book to at least scan in more detail. The book explains creativity: that it’s not a single trait but have different angles. Some have creativity from their passion, others from their perceptivity. There are also things one can do to improve their odds of being more creative: breaking fixed routines, take a walk of solitude...]
December 4, 2016
Absolutely LOVED this.
February 14, 2019
“Wired to Create – Unravelling the Mysteries of the Creative Mind” by Scott Barry Kaufman (Scientific Director of the Imagination Institute and a Researcher in the Positive Psychology Centre at the University of Pennsylvania) & Carolyn Gregoire (Senior Writer at the Huffington Post)
In “Wired to Create – Unravelling the Mysteries of the Creative Mind”, the authors Scott Barry Kaufman and Carolyn Gregoire have identified and presented some incredibly useful traits and behaviours of highly creative minds/individuals. Becoming aware of these traits would help us, the readers, to systematically understand some of the thoughts/behaviours of our own as well as the others with whom we interact on a daily basis. One of the important messages highlighted throughout the book is the messy nature of these truly creative minds that our societies find baffled if look at them in an ordinary/casual sense, thus leading to a situation of social isolation/alienation of these creative minds. Out of the ten traits of highly creative minds presented by the authors, a number of them such as thinking differently, solitude, sensitivity and daydreaming etc. are, in general, negatively regarded by our societies, akin to antisocial behaviour/mental disorder.
“Our cultural disapproval of creativity tends to show through when we look at creative paths that don’t lead to mainstream success. There’s a high price to pay for being creative - tireless work, solitude and isolation, failure, and the risk of ridicule and rejection.”
Throughout the book, the authors have duly glorified the notion of creativity in a deeper sense by presenting the evidence (unlike how our societies do, in general, in the same way although superficially), while at the same time pointing to some of the commonly used practices in the educational forefronts, albeit somewhat unconsciously, that hamper the enhancement of creativity, which is identified by many scholars and researchers to be a natural human capacity, in learners. As discussed in detail in the book, the important role of “imaginative play” in developing creative minds, especially during the childhood, can be an eye-opener for many parents who are the main caregivers in many cases. Giving the children the freedom to play in their imaginary or dream worlds, minimising unnecessary parental instructions/intervention would be more important than getting them to forcefully develop early reading/writing skills as means of overcoming parental anxieties.
“In fact, most children are natural nonconformists. Unfortunately, either at home or in school (or both), many children grow up in environments that devalue independent and creative thought and instead reward imitation, memorisation, and rote learning. The suppression of free thinking and imagination often starts in the educational system. Many people can recall an experience during childhood…when they were punished for thinking differently from everyone else. These experiences can lead children to suppress their natural inquisitive and creative instincts.”
The need for appropriate means of instruction for learners by encouraging them to ask questions and finding appropriate information on their own while minimising direct instructions is presented in the book as an important step in encouraging and enhancing creativity. Such practices are likely to minimise stifling of learner creativity inadvertently as a result of inappropriate means of content delivery and expectations from learners.
“…common teaching methods that emphasise direct instruction – those in which the child shown what to do rather than given the opportunity to figure it out for herself – can hamper the child’s ability to solve problems independently and creatively and may instead encourage mindless imitation…she won’t be learning the important real-world skills of asking questions and sleuthing out new information about a problem…learning to imitate sometimes means learning to generate the less intelligent response. This is the response that most students give, because of both the way they are instructed and the fact that they may be punished for presenting the more creative answer.”
As the authors elaborated, sensitivity and openness to experience appear to go hand in hand in supporting creativity in individuals. Through these traits, creative individuals are able to take in and process a larger volume of information from external (from the outside world through sensory organs) and internal (thoughts, emotions, self-awareness, intuition etc.) environments compared to one who does not show these traits. Such inherent broader and in-depth information processing capacities themselves are also shown to make creative individuals exposed to many vulnerabilities as a result of becoming aware of as well as reactive to some perceived/felt negative subtleties and nuances emerging from social encounters.
“…creative people of all types tend to be acutely sensitive, and conversely, sensitive people are often quite creative. It is easy to see how one trait feeds into the other: To both highly creative and highly sensitive mind, there’s simply more to observe, take in, feel, and process from their environment. To highly sensitive people…the world may appear to be more colourful, dramatic, tragic, and beautiful. Sensitive people often pick up the little things in the environment that others miss, see patterns where others see randomness, and find meaning and metaphor in the minutiae of everyday life.”
Given the above vulnerabilities faced by creative/sensitive individuals, the only ways to minimise or overcome them appear to be the other characteristics highlighted fittingly by the authors - solitude, passion and mindfulness. In many instances, as aptly presented by the authors, creative individuals were able to turn adversity into advantage through the means of relaxing/recharging in solitude and identifying and working towards passions of the greater good. They are also helped by their inherent capacities of mindfulness in which they demonstrate both focused attention as well as open attention abilities in a balanced manner. More specifically, in open attention awareness/monitoring, creative individuals are able to receive and digest information entering into the default/imagination network (while daydreaming) in a non-judgemental/open manner, leading to emotional stability and clarity of understanding.
The authors have also highlighted the interesting point of similarities in brain activations of highly creative thinkers and people who are prone to psychosis/mental imbalances. They used the spectrum of referred to as schizotypy – a personality continuum ranging from normal levels of openness to experience and imagination to extreme manifestation of magical thinking/psychosis – to highlight the difficulty in demarcating the boundary between creativity and psychosis, possibly leading to widely discussed medical misdiagnosis instances of creative/highly sensitive individuals, yet another vulnerability faced by them.
“So what determines whether schizotypy goes the way of intense absorption and creative achievement or tips over to mental illness? This is where a number of other factors come into play. If mental illness is defined as extreme difficulty in functioning effectively in the real world, then the complete inability to distinguish imagination from reality is surely going to increase the likelihood of mental illness. However, if one has an overactive imagination but also has the ability to distinguish reality from imagination and can harness these capacities to flourish in daily life (with the help of things like motivation, posttraumatic growth, resilience, and a supportive environment), then that is far from mental illness.”
Finally, authors have fulfilled a commendable task in directing our readers and societies to sustainability by making use of human creativity appropriately. To pursue that path, we first need to develop the capacities/awareness to identify the characteristics/behaviours of creativity and make it a point to encourage/enhance them rather than stifling them unconsciously right from the childhood. Our societies, in its current form of operation, need a different and evidence-based perspective of seeing, identifying, supporting and embracing this important notion/instinct of human creativity for the sole purpose of their sustainability/survival.
In “Wired to Create – Unravelling the Mysteries of the Creative Mind”, the authors Scott Barry Kaufman and Carolyn Gregoire have identified and presented some incredibly useful traits and behaviours of highly creative minds/individuals. Becoming aware of these traits would help us, the readers, to systematically understand some of the thoughts/behaviours of our own as well as the others with whom we interact on a daily basis. One of the important messages highlighted throughout the book is the messy nature of these truly creative minds that our societies find baffled if look at them in an ordinary/casual sense, thus leading to a situation of social isolation/alienation of these creative minds. Out of the ten traits of highly creative minds presented by the authors, a number of them such as thinking differently, solitude, sensitivity and daydreaming etc. are, in general, negatively regarded by our societies, akin to antisocial behaviour/mental disorder.
