How to be creative

(A response to Elliot's article about creativity.)

How to be creative

There is no single recipe for creativity, but they all seem to follow roughly the same technique.

The best intro to creativity I’ve found is this video by John Cleese. Being John Cleese it’s a fun video, but what he talks about is completely accurate and based on how our brain works and is backed by research:

For an in-depth look at creativity, check out the book “deep work” by Cal Newport. Among other points, he talks about how artistic and highly productive people have managed to set themselves up for productive output throughout history. For another viewpoint look up Brian Tracy’s lectures on “the superconscious mind”. Many other sources say pretty-much the same thing.

To summarize, at any one time your brain runs lots of competing little subroutines that are primed by what you encounter in the environment (see “priming” on Wikipedia) used to predict the immediate future, called “nexting”.

When you set yourself in an environment with no distractions, these subroutines run their course and eventually die down, leaving your mind clear to think deeply about something with no distractions. During this time, if you have set up a problem for your brain to think about, it will do exactly that… and eventually give insight into the problem.

The effect is real, and not something people usually experience or even know about. The experience is also highly pleasurable.

It takes about 1/2 hour of uninterrupted time to *begin* this state if you are practiced at it. The first time might take a person 60 minutes and the first time they might not even be able to do it at all. It takes a few sessions to get the feel of it and know what to expect and where to put your mind.

Anything that distracts you from the state will stop it completely, and it will take another 1/2 hour to get back into the mode. A phone call will do it, someone stopping by your office will do it, and checking twitter on your phone will do it. Any distraction will activate more subroutines in your head, and it takes time for these to die down again.

There’s a brain neurochemistry explanation for this which I won’t go into (it’s in Cal Newport’s book, IIRC).

Lots of famously productive people practice this technique, it’s the root of their creativity.

Difference from flow

Flow is a slightly different state. The flow state is where you are hyper focused and lose track of the sense of time, but it’s not specifically tied to creativity. If you are an expert in something you can get into flow and be highly productive by using your existing skills, but not necessarily creative.

Creativity is described as being in the “open” or “closed” state, online it’s called “systemic mode” and “heuristic mode” (cf. wikipedia).

A good distinction between flow and creativity is the target: if you have a task to complete (writing, coding, sewing, circuit design) you can get into flow and complete the task quickly and efficiently. At any point you always know what the next task is.

Being creative is the opposite: it’s where you *don’t* know what the next step is, you don’t have a ready-made solution, and you have to mull over possibilities.

If you can quiet your mind, and think through the issues, your brain will eventually pop up a creative solution seemingly at random.

It’s weird – you’re thinking through a problem with no obvious solution, and suddenly the answer pops into your head with no obvious prior reasoning.

That’s the open mode. It’s closely related to flow.

(Flow also has a neurochemistry explanation.)

Bootstrapping your life

Jenny's recent article about purchasing a green vehicle prompted this comment and my reply:

Some people can barely live within their means despite working two grueling jobs

a day, and saving for an EV is not a priority over putting food on the table or paying

off medical or educational debt.

Do you have any advice about bootstraps?

Yes.

How many books have you read about success? How many about whichever field your jobs are in? Do you have a goal of switching to a single job? Have you written down exactly what your ideal job would be?

How often do you go looking for a new job? Do you scan the papers every day, check out Craigslist, and ask around? Do you study up and learn how to interview, how to make a resume, how to do well in your job? Are you willing to move to get a better job? Have you compared the expenses of moving with the extra money?

The US is having a shortage of workers right now. I’ve read this in the news, and I pass a *ton* of “help wanted” signs in my area. I have no reason to believe it’s not true today.

Lots of people have been in your situation, and you can find out what those people have done and what works and what doesn’t. Much of this information is available for free on the internet and in libraries.

Your first step will be to do everything you can to get more spare time. That probably means cutting down to a single job, and one that will pay more than both of your existing jobs.

Once you have spare time you can use it to bootstrap a better life.

There are 3 psychological aspects that determine success in life: intelligence, conscientiousness(1), and luck. Each is responsible for about 30% of the variation in life success.

Conscientiousness is the ability to work hard, to do a good job, and to make sure all the bases are covered. You can pump up your conscientiousness by building good work ethic habits. In other words, don’t approach work as something to be avoided, approach it as something that you must excel at.

Static intelligence is how much you know, and fluid intelligence is how easily you learn something. Fluid intelligence can’t be changed, but there’s an out: if you keep learning as an adult, you can amass more knowledge than a smarter person who stops learning, and most people simply stop learning as adults.

Most people don’t read even a single book a year – if you can read 10 books a year you will be far ahead of the average person. Choose books that will help your life success. Audio books count, are easier than reading, and you can listen to them while doing other things (such as driving, or doing manual labor).

Finally: you can’t do much about luck, but you can give luck a better chance to happen. Move to a city, or a different area of the city, or hang out in a different area of the city. Go to meetups and group meetings for your areas of interest. Generally put yourself in whichever environment you think will give you the best chances of achieving your goals.

There are many examples of people who sat down, wrote out their situation, and attacked the problem logically. Those people are now successful.

Go thou and do likewise.

(1) Conscientiousness is personality trait that can be measured numerically, similar to IQ. It's one of the "Big 5 personality" traits, and you can find tests to measure it online.

Two types of motivation

The note (below the fold) was posted response to Eliot's recent "Goals and Goalposts" article.

It occurs to me that learning about project motivation from makers is sort of like apprentice learning, as opposed to formal school learning.

There's absolutely nothing wrong with Eliot's post, and you can learn a lot from watching an "old hand" do things, but it's sort of like the difference between being an apprentice in a machine shop and learning by watching the experts (and asking questions), versus going to school and taking formal courses.

Old pros explaining something they discovered after years of experimentation is fine, but going to school can give you the background you need to understand *why* certain ways work best, and can give you an understanding of subtle differences that you might not notice just by watching someone.

Eliot's post misses one of these subtleties; namely, that there are types of motivation, and the differences are crucial. Focusing on one type will diminish your love of projects, while focusing on the other type will enhance it. Without explaining this distinction, it's entirely possible that future articles will serve to reduce peoples' motivation to make projects. Without this distinction, it's even possible that Eliot's current article will do this.

I'm not an expert in these things either, started studying this less than a year ago, and my reason for doing it is unrelated to making things. I'm not in a position to critique Eliot's post, but it bothers me that a future post might actually be harmful.

It's too bad we don't have an actual expert we could ask about such things.

Suggestion: Could HAD find a researcher in these things and do an AMA article about it?

Extrinsic motivations are goals, things you get in exchange for being done such as money or likes.

Intrinsic motivations are what you get while doing something, and fall into 4 categories: learning something new, practicing something you’re rusty at, creative control, and value to yourself, family, or community.

Creative tasks respond to intrinsic motivations but if you concentrate on the extrinsic goals, the intrinsic motivations will fade. This is called the “overjustification effect” and it’s well established in the literature.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overjustification_effect

Setting a completion target is fine so long as it’s not an extrinsic goal. Don’t do projects to get subscribers on your YouTube channel, do projects because you like to do projects. Set goals so that the project is inherently valuable to you (or your family, or the community) instead of valuable for the money it brings in.

Moving the intrinsic goalposts is fine because your enjoyment comes from the journey, not the destination. The enjoyment from extrinsic goals quickly fades, and you’re always looking for the next one. Happiness from extrinsic goals is always over the cognitive horizon.

It’s not known whether the overjustification effect can be reversed, but I have an experimental technique that might work. I'm in the process of coding it up as a project that people can download and try.

Available in about a month.

https://hackaday.io/project/180726-motivation