Whether it's photo editing or some other craft we like to dabble in, coming up with interesting ways to reignite our passion for it and refine our skills can be a challenging task in and of itself.
According to Moshe Bar, the professor and director of the Leslie and Susan Gonda Multidisciplinary Brain Research Center at Bar-Ilan University, Israel, the first obstacle to creative thinking is the so-called 'cognitive load.'
"[It consists of] all these details, worries and other thoughts that load our mind and tax our mental abilities," the author of Mindwandering: How Your Constant Mental Drift Can Improve Your Mood and Boost Your Creativity, told Bored Panda.
Many psychologists assume that the mind, left to its own devices, is inclined to follow a well-worn path of familiar associations. But the neuroscientist and graduate student Shira Baror found that innovative thinking, not routine ideation, is our default cognitive mode when our minds are clear.
In a series of experiments, they gave participants a free-association task while simultaneously taxing their mental capacity to different degrees. In one, for example, the researchers asked half the participants to keep in mind a string of seven digits, and the other half to remember just two digits. While the participants maintained these strings in working memory, they were given a word (e.g., shoe) and asked to respond as quickly as possible with the first word that came to mind (e.g., sock).
Bar and Baror discovered that a high mental load consistently diminished the originality and creativity of the response. Participants with seven digits to recall resorted to the most statistically common responses (e.g., white/black), whereas participants with two digits gave less typical, more varied pairings (e.g., white/cloud).
"The second obstacle to creativity is negative mood," professor Bar said. "People who are feeling positive are more creative. Interestingly, this link also works in the other direction: people who are more creative find themselves in a better mood. A finding that [the scientific community] now use to try to alleviate symptoms of mood disorders such as depression and anxiety."
However, it's worth pointing out that some studies say the positive vs. negative emotions distinction may not be the most important contrast for understanding attentional focus. Research conducted by psychologist Eddie Harmon-Jones and his colleagues, for example, suggests that the critical variable influencing one’s scope of attention is not emotional valence (positive vs. negative emotions) but motivational intensity, or how strongly you feel compelled to either approach or avoid something.
Given the obstacles he just mentioned, professor Bar believes the first tip for improved creativity is to be less occupied and cognitively loaded. So if you want to challenge Benjamin and morph a few celebrities or are simply looking for inspiration for your next poem, a clear mind can get you a long way.
"To get to be in this state some people find meditation helpful, but there are other ways, as I detail in my book, Mindwandering."
"Similarly, when you are looking for a creative solution, mind your mood for optimal conditions. A better mood is more conducive to creative ideation."
But there are more factors. "We also need to find the level of stimulation that is right for our creativity to blossom; not too much and not too little," Moshe Bar said.
For instance, have you wondered why so many of our best thoughts come to us in the shower? "You become less aware of your environment and more aware of your internal thoughts,” said John Kounios, a psychologist who studies creativity and distraction at Drexel University in Philadelphia. These activities are physically or mentally demanding, but only on a mild level. They also need to be familiar or comfortable enough that a person stays engaged but doesn't get bored, and last long enough to allow an uninterrupted stream of thought.