“Our cultural disapproval of creativity tends to show through when we look at creative paths that don’t lead to mainstream success. There’s a high price to pay for being creative - tireless work, solitude and isolation, failure, and the risk of ridicule and rejection.”
Throughout the book, the authors have duly glorified the notion of creativity in a deeper sense by presenting the evidence (unlike how our societies do, in general, in the same way although superficially), while at the same time pointing to some of the commonly used practices in the educational forefronts, albeit somewhat unconsciously, that hamper the enhancement of creativity, which is identified by many scholars and researchers to be a natural human capacity, in learners. As discussed in detail in the book, the important role of “imaginative play” in developing creative minds, especially during the childhood, can be an eye-opener for many parents who are the main caregivers in many cases. Giving the children the freedom to play in their imaginary or dream worlds, minimising unnecessary parental instructions/intervention would be more important than getting them to forcefully develop early reading/writing skills as means of overcoming parental anxieties.
“In fact, most children are natural nonconformists. Unfortunately, either at home or in school (or both), many children grow up in environments that devalue independent and creative thought and instead reward imitation, memorisation, and rote learning. The suppression of free thinking and imagination often starts in the educational system. Many people can recall an experience during childhood…when they were punished for thinking differently from everyone else. These experiences can lead children to suppress their natural inquisitive and creative instincts.”
The need for appropriate means of instruction for learners by encouraging them to ask questions and finding appropriate information on their own while minimising direct instructions is presented in the book as an important step in encouraging and enhancing creativity. Such practices are likely to minimise stifling of learner creativity inadvertently as a result of inappropriate means of content delivery and expectations from learners.
“…common teaching methods that emphasise direct instruction – those in which the child shown what to do rather than given the opportunity to figure it out for herself – can hamper the child’s ability to solve problems independently and creatively and may instead encourage mindless imitation…she won’t be learning the important real-world skills of asking questions and sleuthing out new information about a problem…learning to imitate sometimes means learning to generate the less intelligent response. This is the response that most students give, because of both the way they are instructed and the fact that they may be punished for presenting the more creative answer.”
As the authors elaborated, sensitivity and openness to experience appear to go hand in hand in supporting creativity in individuals. Through these traits, creative individuals are able to take in and process a larger volume of information from external (from the outside world through sensory organs) and internal (thoughts, emotions, self-awareness, intuition etc.) environments compared to one who does not show these traits. Such inherent broader and in-depth information processing capacities themselves are also shown to make creative individuals exposed to many vulnerabilities as a result of becoming aware of as well as reactive to some perceived/felt negative subtleties and nuances emerging from social encounters.
“…creative people of all types tend to be acutely sensitive, and conversely, sensitive people are often quite creative. It is easy to see how one trait feeds into the other: To both highly creative and highly sensitive mind, there’s simply more to observe, take in, feel, and process from their environment. To highly sensitive people…the world may appear to be more colourful, dramatic, tragic, and beautiful. Sensitive people often pick up the little things in the environment that others miss, see patterns where others see randomness, and find meaning and metaphor in the minutiae of everyday life.”
Given the above vulnerabilities faced by creative/sensitive individuals, the only ways to minimise or overcome them appear to be the other characteristics highlighted fittingly by the authors - solitude, passion and mindfulness. In many instances, as aptly presented by the authors, creative individuals were able to turn adversity into advantage through the means of relaxing/recharging in solitude and identifying and working towards passions of the greater good. They are also helped by their inherent capacities of mindfulness in which they demonstrate both focused attention as well as open attention abilities in a balanced manner. More specifically, in open attention awareness/monitoring, creative individuals are able to receive and digest information entering into the default/imagination network (while daydreaming) in a non-judgemental/open manner, leading to emotional stability and clarity of understanding.
The authors have also highlighted the interesting point of similarities in brain activations of highly creative thinkers and people who are prone to psychosis/mental imbalances. They used the spectrum of referred to as schizotypy – a personality continuum ranging from normal levels of openness to experience and imagination to extreme manifestation of magical thinking/psychosis – to highlight the difficulty in demarcating the boundary between creativity and psychosis, possibly leading to widely discussed medical misdiagnosis instances of creative/highly sensitive individuals, yet another vulnerability faced by them.
“So what determines whether schizotypy goes the way of intense absorption and creative achievement or tips over to mental illness? This is where a number of other factors come into play. If mental illness is defined as extreme difficulty in functioning effectively in the real world, then the complete inability to distinguish imagination from reality is surely going to increase the likelihood of mental illness. However, if one has an overactive imagination but also has the ability to distinguish reality from imagination and can harness these capacities to flourish in daily life (with the help of things like motivation, posttraumatic growth, resilience, and a supportive environment), then that is far from mental illness.”
Finally, authors have fulfilled a commendable task in directing our readers and societies to sustainability by making use of human creativity appropriately. To pursue that path, we first need to develop the capacities/awareness to identify the characteristics/behaviours of creativity and make it a point to encourage/enhance them rather than stifling them unconsciously right from the childhood. Our societies, in its current form of operation, need a different and evidence-based perspective of seeing, identifying, supporting and embracing this important notion/instinct of human creativity for the sole purpose of their sustainability/survival.
February 3, 2021
Me gustó mucho este libro, de alguna manera describe un montón de cuestiones relacionadas con el pensamiento creativo que aparecen en muchos otros libros, quizá como aspecto diferencial que tiene este libro en particular es que combina dos cuestiones muy importantes.
La primera es que las afirmaciones que describe respecto de cada uno de los temas que asocia con la creatividad suele estar referenciada a un estudio científico, lo que le da solvencia al libro.
La segunda es que está descripto de una manera muy amena, es decir, a pesar de ser un libro de divulgación académica es de una lectura muy fluida, palabras sencillas conceptos interesantes (y no al revés)
Recomiendo para todos los que estudiamos la creatividad.
La primera es que las afirmaciones que describe respecto de cada uno de los temas que asocia con la creatividad suele estar referenciada a un estudio científico, lo que le da solvencia al libro.
La segunda es que está descripto de una manera muy amena, es decir, a pesar de ser un libro de divulgación académica es de una lectura muy fluida, palabras sencillas conceptos interesantes (y no al revés)
Recomiendo para todos los que estudiamos la creatividad.
October 9, 2017
I don't know if my three-star rating is completely fair or not. This book promises to describe "the ten things highly creative people do differently." It does. But - maybe because I already do all ten of the things - I mostly felt bored while reading it. I didn't get any new ideas out of it.
November 7, 2021
I read this as a Kindle book. It's one that I'd like to have as a physical copy because then I could flip back and forth to find the various nuggets that appealed to me. There's so much to unpack in this book.
