Simon Reads: brain

by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

(i only read the last chapter as i felt i didn't need this knowledge in depth, especially after just reading "flow" by the same author...i don't mind reading the whole book someday or picking out the chapters of interest, but not now as i got more interestingly related books on my read list)

chapter 14 - Enhancing Personal Creativity

But the fact is that there are real limits to how many things a person can attend to at the same time, and when survival needs require all of one's attention, none is left over for being creative
in a person concerned with protecting his or her self, practically all the attention is invested in monitoring threats to the ego

Curiousity and Interest

with age most of us lose the sense of wonder, the feeling of awe in confronting the majesty and variety of the world. Yet without awe, life becomes routine. Creative individuals are childlike in that their curiosity remains fresh even at ninety years of age; they delight in the strange and the unknown.
Try to be surprised by something every day. Experience this one thing for what it is, not what you think it is. Be open to what the world is telling you. Life is nothing more than a stream of experiences - the more widely and deeply you swim in it, the richer your life will be
Try to surprise at least one person every day. Comfortable routines are great when they save energy for doing what u really care about; but if you are still searching, they restrict and limit the future. Instead of being your predictable self, say something unexpected, express an opinion that you have not dared to reveal, ask a question you wouldn't ordinarily ask.
Write down each day what surprised you and how you surprised others. Most creative people keep a diary, or notes, or lab records to make their experiences more concrete and enduring. One of the surest ways to enrich life is to make experiences less fleeting, so that the most memorable, interesting, and important events are not lost forever a few hours after they occured. Writing them down so that you can relive them in recollection is one way to keep them from dissapearing
When something strikes a spark of interest, follow it. The world is our business, and we can't know which part of it is best suited to our selves, to our potentialities, unlesss we make a serious effort to learn about as many aspects of it as possible

Cultivating Flow in Everyday Life

Wake up in the morning with a specific goal to look forward to. Creative people believe that there is something meaningful to accomplish each day, and they can't wait to get started on it. It is easier if each night before falling asleep, you review the next day and choose a particular task that, compared to the rest of the day, should be relatively interesing and exciting. then next morning, open your eyes and visualize the chosen event - play it out briefly in your mind until you can hardly wait to get dressed and get going
If you do anything well, it becomes enjoyable. The more activities that we do with excellence and style, the more of life becomes intrinsically rewarding
To keep enjoying something, you need to increase its complexity. You cannot enjoy an activity over and over, unless you discover new challenges, new opportunities in it. Otherwise it becomes boring. It is always possible to find a better way to do anything

