If You Want To Have Better Ideas, Get Out Of This World

AI-generated image with the prompt: “creative ideas in another world”

I regularly check the science boards and university press releases for new studies on creativity. Specifically, studies that show us some small or big way to increase our own creativity. In compiling ten years worth of such studies on our Scientific Studies page, I noticed a pattern across many, if not all of those studies. That is, reducing our ability to focus on the physical 3D world increases our creativity. These studies appear quite different on the surface—the creative effects of sound, light, certain activities like walking, etc.—but I believe they are just different ways we can get out of this world in order to be more creative.

focusing is filtering.

Focusing brings our consciousness into the 3D world. And it’s great when you’re doing your taxes or putting together that 600 piece LEGO set, as you don’t want to be thinking about anything else. But it’s horrible for creativity. Why? When you are paying full attention to one physical, complex thing or task (taxes or LEGOs) you are filtering out any irrelevant noise. But when it comes to creative ideas, who’s to say what thoughts are the wheat and what are the chaff? There’s the rub.

Creativity happens when two seemingly disconnected notions collide and form an entirely new notion (an idea). If we are overly focused on the physical 3D world, then we are limiting the number of notions that can collide in our minds.

And the science supports this truth.

AI-generated image with the prompt: “creativity in another dimension”

We have to get out of our own way.

My favorite of the scientific studies looked at walking. Turns out walking increases our creativity by a whopping 60%. We can be walking on the street, in nature, or even on a treadmill, it doesn’t matter. We just have to walk. Other similar studies have shown that menial tasks like showering, washing dishes, or even gardening, can also increase our creativity.

But why? Aren’t we focusing on walking, showering, washing dishes, and gardening? Yes, but it turns out to be a question of degree.

Cognitive scientist, Sian Beilock, wrote a book called “Choke.” In it, she describes how our working memory helps us focus. And, to the point of the book, we choke in stressful situations because we get in our own way when our working memory goes into overdrive and we focus too much on what should be a natural, previously learned task. There’s a funny story about a basketball player who was missing free throws. He was told to do simple math in his head while he was shooting as a way to give his working memory something to do while he was shooting. It worked! His free-throw shooting improved.

I believe the same thing is happening with walking and other menial tasks. Our intention is to increase creativity, so these tasks give our working memory something else to do in the physical 3D world. The tasks distract our working memory just enough so that it can’t “over focus” us mentally and disallow potential connections in our minds to happen. This is why so many people have ideas in the shower.

Beilock put it this way:

“Simply put, people’s ability to think about information in new and unusual ways can actually be hampered when they wield too much brain power.”

So the question is, how else can we manage our working memory to allow more creative thinking?

AI-generated image with the prompt: “creativity in another dimension”

hey, working memory, look over there.

There are many other studies listed in our Scientific Studies page that don’t intend to prove that mitigating focus improves creativity, but seem to do so anyway. Here are a few.

Finding: creativity increases when you’re tired. Guess what else is tired? Your working memory. So being tired is a way to dampen the focusing effects of our working memory.

Finding: moderate amounts of alcohol increases creativity. Guess what else catches a buzz when you drink? Your working memory. That liberates thinking.

Finding: sensory deprivation tanks increase creativity. When your senses are deprived in one of those tanks, your working memory has nothing to latch onto at all. So you don’t have to trick it to turn off, it’s already off. Creativity ensues.

Finding: coffee shop noise is the perfect amount of sound for creativity. Any louder than that and creativity decreases, perhaps because it turns our working memory on too much and the sound becomes our only focus. Any less and and the sound is not enough to capture our working memory’s attention.

Even Thomas Edison seemed to understand this dynamic. He would sit in a chair with a fist full of ballbearings in one hand, dangled over a metal bucket. He’d close his eyes and contemplate a problem he was working on. As he drifted off to sleep his hand would relax and drop the ballbearings into the bucket and wake him up. He’d repeat this over and over, trying to maintain an “in-between” state of consciousness. Could be he was simply turning his working memory off so more ideas would come.

There are other formal studies that find completely different activities or actions that will improve creativity. But none point to our working memory as the real culprit in improving creativity.

Now let’s take this concept a little further.

AI-generated image with the prompt: “creative ideas in another world”

Ideas are out of this world.

Our working memory wants to lock us up in our 3D world and we know it does so by sharpening our focus. By definition a new creative idea doesn’t currently exist in our world. So it’s logical that we need to get out of this world in order to come up with a new creative idea.

Which begs the next big, fat question. When we get out of this world, what world are we entering? Are we in another dimension? Do some people find it easier than others to go there? Do we all go to the same world when we create (like a Carl Jung’s collective unconscious) or do we all have our own separate worlds? Are these creative worlds related to dreams, meditation, the soul, and/or spirituality? After all, God is often called “the creator.” Coincidence?

I don’t know, but I do know there’s something important going on here and will keep studying the studies and reporting those most interesting on our Scientific Studies page. Stay tuned.

NOTE: please forward this blog post to any cognitive scientists (or similar) in universities, as maybe it’ll inspire new research into this exciting topic.