January 28, 2023
This book sums up a good amount of characteristics of creative people. It was a pleasant read.
May 17, 2018
p.xiv - Picasso said of this own creative process, “A painting is not thought our and settled in advance. While it is being done, it changes as one’s thoughts change. And when it’s finished, it goes on changing, according to the state of mind of whoever is looking at it.”
Introduction: Messy Minds
p.xvii – In his boo The Art of Thought, British social psychologist Graham Wallas outlined the popular “four-stage model” of creativity. After observing and studying accounts of eminent inventors and creators, Wallas proposed that the creative process involves the following stages: preparation, during which the creator acquires as much information as possible about a problem; incubation, during which the creator lets the knowledge stew as the unconscious mind takes over and engages in what Einstein referred to as “combinatory play;” illumination, during which an insight arises in consciousness – the natural culmination of a “successful train of association;” and a verification stage, during which the creator fleshes out the insights, and communicates their value to others.
p.xxiv – Creative people seemed to become more intimate with themselves – they dared to look deep inside, even at the dark and confusing parts of themselves. Being open to and curious about the full spectrum of life – both the good and the bad, the dark and the light – may be what leads writers to score high on some characteristics that our society tends to associate with mental illness, while it can also lead them to become more grounded and self-aware. In truly facing themselves the world, creative-minded people seemed to find an unusual synthesis between healthy and “pathological” behaviors.
Armed with mounting evidence of these deep paradoxes, scientists now generally agree that creativity is not a single characteristic but a system of characteristics, and many theories now emphasize the multifaceted nature of creativity. The characteristics highlighted by these theories include general intellectual functioning, knowledge, and skill relevant to the activity; creative skills and thinking styles; psychological resources such as confidence, perseverance, and a willingness to take risks; inner motivation and a love of one’s work; a complex suite of positive and negative emotions; and environmental factors such as access to gatekeepers in the field and key resources.
p.xxvi – The creative process draws on the whole brain.
p.xxx – We are all, in some way, wired to create and everyday life presents myriad opportunities to exercise and express that creativity. This can take the form of approaching a problem in a new way, seeking out beauty, developing and sticking to our own opinions (even if they’re unpopular), challenging social norms, taking risks, or expressing ourselves through personal style.
Creative self-expression, in its many forms, can be a particularly powerful means of coping with life’s inevitable challenges. There’s a great myth that creativity requires mental illness or suffering, but as we’ll see throughout the book, while there are interesting connection between creativity and suffering, they do not suggest that suffering is a necessary or sufficient condition for creativity.
p.xxxii – Learning to solve the increasingly complex world problems of the twenty-first century – and to identity the problems themselves – will require creative qualities like originality, curiosity, risk taking, and a tolerance for the ambiguity inherent in the idea that there is not always a single correct solution.
p.xxxiii – Between the late 1960s and early 1990s, more than nine thousand scientific papers were published on the subject. Between 1999 and 2009, another ten thousand papers were written about creativity from a variety of psychological perspectives, including biological, developmental, social, cognitive, and organizational domains, as well as in other fields including economic, education, and the arts. Today, creativity research is in full bloom, with its own scholarly journals and a division of the American Psychological Association. There are now twenty-one thousand books on or related to creativity on Amazon and an endless array of blogs devoted to sharing tips for living more creatively.
1 – Imaginative Play
p.6 – It’s important that children grow up in a home environment in which adult interactions support their natural desire to play in this way. Research has shown that pretend play is more common among children whose parents talk to them often, read or tell bedtime stories, and explain things about nature or social issues to them. Research has also found that in schools, encouraging pretend games either in the curriculum or at recess can enhance imaginativeness and curiosity. Adults, too, need this type of support to dream and play.
p.8 – “You can discover more about a person in an hour of play than in a year of conversation.” (Plato)
p.11 – In the words of George Bernard Shaw: “We don’t stop playing because we grow old; we grow old because we stop playing.” But that doesn’t mean we can’t infuse playfulness back into our adult lives.
Our widespread play deficit is an important reason to carve out spaces in which play is not only tolerated but celebrated. Adults who are more playful report feeling less stressed, being better able to cope with stress, and having greater life satisfaction and other positive life outcomes. And truly, maintaining a spirit of play keeps creativity and vitality alive as we get older.
2 – Passion
p.17 – Many highly creative people can vividly remember a “moment, an encounter, a book that they read, a performance that they attended, that spoke to them and led them to say, ‘This is the real me, this is what I would like to do, to devote my life to, going forward,” says psychologist Howard Gardner.
That moment of memorable, dramatic contact with an activity of fascination is known as a “crystallising experience.” It can be like love at first sight. The encounter often activates lasting changes in the person’s worldview and self-understanding. Ultimately, the individual and the activity become one and the same.
Both the initial and refining crystallizing experiences are critical to the development of the creative mind. As author Thomas Armstrong puts it, crystallizing experiences – which he believes propel people toward their destinies – are the “sparks that light an intelligence and start its development toward maturity.”
p.18 – Developmental psychologist Ellen Winner concluded that talented young people “must be able to persist in the face of difficulty and overcome the many obstacles in the way of creative discovery.”
Talent is associated with a “rage to master” – an intense and sustained drive for excellence – in the individual’s chosen activity or medium, according to Winner. While important, this drive does not take place of mundane, everyday hard work. The prodigies she studied worked intensely hard, and they were highly motivated to consistently work hard precisely by this internal drive. But what she noticed was that, in addition to hard work, talented young artists shared an intense love of their activity. They were driven less by external rewards and praise and more by a passionate joy in doing their work. While working, they focused like a laser beam, entering a psychological state of flow, which is characterized by complete absorption, concentration, joy, and subjective loss of time.
Flow has been documented as an important contributor to performance in areas ranging from sports to music, to physics, to religion, to spirituality, to sex. Who can forge the 1992 NBA Finals, Bulls against Trail Blazers? Imprinted in the brains of many sports fans is the moment when Michael Jordan hit his sixth consecutive three-point shot, looked over at Magic Johnson, and just shrugged, as if to say, “This is out of my hands!”
It’s likely that our ability to enter flow states is a product of the creative rage to master. Martha J. Morelock, who has worked with exceptionally creative children, is convinced that the intense engagement she saw in the children is a reflection of a deep brain-based impulse to learn – “a craving for intellectual stimulation matching their cognitive requirements in the same way that the physical body craves food and oxygen. In other words, the children didn’t just seem internally driven to learn about their craft. It appeared as though they needed to master it.
p.19 – the same finding, of course, applies to highly motivated adults. A love of one’s work is key to not only productivity but also high-level creativity. In a famous study of the development of excellence, developmental psychologist Benjamin Bloom found that children who became highly creative later in life showed unusual interests in their field.
p.20 – The highly creative person may also fall in love with the creative process itself- the imagination, the creation of new forms and figures, and the exploration of new ideas and possibilities.
p.21 – Psychologist Robert Vallerand and his colleagues make a distinction between harmonious and obsessive passion, which are most importantly distinguished by how a passion has been internalized in the person’s identity.