Habits of Strength

You should conserve creative energy by routinizing as much of everyday life as possible so that you can focus entirely on what really matters.
Before you have discovered an overriding interest in a particular domain, it makes sense to be open to as much of the world as possible. After you have developed an abiding interest, however, it may make more sense to save as much energy as you can to invest in that one domain
People who meditate expand their being by letting go of focused thought. this way, they aim to achieve a spiritual union with the energy behind the world of appearances, the force that drives the universe
take charge of your schedule. There are probably best times to shop, to visit, to work, to relax for each one of us; the more we do things at the most suitable times, the more creative energy we can free up
Make time for reflection and relaxation. Keeping constantly busy is commendable and certainly much better than just lounging around feeling sorry for yourself. But constant busyness is not a good prescription for creativity. It is important to schedule times in the day, the week, and the year just to take stock of your life and review what you have accomplished and what remains to be done.
These are times when you should not expect any task to be one, any decision to be reached. You should just indulge in the luxury of reflection for its own sake. Whether you intend it or not, new ideas and conclusions will emerge in your consciousness anyway - and the less you try to direct the process the more creative they are likely to be. It may be best to combine these periods of reflection with some other task that requires a certain amount of attention.. Typical activities that facilitate subconscious creative processes are walking, showering, swimming, driving, gardening, weaving, and carpentry
Creative individuals usually sleep longer and claim that if they cut down on sleeptime the originality of their ideas suffer. And don't feel guilty if you sleep a few hours more than is considered normal. What you lose in waking time will probably be made up in terms of the quality f experience while you are awake
Shape your space. It is not what the environment is like that matters, but the extent to which you are in harmony with it. At the macro level, the question may be whether you feel you would be happiest if living at the seashore, surrounded by mountains or plains, or in the bustle of a big city. At the midlevel, determine what sort of community you want to sink roots in. Every city and rural area have neighborhoods that are stratified in terms of price, centrality, type of activities available and so forth. At the micro level the choices are much more readily available to everyone. We can all decide what kind of environment to create at our home. We can organize space and collect things that are meaningful and conducive to the use of creative energies
The work space of creative individuals is often messy and it tends to put off more ordered souls. The important thing is that they know where everything is, so they can work without too much distraction.
The kind of objects you fill your space with also either help or hinder the allocations of creative energies. Cherished objects remind us of our goals, make us feel more confident, and focus our attention.
Trophies diplomas, favorite books, and family pictures on the office desk are all reminders of who you are, and what you have accomplished, therefore what you are likely to achieve.
Pictures and maps of places you would liek to visit and books about things you might liek to learn more about are signposts of what u might do in the future
Find out what you like and what you hate about life. It is astonishing how little most ppl know about their feelings. There are people who can't even tell if they are hapy, and if they are, when or where. Creative individuals are in very close touch with their emotions. They always know the reason for what they are doing, and the are very sensitve to pain, to boredom, to joy, to interest, and to other emotions. They are very quick to pack up and leave if they are bored and to get involved if they are interested. And because they have practiced this skill for a long time, they need to invest no psychic energy in self-monitoring. The first step toward self-knowledge involves having a clear idea of what you spend your life doing and how you feel while doing it.
Start doing more of what you love, less of what you hate. After a few weeks of self monitoring, sit down with your diary or your notes and begin to analyze them. See what you need to add more of or take away. Maybe the emotions say that you should quit your job or find a way to add more flow to it

Internal Traits

To change personality mean to learn new patterns of attention. To look at different things, and to look at them differently; to learn to think new thoughts, have new feelings about what we experience
Develop what you lack. The point here is that everyone can strengthen the missing end of the polarity. When an extrovert learns to experience the world like an introvert, or vice versa, it is as if he or she has discovered a whole missing dimension to the world.
To start, it makes sense to identify your most obvious characteristic, the one that your friends would use to describe you. when you have identified a central trait, you can begin to try its opposite. Keep exploring what it takes to be the opposite of who you are
Shift often from openness to closure. Perhaps the most important duality that creative persons are able to integrate is often being open and receptive on the one hand, and focused and hard-driving on the other. Good scientists, like good artists, must let their minds roam playfully or they will not discover new facts, new patterns, new relationships. At the same time, they must be able to evaluate critically every novelty they encounter, forget immediately the spurious ones, and then concentrate their minds on developing and realizing the few that are promising.
for a relationship t work, it is essential to listen to the other person, to try to imagine why she says what she says, what she feels, how she sees the world. It is essential to change perspectives when necessary, to compromise, to understand the world and to act differently, because this is what the other person's reality requires. Yet it is just as important to remain in touch with our own beliefs and perspectives. In a relationship, we should be able to shift moment by moment from our own viewpoint to that of the other.
Aim for complexity. A creative person is highly individualized. She follows her own star and creates her own career. At the same time, she is deeply steeped in the traditions of the culture; she learns and respects the rules of the domain and is responsive to the opinions of the field - as long as those opinions do not conflict with personal experience. Complexity is the result of the fruitful interaction between these two opposing tendencies.

