Stay focused! Eliminate distractions! Discipline your mind! Oh boy. I’m a recovering perfectionist and bought into this mindset as a young professional. If I could just block out random thoughts and the urge to get up and run outside and see what my chickens are doing!
But guess what? Research has revealed that the easily distracted might be the most creative. Science says that distractable may have an innate tendency to make those useful random leaps. In a study of 25 super creatives, “twenty-two of them had weak or porous attention filters.”[1]
Conceptual blending is combining two different concepts to form new ideas. It is how creativity works – as we store skills and information – in the background, our brain links seemingly unrelated concepts to create new connections. A Harvard/University of Toronto study of undergrads found that those “who had a tougher time ignoring unrelated stuff were also seven times more likely to be rated as “eminent creative achievers” based on their previous accomplishments. According to scientists, the inability to focus helps ensure a richer mixture of thoughts in consciousness. Because these people had difficulty filtering out the world, they let more in. Instead of approaching the problem from a predictable perspective, they considered all sorts of far-fetched analogies, some of which proved useful.”[2]
Our American work culture often preaches focusing and force to solve problems, “this clenched state of mind comes with a hidden cost: it inhibits the sort of creative connections that lead to breakthroughs. We suppress the very type of brain activity that should be encouraged.” “People assume that increased focus is always better,” says Martha Farah, a neuroscientist at the University of Pennsylvania. She points out that relentless focus might expand the time you can concentrate on something, “but you are probably not going to have many big insights.” [3]
In studies of people with ADHD, researchers found that they were more creative in the laboratory than non-sufferers and were more likely to have significant creative accomplishments outside the lab. “In every single domain, from drama to engineering, the students with ADHD have achieved more. Their attention turned out to be a creative blessing.”[4]
“Occasionally, focus can backfire and make us fixated on the wrong answers. It’s not until you let yourself relax and indulge in distractions that you discover the answer; the insight arrives only after you stop looking for it.”[5]
A more positive term for this ability to indulge in random thoughts and float distractedly between ideas and projects is “Flexible attention.” Distractions include going back and forth between multiple projects a creative might have going at any given time. I am certainly a project juggler.
One of my favorite project jugglers of all time was a friend, the late Nick DeWolf, the founder of the Teradyne Corporation. The first time Nick invited me to his and his wife Maggie’s house in Aspen, CO, I expected from the beautiful, well-tended garden and the large green Victorian home’s façade to find what every large Aspen home looked like inside; rooms copied from pages of the best interior design magazines. Instead, I saw a house like mine, comfortable furniture with every flat surface covered with books, notes, and stimulating projects. Nick escorted me through each room devoted to a project he was working on. He was especially excited to show me his newest project (with its own room), a book on Vietnam and the war.
Every creative genius studied had multiple projects on the go simultaneously – a “network of enterprises” – different projects at different stages of development. The practical benefit is that engaging in multiple projects fertilizes the mind for seedbop moments. “While we’re paying close attention to one project, we may unconsciously process another -as with the cliché of inspiration striking in the shower. Some scientists believe that this unconscious processing is vital to solving creative problems. …daydreaming strips items of their context. That is a powerful way to unlock fresh thoughts. And there can be few better ways to let the unconscious mind chew over a problem than to turn to a totally different project in the network on enterprises.”[6]
Creative genius David Bowie said, “The idea of mixtures has always been something that I’ve found absolutely fascinating, using the wrong pieces of information and putting them together and finding a third piece of information.” Brian Eno’s take, “A fresh context is exciting: having several projects may seem distracting, but instead of the variety grabs our attention – we’re like tourists gawping at details that a local may find mundane.” [7]
Sometimes ideas and projects don’t pan out. Creativity researchers Howard Gruber and Sara Davis observe that a dead-end in one project can feel liberating. “If one business model flounders, an entrepreneur can pivot to something fresh. … What would have been a depressing waste of time for a single-minded person can become a creative lease of life for someone with several projects on the go.”[8]
Right now, I am finishing up the chicken coop I built last summer with donated wood and the kitchen cabinets removed from my newly purchased fixer-upper. I am still fixing upping my new-to-me house. I’m saving kipper snack tins for a wall-sized 3-dimensional work that chronicles the significant losses in my life’s journey – my version of a personal roadside memorial to tiny deaths. I’m cultivating a wildflower meadow on my 11,000-square-foot lot. Oh, and also starting a seedbop podcast. I’m still unpacking my moving boxes in my studio, so that space is unusable, so the bedroom, office, kitchen, living room, yard, and laundry room are all pressed into service. I paint on Tuesday nights and Thursday mornings outside.
Follow your distractions even though they don’t make any sense. At some point, the connections will reveal themselves.
[1] Tim Harford. Messy: The Power of Disorder to Transform Our Lives. Riverhead Books, 2016. Pg 17.
[2] Jonah Lehrer. Imagine: How Creativity Works. Houghton, Mifflin Harcourt, 2012. Pg 43 Note: Subsequent to the publishing of this book, Mr. Lehrer was found to have fabricated quotes from Bob Dylan. In my opinion, the information he researched and used in this book still has great value and is replicated in creativity research of other authors. I do not include any Bob Dylan quotes Lehrer wrote.
[3] Ibid. pg 33
[4] Ibid. pg 35
[5] Ibid. pg 36
[6] Ibid. pg 28
[7] Tim Harford. Messy: The Power of Disorder to Transform Our Lives. Riverhead Books, 2016. Pg 28
[8] Ibid. pg 29