In contrast, obsessively passionate people are less motivated by a love of their work, and they tend to feel as though they are not in control of their passions. They frequently experience anxiety when engaging in their work and feel constant pressure to outperform others because they see their achievements as a source of social acceptance or self-esteem. They are motivated to engage in their activity due to the promise of external rewards, not their inner inclinations. Obsessive passion is an indicator that the activity has not been healthily integrated into a person’s overall sense of self.
p.22 – Passion and its companion, inspiration, are critical pieces of the creativity puzzle.
p.24 – Inspiration really does favor the prepared mind.
p.25 – Inspired people also tend to enjoy increased well-being in life. In particular, they enjoy greater levels of gratitude, positive emotions, life satisfaction, vitality, and self-actualization.
p.28 – Snyder suggests that hope is a dynamic cognitive motivational system in which emotions follow thoughts, rather than the opposite. Guided by either a hopeful personality or state of mind, people approach their goals with an attitude and a set of strategies that are conductive to success.
People who are hopeful tend to create learning goals (like experimenting with a new type of sound), which support personal growth and improvement. Those without hope, on the other hand, tend to adopt mastery goals (like selling a certain number of records), which are less focused on growth and more focused on outperforming others. Several studies have also linked hope to academic achievement, while one study found that those who were in a hopeful state came up with more original ideas and associations. Hopeful thinking may actually promote creative thinking skills, insofar as it involves coming up with various flexible strategies to achieve a goal.
3 – Daydreaming
p.30 – “Was it only by dreaming or writing that I could find out what I thought?” Joan Didion once asked.
p.33 – Creative work requires a connection to one’s inner monologue, and it is from this stream of desires, emotions, and ways of making sense of the world that new ideas and novel perspectives arise. T. S. Eliot was ahead of his time in recognizing the role of mind wandering in creative incubation, which he referred to as “idea incubation” in his 1933 work, The Use of Poetry and the Use of Criticism. Eliot argued that creativity required an “incubation period” during which the mind could unconsciously process pre-existing ideas – and for this reason, he believed that illnesses forcing the artist to take to bed and avoid the unusual distractions of their daily routines could be surprisingly beneficial for creative work.
4 – Solitude
p.48 – Science has confirmed that time for solitude reflection truly feeds the creative mind. The capacity for solitude is a quality that unites successful creators, who are able to turn away from the distractions of daily life and social interactions to reconnect with themselves. But solitude isn’t just about avoiding distractions; it’s about giving the mind the space it needs to reflect, make new connections, and find meaning.
p.49 – Far from being an indicator of negative personality traits or mental illness, the capacity for solitude may be a sign of emotional maturity and healthy psychological development. D. W. Winnicott calls the capacity to be alone “one of the most important signs of maturity in emotional development.” Regardless of where you fall on the extraversion spectrum, the capacity for solitude is a muscle that anyone can strengthen and tap into as a way to facilitate the creative process. Psychologist Ester Buchholz describes solitude as “meaningful alone time” that fuels joy and fulfillment in both interpersonal relationships and creative work.
p.52 – But we often don’t give ourselves much time for purposeful inner reflection – the pace of modern life leaves little time for seemingly unproductive activity as we face increasing distractions and demands for our attention. The mind must have the space to settle down if it is to come up with the insights that make for original creative work. When we’re engaged in solitary reflection, the brain is able to process information, crystallize memories, make connections, re-establish a sense of identity and construct a sense of self, making meaning from our experiences, and even guide moral judgement. When we’re alone relaxing and daydreaming – or simply turning out our immediate surroundings – the brain’s imagination network is activated. This gives us a sort of inner focus, a lens through which to see ourselves and others more clearly.
p.53 – Solitude and creativity have a long and storied history. Since ancient times, a solitary life has been seen as a key to unlocking the mind’s highest creative, intellectual, and spiritual potential.
5 – Intuition
p.58 – “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)
6 – Openness to Experience
p.82 – We need new and unusual experiences to think differently.
Openness to experience – the drive for cognitive exploration of one’s inner and outer worlds – is the single strongest and most consistent personality trait that predicts creative achievement. Openness to experience, one of the “Big Five” personality traits, is absolutely essential to creativity. Those who are high in openness tend to be imaginative, curious, perceptive, creative, artistic, thoughtful and intellectual.
p.85 – There are many misconceptions about dopamine, which is commonly seen as the “sex, drugs, and rock ’n’ roll” neurotransmitter. Despite many popular descriptions, dopamine is not necessarily associated with pleasure and satisfaction. Instead, dopamine’s primary role is to make us want things. We get a huge surge of dopamine coursing through our brains at the possibility of a big payoff, but there’s no guarantee that we’ll actually like or enjoy what we’ve obtained. Colin DeYoung explains that the release of dopamine “increases motivation to explore and facilitates cognitive and behavioral processes useful in exploration.” DeYoung has called dopamine the “neuromodulator of exploration.”
At the broadest level, dopamine facilitates psychological plasticity, a tendency to explore and engage flexibility with new things, in both behavior and thinking. Plasticity leads us to engage with uncertainty – whether it’s pondering a new app to meet a consumer demand or questioning the next step in our own life path – exploring the unknown and finding reward in seeking its positive potential. With plasticity comes enhanced cognitive and behavioral engagement and exploration and, frequently, a commitment to personal growth.
p.87 – We know that both daydreaming and dreaming at night are invaluable tools to help us access deeper realms of creativity. People who are high in openness to experience report dreaming more often and having more vivid dreams than those who are less open to experience, very likely due to their higher dopamine production.
Dreaming inspires creative insights, and those who have more creative insights show more activation in the brain’s right hemisphere. Among people who are high in openness, the brain’s dopamine systems are working day and night to inspire creative insights.
p.92 – Achieving a balance between the intellectual, emotional, and aesthetic aspects of openness to experience may increase the chances that surprising and novel connections will arise and that creativity will not tip over into mental illness. Indeed, for the highest levels of creativity it may be especially important to achieve a balance between the intellectual aspects of openness to experience and the more fantasy-oriented aspects.
7 – Mindfulness
p.111 – Being mindful alters the very structure and function of the brain, supporting executive functions like attention and self-regulation, both of which are valuable assets to creativity – especially when it comes to motivating ourselves to sit down and focus on a challenging creative task for extended periods of time.
8 – Sensitivity
p.123 – “Creative people’s openness and sensitivity often exposes them to suffering and pain, yet also to a great deal of enjoyment,” Csikszentmihalyi wrote. “Being alone at the forefront of a discipline also leaves you exposed and vulnerable.”
p.140 – Both positive and negative emotions play a critical role in the positive disintegration process. Even emotional experiences that we tend to think of as negative, like neurosis and inner conflict, can contribute to personality growth. These conflicts, if we engage with and learn from them, can set the stage for emotional development, creativity, and a rich inner life.
p.141 – At later phases of personality development, a quest to find the true self emerges. The individual no longer passively accepts external authority, but starts listening to his or her inner voice and making judgments based on his or her own standards. Through the process of transcending to the “higher self,” people often become aware of what Robert Greene refers to as the false self – “the accumulation of all the voices you have internalized from other people – parents and friends who want you to conform to their ideas of what you should be like and what you should do, as well as societal pressures to adhere to certain values. Becoming intimate with these voices helps the individual to transcend them. As Joseph Campbell said, “It is by going down into the abyss that we discover the treasures of life. Where you stumble, there lies your treasure.”
