Creativity: The Psychology of Discovery and Invention

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3 Sentence Summary

Professor Csikszentmihalyi coined the term “flow” to explain a theory on how we can achieve a mental state of peak performance and happiness. Now he uses that same theory and applies it to help us understand the creative process. Drawing upon nearly one hundred interviews with creative people in every field, this book explores the traits of creative people and helps us identify ways to encourage our own originality.

5 Key Takeaways

1. Creative individuals tend to operate at the extremes.
2. The creative process is recursive, not linear. Mental meandering to allow the commingling of ideas is an essential process.
3. Creativity comes from the heart. There is no other motivation other than the joy of discovering something new.
4. One cannot be exceptional and normal at the same time.
5. Stay curious. Try new things. Make time for reflection and relaxation.

Creativity Summary

Defining Creativity

• Creativity does not happen inside people’s heads but in the interaction between a person’s thoughts and a sociocultural context. It is a systemic rather than an individual phenomenon.

3 Criteria For An Idea to Be Considered “Creative”

1. Be couched in terms that are understandable to others
2. Pass muster with the experts of the field
3. Be included in the cultural domain to which it belongs

Creative Personality Traits

• Creative people have complex personalities. They have the ability to move from one extreme to the other as needed. They can experience both with equal intensity and without inner conflict.
• Creative individuals have a great deal of physical energy, but they are also often quiet and at rest.
• Creative individuals tend to be smart, yet also naive at the same time.
• They are both playful and disciplined; responsible and irresponsible.
• Creative individuals alternate between imagination and fantasy at one end, and a rooted sense of reality at the other.
• Creative people seem to be both introverted and extroverted.
• Creative people are remarkably humble and proud at the same time. Another way to say it might be that they are both ambitious and selfless.
• Creative individuals tend to live outside of society’s gender role stereotypes.
• Creative people have respect for tradition but are unafraid to be rebellious and iconoclastic.
• They are passionate but remain objective about their work.
• Creative individuals often experience suffering and pain yet also a great deal of enjoyment.

The Creative Process

• The creative process is recursive, not linear. Steps overlap and repeat themselves.

5 Steps

1. Preparation: Immersing oneself in the problem and sparking curiosity
2. Incubation: Time to allow the ideas to church around in the subconscious where unusual connections can be made
3. Insight: The “Aha!” moment
4. Evaluation: Deciding whether the insight is valuable and worth pursuing
5. Elaboration: The hard work of implementing and realizing the solution

Make Connections Without Distractions

One of the values in walking to work is mental meandering. Or if driving, not to have the car radio on…Mental meandering, mind wandering and so on, is an essential process. If you are allowing that mentation to be driven by the radio or the television or other people’s conversations, you are just cutting down on your exploratory, your intellectual exploratory time.

Donald Campbell

Motivating Creativity

• Creative people all love what they do. It is not the hope of achieving fame or making money that drives them; rather, it is the opportunity to do the work that they enjoy doing.
• Most people enjoy “designing or discovering something new.”
• We are also motivated by the force of entropy. It gives us pleasure when we are comfortable, when we relax, or when we can get away with feeling good without expending energy.
• Even the most creative person must overcome the barrier of entropy. It is impossible to accomplish something that is truly new and worthwhile without struggling with it.

9 Elements of Finding Flow

1. There are clear goals every step of the way.
2. There is immediate feedback to one’s actions.
3. There is a balance between challenges and skills.
4. Actions and awareness are merged.
5. Distractions are excluded from consciousness.
6. There is no worry of failure.
7. Self-consciousness disappears.
8. The sense of time becomes distorted.
9. The activity becomes autotelic. You do it just for the sake of the activity itself.

3 Reasons to Have Creative Surroundings

1. One must be in a position to access the domain in which one plans to work. Information is not distributed evenly in space but is clumped in different geographical nodes.
2. Novel stimulation is not evenly distributed. Some environments have a greater density of interaction and provide more excitement and a greater effervescence of ideas.
3. Access to the field is not evenly distributed in space. The centers that facilitate the realization of novel ideas are not necessarily the ones where the information is stored or where the stimulation is greatest.

Ideas for Creating an Inspiring Environment

• The evidence suggests that unusual and beautiful surroundings may in face help us see situations more holistically and from novel viewpoints.
• How one spends time in a beautiful natural setting seems to matter as well. Just sitting and watching is fine, but taking a leisurely walk seems to be even better.
• Devoting full attention to a problem is not the best recipe for having creative thoughts.
• Homes rich in meaningful symbols make it easier for their owners to know who they are and therefore what they should do.
• Patterns and routines can help free the mind from making trivial decisions that distract our concentration on matters that count.

The Lives of Creative People

• Creative people are curious
• Parental support is instrumental in helping children succeed amidst a poor or socially marginal background.
• Creative people seem to come from exceptionally supportive childhoods or very deprived and challenging ones. Very few come from middle-class comfort.
• Influential teachers are those that notice students, believe in their abilities, and genuinely care. Second, they give the child extra work to do and challenge them to go beyond the rest of the class.
• One cannot be exceptional and normal at the same time.
• Focus, or drive, is the second quality behind curiosity that sets creative individuals apart from their peers.
• Creative individuals don’t have a career. They create their career.
• “You must always have an obsession. You must always have too little time instead of too much.” – Eva Zeisel
• Some of your most memorable work will be done in your later years.
• Specialization can come later, but intense involvement in some domain may be necessary for a person to become creative.
• Most breakthroughs come from linking information that is usually not thought of as related. Integration. Synthesis.
• Specialization reduces that likelihood of making a creative contribution.

Tips for Enhancing Personal Creativity

• When we live creativity, we banish boredom.
• Stop wasting energy on selfish goals. Explore the world around you for its own sake. Be curious.
• Try to be surprised by something every day.
• Try to surprise at least one person every day.
• Keep a journal and write these things down.
• Wake up with a specific goal to look forward to.
• Review your day the night before and choose a particular task that is relatively interesting and exciting.
• Things become more fun the better we get at them.
• Have clear goals and expectations, focus on the consequences of your actions, concentrate without distractions – these are just a few simple rules that can make any experience more enjoyable.
• Take charge of your schedule and do creative activities when your energy is highest.
• Make time for reflection and relaxation. Constant busyness is not a good prescription for creativity.
• Shape your space. Invest in your surroundings to facilitate a more creative process.
• Keep routines that automate mundane, everyday tasks, which frees your mental capacity and energy for creative thinking.
• Find out what you like and dislike. Be in tune with your emotions. Know the reason for what you’re doing.
• Do more of what you love and less of what you hate.
• Intentionally develop your weaker character traits.
• Practice shifting from operating with an open mind and receptive to new ideas, to closed focus and concentration.
• Aim for a complex personality. Allow yourself to become more and experience more.
• Find problems that move you emotionally.
• Look at problems from as many viewpoints as possible. Do not rush to define a cause.
• Experiment with many alternate solutions. Keep your options open.
• Produce many different, unlikely and divergent ideas.
• Too many people assume that most of the world is off-limits to them.
• Try as many domains as possible. Keep searching until you find what fits your interests.

4 Obstacles to Creativity

1. We are exhausted by too many demands
2. We are easily distracted
3. We are lazy and lack discipline for controlling the flow of energy
4. We do not know what do do with the energy we do have

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