Inspired by Distraction

As I have been on the search for creative spaces and places, I have also spent a fair amount of time researching the concept of creativity and its driving factors. The focus of this blog is not only productive work spaces and their atmosphere, I am also intrigued by the many ways that each individual mind navigates finding their creative drive. Although I believe that environment is vastly influential on a person's existence, creativity is a wildly methodical beast. So as any millennial would do, I turned to the expansive world of Google, where I stumbled upon my unavoidable friend Wikipedia who had a few intriguing opinions on this whole creativity thing. Here's what Wiki had to say about Creative Techniques and their Affecting Factors;

Affecting factors

Distraction

A study has found that non-demanding distractions can improve the number of uses that subjects can come up with for an object ("unusual uses task").^[8]

Walking

In 2014, a study found that walking increased creativity,^[9] an activity favored by Albert Einstein.

Sleep and relaxation

Some advocate enhancing creativity by taking advantage of hypnagogia, the transition from wakefulness to sleep, using techniques such as lucid dreaming. One technique used by Salvador Dalí was to drift off to sleep in an armchair with a set of keys in his hand; when he fell completely asleep, the keys would fall and wake him up, allowing him to recall his mind's subconscious imaginings.^[10] Thomas Edison used the same technique, with ball bearings.^[11]

Meditation

A study^[12] from 2014 conducted by researchers in China and the US, including the psychologist Michael Posner found that performing a short 30 minute meditation session each day, for seven days, was sufficient to improve verbal and visual creativity, as measured by the Torrance Tests of Creative Thinking, due to the positive effects of meditation on emotional regulation. The same researchers^[13] also showed in 2015 that short term meditation training could also improve insight-based problem solving (the type commonly associated with an "Ah-ha", or "eureka" type moment of realization) as measured by the Remote Associates Test.

As I have discussed in previous posts, there are many factors that influence the ambiance of a space making it a creative haven, one of which being the sound of a space. Ambient noise in some cases causes distraction, a topic that our friend Wikipedia decided to touch upon much too briefly, so I had a few things to add based on my own extensive research--turns out its not that hard speak my mind to a computer screen. Here's my two cents...or paragraphs;

Affecting factors

Distraction

Multiple studies have confirmed that distraction actually increases creative cognition.^[8] One such study done by Jonathan Schooler found that non-demanding distractions improve performance on a classic creativity task called the UUT (Unusual Uses Task) in which the subject must come up with as many possible uses for a common object. The results confirmed that decision-related neural processes occur during moments of unconscious thought while a person engages in a non-demanding task. The research showed that while distracted a subject isn’t maintaining one thought for a particularly long time, which in turn allows different ideas to float in and out of one’s consciousness—this sort of associative process leads to creative incubation. ^[9]

Ambient noise is another variable that is conducive to distraction, yet it has been proven that a moderate level of noise actually heighten creativity. Professor Ravi Mehta conducted a study to research the degree of distraction induced by various noise levels and their effect on creativity. The series of experiments show that a moderate level of ambient noise (70 dB) produces just enough distraction to induce processing disfluency, which leads to abstract cognition. These higher construal levels caused by moderate levels of noise consequently enhance creativity.^[10]

As a wise man once said; "Brevity is the soul of wit", so for the sake of Shakespeare I didn't include the three subtopics following the one I edited. Here is the link instead: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creativity_techniques

Go distract yourself with the two studies I mentioned in my Wiki-edit, they're mega-cool!

P. S.