What lies at higher stages of this journey of personality development? Self-actualization and a desire to help others and solve problems in the world, rather than a preoccupation with one’s own petty concerns. Here, people develop universal compassion, service to humanity, and the realization of timeless values.
p.142 – People who achieve extraordinary inner transformation find creative way of solving problems, coping with emotional challenges, accepting themselves and others, and giving back. They seek to constantly give new meaning to their lives and discover their true selves – the self becomes an object of ongoing discovery and creation. They also discover that one’s inner world determines his or her external reality, that we each create our personal and collective reality, that our lives are interconnected, and that the choices we make shape the world toward war or peace. In other words, they discover that “inner peace is the foundation of wold peace” and the “everything we need is within us.”
Introduction: Messy Minds
p.xvii – In his boo The Art of Thought, British social psychologist Graham Wallas outlined the popular “four-stage model” of creativity. After observing and studying accounts of eminent inventors and creators, Wallas proposed that the creative process involves the following stages: preparation, during which the creator acquires as much information as possible about a problem; incubation, during which the creator lets the knowledge stew as the unconscious mind takes over and engages in what Einstein referred to as “combinatory play;” illumination, during which an insight arises in consciousness – the natural culmination of a “successful train of association;” and a verification stage, during which the creator fleshes out the insights, and communicates their value to others.
p.xxiv – Creative people seemed to become more intimate with themselves – they dared to look deep inside, even at the dark and confusing parts of themselves. Being open to and curious about the full spectrum of life – both the good and the bad, the dark and the light – may be what leads writers to score high on some characteristics that our society tends to associate with mental illness, while it can also lead them to become more grounded and self-aware. In truly facing themselves the world, creative-minded people seemed to find an unusual synthesis between healthy and “pathological” behaviors.
Armed with mounting evidence of these deep paradoxes, scientists now generally agree that creativity is not a single characteristic but a system of characteristics, and many theories now emphasize the multifaceted nature of creativity. The characteristics highlighted by these theories include general intellectual functioning, knowledge, and skill relevant to the activity; creative skills and thinking styles; psychological resources such as confidence, perseverance, and a willingness to take risks; inner motivation and a love of one’s work; a complex suite of positive and negative emotions; and environmental factors such as access to gatekeepers in the field and key resources.
p.xxvi – The creative process draws on the whole brain.
p.xxx – We are all, in some way, wired to create and everyday life presents myriad opportunities to exercise and express that creativity. This can take the form of approaching a problem in a new way, seeking out beauty, developing and sticking to our own opinions (even if they’re unpopular), challenging social norms, taking risks, or expressing ourselves through personal style.
Creative self-expression, in its many forms, can be a particularly powerful means of coping with life’s inevitable challenges. There’s a great myth that creativity requires mental illness or suffering, but as we’ll see throughout the book, while there are interesting connection between creativity and suffering, they do not suggest that suffering is a necessary or sufficient condition for creativity.
p.xxxii – Learning to solve the increasingly complex world problems of the twenty-first century – and to identity the problems themselves – will require creative qualities like originality, curiosity, risk taking, and a tolerance for the ambiguity inherent in the idea that there is not always a single correct solution.
p.xxxiii – Between the late 1960s and early 1990s, more than nine thousand scientific papers were published on the subject. Between 1999 and 2009, another ten thousand papers were written about creativity from a variety of psychological perspectives, including biological, developmental, social, cognitive, and organizational domains, as well as in other fields including economic, education, and the arts. Today, creativity research is in full bloom, with its own scholarly journals and a division of the American Psychological Association. There are now twenty-one thousand books on or related to creativity on Amazon and an endless array of blogs devoted to sharing tips for living more creatively.
1 – Imaginative Play
p.6 – It’s important that children grow up in a home environment in which adult interactions support their natural desire to play in this way. Research has shown that pretend play is more common among children whose parents talk to them often, read or tell bedtime stories, and explain things about nature or social issues to them. Research has also found that in schools, encouraging pretend games either in the curriculum or at recess can enhance imaginativeness and curiosity. Adults, too, need this type of support to dream and play.
p.8 – “You can discover more about a person in an hour of play than in a year of conversation.” (Plato)
p.11 – In the words of George Bernard Shaw: “We don’t stop playing because we grow old; we grow old because we stop playing.” But that doesn’t mean we can’t infuse playfulness back into our adult lives.
Our widespread play deficit is an important reason to carve out spaces in which play is not only tolerated but celebrated. Adults who are more playful report feeling less stressed, being better able to cope with stress, and having greater life satisfaction and other positive life outcomes. And truly, maintaining a spirit of play keeps creativity and vitality alive as we get older.
2 – Passion
p.17 – Many highly creative people can vividly remember a “moment, an encounter, a book that they read, a performance that they attended, that spoke to them and led them to say, ‘This is the real me, this is what I would like to do, to devote my life to, going forward,” says psychologist Howard Gardner.
That moment of memorable, dramatic contact with an activity of fascination is known as a “crystallising experience.” It can be like love at first sight. The encounter often activates lasting changes in the person’s worldview and self-understanding. Ultimately, the individual and the activity become one and the same.
Both the initial and refining crystallizing experiences are critical to the development of the creative mind. As author Thomas Armstrong puts it, crystallizing experiences – which he believes propel people toward their destinies – are the “sparks that light an intelligence and start its development toward maturity.”
p.18 – Developmental psychologist Ellen Winner concluded that talented young people “must be able to persist in the face of difficulty and overcome the many obstacles in the way of creative discovery.”
Talent is associated with a “rage to master” – an intense and sustained drive for excellence – in the individual’s chosen activity or medium, according to Winner. While important, this drive does not take place of mundane, everyday hard work. The prodigies she studied worked intensely hard, and they were highly motivated to consistently work hard precisely by this internal drive. But what she noticed was that, in addition to hard work, talented young artists shared an intense love of their activity. They were driven less by external rewards and praise and more by a passionate joy in doing their work. While working, they focused like a laser beam, entering a psychological state of flow, which is characterized by complete absorption, concentration, joy, and subjective loss of time.
Flow has been documented as an important contributor to performance in areas ranging from sports to music, to physics, to religion, to spirituality, to sex. Who can forge the 1992 NBA Finals, Bulls against Trail Blazers? Imprinted in the brains of many sports fans is the moment when Michael Jordan hit his sixth consecutive three-point shot, looked over at Magic Johnson, and just shrugged, as if to say, “This is out of my hands!”
