The Weekly Charge⚡#2: Don't Focus On Creativity

Creativity is behind every new idea

I love this quote by Albert Einstein. Not only was he a remarkable scientist, he was apparently also an accomplished poet because I can’t think of a more elegant and profound definition of creativity.

This makes sense though. Einstein’s brilliance wasn’t just in his quantitative and computational prowess. It was in observing the phenomena that scientists had studied for millennia, but seeing something entirely novel!

And that’s what creativity is all about. Yes, artistic talent and creativity generally go hand in hand, but you use creativity in your life every day, even when you don’t realize it.

Creativity shouldn’t be a black hole

Although let’s be honest, whoever first theorized black holes was pretty creative. So fricken cool!

Anyway….

Creativity is so important to success in every aspect of your life, but for many of us, it’s hard to even understand what creativity is, let alone how to deliberately cultivate it.

Well, as a subscriber to “The Weekly Charge⚡”, you’re in luck, because I’m going to demystify creativity for you here using, you guessed it, neuroscience and biology.

There are 2 kinds of creativity

It’s important to define what we mean by creativity, so here are the 2 main categories of creativity and what they mean to you in real life:

Divergent Creativity

This is what we most often think of when we imagine creativity and it’s what we’re going to focus on in this post. I honestly can’t give a better definition than Einstein so I’m just going to repeat it here:

Basically, divergent creativity is observing ordinary things and finding new and meaningful ways of interpreting and expressing them such that the result is a novel expression of otherwise ordinary objects or components.

Divergent creativity is where all new ideas come from, whether it’s a painting, a movie, a poem, social media content, or that product launch strategy that’s going to blow away the competition.

We all use it all the time.

Convergent Creativity

The other type of creativity is convergent creativity. This might be more familiar to a lot of you, but we often don’t label it as creativity.

This tends to be our default mode when we enter states of high work productivity and, if you read last week’s post on Focus, is usually helped with a narrow cognitive spotlight and removal of all distractions.

Since we already went over a lot of the strategies to help with convergent thinking in that post, let’s talk about Divergent Creativity and why those same tactics will be counterproductive if you’re trying to create.

Stop thinking about elephants

And don’t look at that picture of the impossibly cute elephant playing with birds.

That’s a trick obviously.

Now that I’ve mentioned elephants and told you not to think about them, all you can do is think about them.

That’s an example of a directive that actually accomplishes the opposite of its intent.

Here’s another one.

“Focus on Creativity”

That’s not going to work either. Why? They’re generally mutually exclusive mental states.

1. They utilize different brain wave states
   Focused, convergent thinking is associated with Beta and Gamma brain waves, while Divergent Creativity is associated with Alpha and Theta brain waves.

2. Eliciting the different states utilizes different neurotransmitters
   As discussed in last week’s post, when we’re in a high-focus state, we need a high level of Dopamine, along with other neurotransmitters, associated with high levels of arousal. Divergent Creativity, on the other hand, is generally facilitated by a calmer state and higher levels of Serotonin.

3. They require opposite attention patterns
   In a high-focus state, we want to block out all distractions. We are quite literally putting on the attention blinders. I say literally, because your visual perception is directly related to your brain’s attention. Narrowing your visual field will elicit a narrowing of attention. With Divergent Creativity, we want the opposite, a wide open and expansive mindset. We want to be able to accommodate all possibilities that exist in space, even if they don’t seem directly related.

⚡Here’s your weekly charge ⚡

Next time you need to be creative…stop needing to be creative.

Again, we can’t focus on being creative. Instead, let the creativity come to you naturally throughout the day. Creativity strikes when we least expect it.

Scheduling creativity just isn’t efficient and doesn’t produce great results. Having said that, we do need to cultivate creativity in the real world to meet deadlines, so here’s what I want you to do next time you do need to be creative.

Go about your day and give yourself room to let your mind wander. Your subconscious has already targeted your creative task. When you least expect it, the creativity will start cascading through your mind, in what can feel like a relentless torrent! So keep a piece of paper around so you don’t lose track!

If you follow this one simple guideline, I guarantee you’ll produce far more creative ideas, using far less energy in far less time than ever before.

Just go with the flow!

If you’re a premium subscriber, keep reading to learn specific techniques to foster creativity when you need to get something done.

If you’re not a premium subscriber, but you’re not ready to spend only $7 per month, contact me and I’ll give you this week’s post for free so you can see for yourself!

Want to talk to me directly?

Schedule a free, 30-minute no obligation strategy call. I want to know what your biggest challenge is right now, and I promise to help you solve it on our call, even if you choose not to continue working with me.

Share the Weekly Charge⚡and earn rewards!

Do you find this content useful? Others will too, so share the love! Even your first referral gets you a free gift!

Share our customized referral link so you get credit:

{{rp_refer_url}}

Check your current Referral and Reward Status here!

Subscribe to Premium to read the rest.