The Applications of Creative Energy

Problem Finding

Creative people are constantly surprised. They don't assume that they understand what is happening around them, and they don't assume that anybody else does either. They question the obvious - not out of contrariness but because they see the shortcomings of accepted explanations before the rest of us do. They sense problems before they are generally perceived and are able to define what they are
if you learn to be creative in everyday life, you may not change how future generations will see the world, but you will change the way you experience it. Problem finding is important in the daily domain because it helps us focus on issues that will affect our experiences but otherwise may go unnoticed.
Look at problems from as many viewpoints as possible. When you know you have a problem, consider it from many different perspectives. How you define a problem usually carries with it an explanation of what caused it. our first impulse is to label problems by relying on tried and true prejudices (if has a fight with spouse, tend to favor self as right and spouse as wrong...though it prob is not the case all the time)
creative individuals do not rush to define the nature of problems; they look at the situation from various angles first and leave the formulation undetermined for a long time. they consider different causes and reasons. They test their hunches about what really is going on, first in their own mind and then in reality. They try tentative solutions and check their success - and they are open to reformulating the problem if the evidence suggests they started out on the wrong path
because they pause to consider a greater range of possible explanations for what happens to them, they have a wider and less predictable range of options to choose from
Figure out the implications of the problem. once you have created a formulation, you can behing to entertain possible solutions.
Creative individuals experiment with a number of alternative solutions until they are certain that they have found the one that will work best. Again, as soon as you think of a good solution, it is useful to think of an opposite one. Even the most experienced person is often unable to tell in advance, just by thinking which solution will do the trick. So first trying one way of going about the problem, then trying another tack for a while, and then comparing results often yields the most creative result
Implement the solution. solving problems creatively involves continuous experimentation and revision. the longer you can keep options open, the more likely it is that the solution will be original and appropriate. artists who do more original work change their technique as they are painting, and their paintings develop on the canvas in less predictable ways than those of less original artists. This is because the original artist is more ready to learn from the emerging work. he or she is alert to the unexpected and is willing to go with a better solution if one presents itself. similarly creative writers often start a story without knowing how it will end; the ending emerges as they follow the logic of the evolving story.
the reason most ppl prefer routine, tried and true solutions to their problems is that this requires less psychic energy. in fact, we could not afford to be creative all the time because we would soon stretch the limits of attention and collapse. routine results in great savings. but it makes good sense to know how to come up with a creative solution when we need one and can spare the effort.

Divergent Thinking

Produce as many ideas as possible. First, come up with as many options as you can think of, even if they are not all very sensible. A crazy suggestion may jolt you into thinking in new directions and led to more acceptable alternatives you would not have considered otherwise.
Have as many different ideas as possible. Quantity is important, but try to avoid redundancy. Whenever someone says something, he asks himself, "what if the opposite were true?" Imagining alternatives to what others hold to be true is probably going to be useless 99% of the time. but that one time the practice of flipping to a divergent perspective might generate an insight that is not only original but also useful

Choosing a Special Domain:

either because of ignorance, low self-esteem, or habits of thought established early, we discount the possibility that we could enjoy and be good at many of the things that make other happy.
few of us know in advance what domains we may have an affinity for. Prodigies are children who from an early age show a definite gift in some directions, but most of us are not prodigies and it takes us decades of trial and error to find out what we are best cut out for. Even in out sample, some individuals did not realize what the realizations were until they were middle-aged. And often the realization was forced on them by outside factors, such as a war or the necessity to do something that they turned out to be just right.
it is important to try as many domains as possible. start with things you already enjoy and then move to related domains. Learning to operate within a new domain is always difficult, and love at first sight is rare. A certain amount of persistence is necessary. On the other hand, it makes no sense to persevere in an activity that gives no joy, or the promise of it.
eventually you sound be able to find one or more domains that fit your interests, things that you enjoy doing and that expand your life. Ideally we should be able to do so in as many domains as possible. but in practice the limits on psychic energy make it impossible to take on more than a few discrete activities seriously.
there are 2 dangers as you become involved in a domain. The first is addiction; some domains are so seductive that you may invest so much attention into it that you have none left for your job and family. The other danger is the opposite: you can become so diffuse, so eclectic, that what you feel in different domains ends up being the same superficial experience. Like the traveler who goes everywhere and is still the same boring soul he was before he left, many poeple seem to gain nothing from sampling the best that the culture has to offer...in other words, u might dabble too much and not get deep enough in any 1 domain that u never grow from the experiences

Simon Reads

Monday, February 27, 2012

How to Live on 24 hours a day

Wednesday, May 12, 2010

Creativity