It’s likely that our ability to enter flow states is a product of the creative rage to master. Martha J. Morelock, who has worked with exceptionally creative children, is convinced that the intense engagement she saw in the children is a reflection of a deep brain-based impulse to learn – “a craving for intellectual stimulation matching their cognitive requirements in the same way that the physical body craves food and oxygen. In other words, the children didn’t just seem internally driven to learn about their craft. It appeared as though they needed to master it.
p.19 – the same finding, of course, applies to highly motivated adults. A love of one’s work is key to not only productivity but also high-level creativity. In a famous study of the development of excellence, developmental psychologist Benjamin Bloom found that children who became highly creative later in life showed unusual interests in their field.
p.20 – The highly creative person may also fall in love with the creative process itself- the imagination, the creation of new forms and figures, and the exploration of new ideas and possibilities.
p.21 – Psychologist Robert Vallerand and his colleagues make a distinction between harmonious and obsessive passion, which are most importantly distinguished by how a passion has been internalized in the person’s identity.
In contrast, obsessively passionate people are less motivated by a love of their work, and they tend to feel as though they are not in control of their passions. They frequently experience anxiety when engaging in their work and feel constant pressure to outperform others because they see their achievements as a source of social acceptance or self-esteem. They are motivated to engage in their activity due to the promise of external rewards, not their inner inclinations. Obsessive passion is an indicator that the activity has not been healthily integrated into a person’s overall sense of self.
p.22 – Passion and its companion, inspiration, are critical pieces of the creativity puzzle.
p.24 – Inspiration really does favor the prepared mind.
p.25 – Inspired people also tend to enjoy increased well-being in life. In particular, they enjoy greater levels of gratitude, positive emotions, life satisfaction, vitality, and self-actualization.
p.28 – Snyder suggests that hope is a dynamic cognitive motivational system in which emotions follow thoughts, rather than the opposite. Guided by either a hopeful personality or state of mind, people approach their goals with an attitude and a set of strategies that are conductive to success.
People who are hopeful tend to create learning goals (like experimenting with a new type of sound), which support personal growth and improvement. Those without hope, on the other hand, tend to adopt mastery goals (like selling a certain number of records), which are less focused on growth and more focused on outperforming others. Several studies have also linked hope to academic achievement, while one study found that those who were in a hopeful state came up with more original ideas and associations. Hopeful thinking may actually promote creative thinking skills, insofar as it involves coming up with various flexible strategies to achieve a goal.
3 – Daydreaming
p.30 – “Was it only by dreaming or writing that I could find out what I thought?” Joan Didion once asked.
p.33 – Creative work requires a connection to one’s inner monologue, and it is from this stream of desires, emotions, and ways of making sense of the world that new ideas and novel perspectives arise. T. S. Eliot was ahead of his time in recognizing the role of mind wandering in creative incubation, which he referred to as “idea incubation” in his 1933 work, The Use of Poetry and the Use of Criticism. Eliot argued that creativity required an “incubation period” during which the mind could unconsciously process pre-existing ideas – and for this reason, he believed that illnesses forcing the artist to take to bed and avoid the unusual distractions of their daily routines could be surprisingly beneficial for creative work.
4 – Solitude
p.48 – Science has confirmed that time for solitude reflection truly feeds the creative mind. The capacity for solitude is a quality that unites successful creators, who are able to turn away from the distractions of daily life and social interactions to reconnect with themselves. But solitude isn’t just about avoiding distractions; it’s about giving the mind the space it needs to reflect, make new connections, and find meaning.
p.49 – Far from being an indicator of negative personality traits or mental illness, the capacity for solitude may be a sign of emotional maturity and healthy psychological development. D. W. Winnicott calls the capacity to be alone “one of the most important signs of maturity in emotional development.” Regardless of where you fall on the extraversion spectrum, the capacity for solitude is a muscle that anyone can strengthen and tap into as a way to facilitate the creative process. Psychologist Ester Buchholz describes solitude as “meaningful alone time” that fuels joy and fulfillment in both interpersonal relationships and creative work.
p.52 – But we often don’t give ourselves much time for purposeful inner reflection – the pace of modern life leaves little time for seemingly unproductive activity as we face increasing distractions and demands for our attention. The mind must have the space to settle down if it is to come up with the insights that make for original creative work. When we’re engaged in solitary reflection, the brain is able to process information, crystallize memories, make connections, re-establish a sense of identity and construct a sense of self, making meaning from our experiences, and even guide moral judgement. When we’re alone relaxing and daydreaming – or simply turning out our immediate surroundings – the brain’s imagination network is activated. This gives us a sort of inner focus, a lens through which to see ourselves and others more clearly.
p.53 – Solitude and creativity have a long and storied history. Since ancient times, a solitary life has been seen as a key to unlocking the mind’s highest creative, intellectual, and spiritual potential.
5 – Intuition
p.58 – “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)
6 – Openness to Experience
p.82 – We need new and unusual experiences to think differently.
Openness to experience – the drive for cognitive exploration of one’s inner and outer worlds – is the single strongest and most consistent personality trait that predicts creative achievement. Openness to experience, one of the “Big Five” personality traits, is absolutely essential to creativity. Those who are high in openness tend to be imaginative, curious, perceptive, creative, artistic, thoughtful and intellectual.
p.85 – There are many misconceptions about dopamine, which is commonly seen as the “sex, drugs, and rock ’n’ roll” neurotransmitter. Despite many popular descriptions, dopamine is not necessarily associated with pleasure and satisfaction. Instead, dopamine’s primary role is to make us want things. We get a huge surge of dopamine coursing through our brains at the possibility of a big payoff, but there’s no guarantee that we’ll actually like or enjoy what we’ve obtained. Colin DeYoung explains that the release of dopamine “increases motivation to explore and facilitates cognitive and behavioral processes useful in exploration.” DeYoung has called dopamine the “neuromodulator of exploration.”
At the broadest level, dopamine facilitates psychological plasticity, a tendency to explore and engage flexibility with new things, in both behavior and thinking. Plasticity leads us to engage with uncertainty – whether it’s pondering a new app to meet a consumer demand or questioning the next step in our own life path – exploring the unknown and finding reward in seeking its positive potential. With plasticity comes enhanced cognitive and behavioral engagement and exploration and, frequently, a commitment to personal growth.
p.87 – We know that both daydreaming and dreaming at night are invaluable tools to help us access deeper realms of creativity. People who are high in openness to experience report dreaming more often and having more vivid dreams than those who are less open to experience, very likely due to their higher dopamine production.
Dreaming inspires creative insights, and those who have more creative insights show more activation in the brain’s right hemisphere. Among people who are high in openness, the brain’s dopamine systems are working day and night to inspire creative insights.
p.92 – Achieving a balance between the intellectual, emotional, and aesthetic aspects of openness to experience may increase the chances that surprising and novel connections will arise and that creativity will not tip over into mental illness. Indeed, for the highest levels of creativity it may be especially important to achieve a balance between the intellectual aspects of openness to experience and the more fantasy-oriented aspects.
7 – Mindfulness
p.111 – Being mindful alters the very structure and function of the brain, supporting executive functions like attention and self-regulation, both of which are valuable assets to creativity – especially when it comes to motivating ourselves to sit down and focus on a challenging creative task for extended periods of time.
8 – Sensitivity
p.123 – “Creative people’s openness and sensitivity often exposes them to suffering and pain, yet also to a great deal of enjoyment,” Csikszentmihalyi wrote. “Being alone at the forefront of a discipline also leaves you exposed and vulnerable.”
p.140 – Both positive and negative emotions play a critical role in the positive disintegration process. Even emotional experiences that we tend to think of as negative, like neurosis and inner conflict, can contribute to personality growth. These conflicts, if we engage with and learn from them, can set the stage for emotional development, creativity, and a rich inner life.
p.141 – At later phases of personality development, a quest to find the true self emerges. The individual no longer passively accepts external authority, but starts listening to his or her inner voice and making judgments based on his or her own standards. Through the process of transcending to the “higher self,” people often become aware of what Robert Greene refers to as the false self – “the accumulation of all the voices you have internalized from other people – parents and friends who want you to conform to their ideas of what you should be like and what you should do, as well as societal pressures to adhere to certain values. Becoming intimate with these voices helps the individual to transcend them. As Joseph Campbell said, “It is by going down into the abyss that we discover the treasures of life. Where you stumble, there lies your treasure.”
What lies at higher stages of this journey of personality development? Self-actualization and a desire to help others and solve problems in the world, rather than a preoccupation with one’s own petty concerns. Here, people develop universal compassion, service to humanity, and the realization of timeless values.
p.142 – People who achieve extraordinary inner transformation find creative way of solving problems, coping with emotional challenges, accepting themselves and others, and giving back. They seek to constantly give new meaning to their lives and discover their true selves – the self becomes an object of ongoing discovery and creation. They also discover that one’s inner world determines his or her external reality, that we each create our personal and collective reality, that our lives are interconnected, and that the choices we make shape the world toward war or peace. In other words, they discover that “inner peace is the foundation of wold peace” and the “everything we need is within us.”
January 15, 2018
I was drawn to this book by Scott Barry Kaufman’s appearance on the Meaning of Life podcast. During the segment, Kaufman offered his unique theory of intelligence which claims that intelligence is context-specific and involves abilities that don’t normally show up on IQ tests such as imagination, creativity, and emotional attunement. Always flattered by my own reflection, I picked up a copy of Wired to Create, co-written by Carolyn Gregoire at the Huffington Post, and found the book both highly readable and sufficiently comprehensive.
Wired to Create might be a confusing title since the book says little about the neurobiology of creativity. It’s also easy to read into the title a certain humanistic or universal sentiment; that we are all wired to create by virtue of our shared cognitive wiring. My impression after reading this book is that although creative talent is not democratically distributed, creativity can be cultivated by the average person seeking to live a more fulfilling and interesting life.
Throughout the book, Kaufman and Gregoire provide comfort to the “messy minds” of creative individuals. Creative minds, they note, are highly complicated and often contradictory. For instance, in one study cited by the authors, a group of creative writers scored high on measures of both psychopathology and psychological wellbeing.
The book is organized around 10 identifiable traits of the creative mind. These include imaginative play, passion, daydreaming, solitude, intuition, openness to experience, mindfulness, sensitivity, turning adversity into challenge, and thinking differently. By far the best predictor of creative capacity is openness to experience-- a personality domain measured by the Five Factor Model (the “Big 5”, or OCEAN). Those who are high in openness tend to crave new experiences and are easily stimulated by novel ideas and stimulus. They tend to be more intellectually inclined--although not necessarily more intelligent--appreciate aesthetic beauty, and constantly seek to make meaning out of new information.
So why are some minds more creative? The authors note that it probably has something to do with being hyper-sensitive to one’s environment. Creative people exhibit “latent inhibition” in that they tend to have more difficulty filtering sensory data and external stimulus. Researchers postulate that with fewer dopamine receptors in the thalamus, more information is transferred to higher parts of the brain. Information that would be ignored as irrelevant by the “normal” brain is combined in more novel ways, as the mind seeks to make meaning out of excess data. Because of this excess of stimulus, the creative person tends to be more excitable, more original in thought and tastes, and more desirous of novelty.
Throughout the book the authors also dispel of certain popular notions around creativity and creative output. The 10,000 hour rule is given short shrift; no amount of technical practice, the authors argue, can conjure the inspiration, insight, and passion needed to produce masterful work. Similarly, the idea that IQ and scholastic achievement are the best predictors of creative achievement is challenged and replaced by the notion that emotional commitment is paramount. Citing a study conducted by other researchers, the authors note that “The desire to learn and discover seemed to have more bearing on creative accomplishment than did cognitive ability.”
Overall, the book is well-organized, engaging, and strikes a good balance between technical detail and interesting anecdotes. The examples are familiar, if not a little tiring. (I don’t think you can publish a popular nonfiction book without mentioning Steve Jobs). I personally would have preferred more suggestions for cultivating creativity in my everyday life, even only as an appendix offered at the end of the book. But I guess a popular science book is allowed to tiptoe into self-help without ever diving in; academic credibility being what it is. If the reader was looking for ways to increase her creative power, she would likely do better finding a more hands-on introduction to creativity as a practice. In fact, I can imagine some readers being discouraged by the information in this book. It seems that creativity is linked to openness, in the same way that mathematics is linked to IQ. If these both openness and IQ are relatively immutable characteristics, then it seems that talent defines our cognitive potential, and these talents are unlikely to lie beyond our abilities to summon then.
But this is probably the wrong lesson to draw. Creativity can also be seen as a set of behavioral characteristics, or even as a way of life. Even if we’re not all creative geniuses, we can all benefit from cultivating our creative potential. This is the real takeaway to this book. We are all wired to create, even if some for us, that wiring is more intricate than for others.
Wired to Create might be a confusing title since the book says little about the neurobiology of creativity. It’s also easy to read into the title a certain humanistic or universal sentiment; that we are all wired to create by virtue of our shared cognitive wiring. My impression after reading this book is that although creative talent is not democratically distributed, creativity can be cultivated by the average person seeking to live a more fulfilling and interesting life.
Throughout the book, Kaufman and Gregoire provide comfort to the “messy minds” of creative individuals. Creative minds, they note, are highly complicated and often contradictory. For instance, in one study cited by the authors, a group of creative writers scored high on measures of both psychopathology and psychological wellbeing.
The book is organized around 10 identifiable traits of the creative mind. These include imaginative play, passion, daydreaming, solitude, intuition, openness to experience, mindfulness, sensitivity, turning adversity into challenge, and thinking differently. By far the best predictor of creative capacity is openness to experience-- a personality domain measured by the Five Factor Model (the “Big 5”, or OCEAN). Those who are high in openness tend to crave new experiences and are easily stimulated by novel ideas and stimulus. They tend to be more intellectually inclined--although not necessarily more intelligent--appreciate aesthetic beauty, and constantly seek to make meaning out of new information.
So why are some minds more creative? The authors note that it probably has something to do with being hyper-sensitive to one’s environment. Creative people exhibit “latent inhibition” in that they tend to have more difficulty filtering sensory data and external stimulus. Researchers postulate that with fewer dopamine receptors in the thalamus, more information is transferred to higher parts of the brain. Information that would be ignored as irrelevant by the “normal” brain is combined in more novel ways, as the mind seeks to make meaning out of excess data. Because of this excess of stimulus, the creative person tends to be more excitable, more original in thought and tastes, and more desirous of novelty.
Throughout the book the authors also dispel of certain popular notions around creativity and creative output. The 10,000 hour rule is given short shrift; no amount of technical practice, the authors argue, can conjure the inspiration, insight, and passion needed to produce masterful work. Similarly, the idea that IQ and scholastic achievement are the best predictors of creative achievement is challenged and replaced by the notion that emotional commitment is paramount. Citing a study conducted by other researchers, the authors note that “The desire to learn and discover seemed to have more bearing on creative accomplishment than did cognitive ability.”
Overall, the book is well-organized, engaging, and strikes a good balance between technical detail and interesting anecdotes. The examples are familiar, if not a little tiring. (I don’t think you can publish a popular nonfiction book without mentioning Steve Jobs). I personally would have preferred more suggestions for cultivating creativity in my everyday life, even only as an appendix offered at the end of the book. But I guess a popular science book is allowed to tiptoe into self-help without ever diving in; academic credibility being what it is. If the reader was looking for ways to increase her creative power, she would likely do better finding a more hands-on introduction to creativity as a practice. In fact, I can imagine some readers being discouraged by the information in this book. It seems that creativity is linked to openness, in the same way that mathematics is linked to IQ. If these both openness and IQ are relatively immutable characteristics, then it seems that talent defines our cognitive potential, and these talents are unlikely to lie beyond our abilities to summon then.
But this is probably the wrong lesson to draw. Creativity can also be seen as a set of behavioral characteristics, or even as a way of life. Even if we’re not all creative geniuses, we can all benefit from cultivating our creative potential. This is the real takeaway to this book. We are all wired to create, even if some for us, that wiring is more intricate than for others.
January 24, 2021
This book is replete with invaluable information for understanding oneself as a highly creative, highly sensitive person. I feel affirmed after reading this book.
August 31, 2018
Great self-congratulatory read to feel good about my creative potential no matter how routinely I squander it by not creating anything of value!
February 9, 2019
Definitely recommend it to students struggling with creative work in mandatory English classes.
September 29, 2018
Wired to Create is a collaboration between Scott Barry Kaufman and Carolyn Gregoire. It explores the methodology of creativity and talks about 10 essential things that creative people do. Citing examples from famous artists and inventors makes the book quite interesting. Though it does talk about some instances of studies on creativity, the book does not really talk about those in depth, wisely preferring to make the most of the examples and not delve into scientific rigor. I say wisely mainly because this seems as though it was intended for a wide audience.
While earlier I said there were things that creative people do, it would be more accurate to say that they have these qualities that make them creative. For instance, people that have messy minds, poor attention filters and so on have a tendency to be more creative than others. It doesn’t really mention how to foster a creative sense, but it does mention these qualities.
I enjoyed the book and did find some facets of personality that I share with a creative person, but I don’t really think that shows much in the way of anything at all.
While earlier I said there were things that creative people do, it would be more accurate to say that they have these qualities that make them creative. For instance, people that have messy minds, poor attention filters and so on have a tendency to be more creative than others. It doesn’t really mention how to foster a creative sense, but it does mention these qualities.
I enjoyed the book and did find some facets of personality that I share with a creative person, but I don’t really think that shows much in the way of anything at all.
February 7, 2017
According to the author's research, individuals wired for creativity have a unique profile: sensitivity, a deep internal life, an ability to toggle between internal and external worlds and a strong desire to mediate and make explicit that experience, etc. I found this book very helpful in explaining some of the mechanisms my children and I operate under and also found it instructive in helping me to navigate around some of the negatives that this kind of neural package invites (daydreaming leads to "big fish" creativity but too much daydreaming leads to messy external world, anxiety and overwhelm...how to navigate?) Found the discussions on impact of digital distraction on creativity and brain makeup particularly useful. Also found discussion on meditation very helpful: meditation that encourages guided mind wandering is apparently much more useful to fostering creative thought than meditation that encourages focus. Takeaways: need to meditate. Need to spend less time online. Need to read more. Need to spend more time alone if I want to foster creative talents.
March 17, 2016
I enjoyed this book. It was difficult to get through at times because they used a lot of strenuous terminology. But it is a science based book, so it should be expected. Each chapter is a topic of the creative mind. I found the point of the truly creative not being gifted to put out masterpiece after masterpiece enlightening. A lot of being a creative person is a numbers game. You have to produce A LOT of failures, mediocre projects, crappy work, and bland ventures to create something of importance eventually. Shakespeare and Beethoven wrote a lot of pieces, many unpublished or unfinished, but the majority of people remember around only 5 to 10 of their works. So, the book motivates me get out there, fail a lot, and get better each time even by just a little bit.
February 27, 2018
This book looks at creativity systematically. Creative people are wired differently. They are:
1. Imaginative like a child, play like a child.
2. Have passion and willing to work hard.
3. Happy to day dream, have a hike to let the subconscious mind work
4. Be alone
5. Happy to rely on their intuition.
6. Open to experience.
7. Mindful of what is happening around them. So no smartphone
8. Sensitive to stimuli and introverted
9. Hardy in adversity or mental sickness.
10. Think differently and have diverse interests.
It is refreshing and well analysed, different from the usual biography which usually bother on the idol worship sort. These are skills that any of us can learn to wire ourselves differently to be creative.
1. Imaginative like a child, play like a child.
2. Have passion and willing to work hard.
3. Happy to day dream, have a hike to let the subconscious mind work
4. Be alone
5. Happy to rely on their intuition.
6. Open to experience.
7. Mindful of what is happening around them. So no smartphone
8. Sensitive to stimuli and introverted
9. Hardy in adversity or mental sickness.
10. Think differently and have diverse interests.
It is refreshing and well analysed, different from the usual biography which usually bother on the idol worship sort. These are skills that any of us can learn to wire ourselves differently to be creative.
November 20, 2016
I enjoyed this book, although I sensed that much of the information was what I already knew. Creative people are curious, stubborn, independent, and willing -- even eager -- to take risks. As an Orthodox woman I realize certain limitations as far as broadening the mind. Too broad, the brain falls out. I cannot pursue certain topics (i.e. other religions) or do certain things (i.e. explore non-kosher food) which shows the problem of highly creative people in an authoritarian or religious environment bound by tradition. But perhaps learning to navigate the boundaries is a lesson itself in creativity.
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