Cliff Guren

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Creativity, Mind-Wandering, Flow, and Deep Play

Cliff Guren

Our Novel Concept of Creativity

Creativity is hard to define. The English word “create” comes from the Latin word “creare,” which originally meant “to make grow” and later came to mean “to make.” Most of us think of creativity as the capability to conceive something original—an idea or an expression of an idea. We talk about creative thinking, creative work, and creative art. Our concept of creativity is relatively new. Ancient cultures didn’t have a word for creativity as we know it today. Plato didn’t believe that painters made things; he said they merely “imitate.” Early Christian cultures had a notion of creativity, but it was the sole province of God. Humans were incapable of creating something new on their own, and creativity required divine inspiration. In Europe, it wasn’t until the Renaissance that creativity was thought of as something humans were capable of originating on their own.

Today, the concept of creativity is often parsed into three different but related activities: personal creativity, innovation, and invention. There are dozens of different theories about the origins and nature of creativity, tests for assessing creativity, and an incalculable number of tools, classes, and workshops focused on encouraging and enhancing creativity. Why? Because creativity—our ability to conceive new ideas, enhance existing ideas, and bring new products to market is the primary creator of value in our culture.

Understanding and nourishing your capacity for creative thinking is an essential skill. It is every bit as important as maintaining your physical health. This article explores mind-wandering, flow, and deep play: three tools that will help you enhance and renew your creative thinking.

Mind-Wandering

Mind-wandering (colloquially referred to as “daydreaming”) is “task-unrelated thought”—simply put, it’s when your mind drifts away from the task you’re focused on. Our minds wander all the time, occasionally with tragic consequences (such as car accidents and debilitating stumbles). Sometimes our minds are pulled away from the task we’re focused on—by visual and audio notifications on our phones and computers, by a colleague wandering into our office to chat, by a child who needs our attention, or plane passing overhead. These external interruptions break our focus, but they differ from mind-wandering. All interruptions of our ability to focus are not the same. Some are signs our minds are hard at work—creative work.

In his book The Organized Mind, Daniel J. Levitin writes that mind-wandering is a “distinctive and special brain state . . . marked by the flow of connections among disparate ideas and thoughts, and a relative lack of barriers between senses and concepts. It also can lead to great creativity and solutions to problems that seemed unsolvable.” The flow of connections and lack of barriers Levitin notes are the same qualities that define divergent thinking—the early playful, free-flowing, wide-ranging, non-linear stage of creative thinking focused on exploring connections between seemingly unrelated ideas and things, and generating new ideas. The mind-wandering mode is our dominant mode of attention. That’s why paying attention takes effort. Our other dominant mode of attention is the “central executive mode.” The aptly named central executive mode keeps us on-task. When the central executive takes over, mind-wandering comes to a stop. When the two modes are working together, we are both creative and productive. There are other brain networks that control and influence our attention, but it’s the relationship between these two modes that have the biggest impact on our creative thinking.

Because the mind-wandering and central executive modes are mutually exclusive, you need to learn how to choreograph the interaction between the two modes of thinking that’s required for sustained creative work. Spend too much time daydreaming and you won’t have any tangible output. Spend too much time immersed in task mode and you’ll drain your creative reservoir.

Flow

Chances are you’re already familiar with the idea of “flow”—the experience of getting blissfully lost in an activity. When you’re in a flow state time stops, you forget to eat, your attention is wholly and deeply focused on your creative work. Here’s how Levitin describes the experience of working in a flow state:

“Because flow is such a focused state, you might think that it involves staying inside either the planning phase or the execution phase, but in fact it usually allows for the seamless integration of them—what are normally separate tasks, boss and worker tasks, become permeable, interrelated tasks that are part of the same gesture. One thing that characterizes flow is a lack of distractibility—the same old distractions are there, but we’re not tempted to attend to them. A second characteristic of flow is that we monitor our performance without the kinds of self-defeating negative judgments that often accompany creative work. Outside of flow, a nagging voice inside our heads often says, ‘That’s not good enough.’ In flow, a reassuring voice says, ‘I can fix that.’”

Flow states aren’t just a figment of your imagination. When you’re in a flow state your brain chemistry changes and the way that electrical impulses flow through your brain changes. As Levitin notes, you’re not battling your “self-defeating negative judgements,” so you get more work done. But achieving a flow state isn’t an everyday occurrence for most people. Flow happens when you’re highly engaged with a task that has clear goals, provides immediate feedback, and is at the right skill level—one that’s not so easy that you get bored, but not so hard that you get frustrated.

There are quite a few excellent books on flow that walk you through the steps required to achieve a flow state (some of which are listed below), and a wide variety of information on the subject on the Web. It takes practice to reliably achieve flow. It also takes time to get into a flow state—most guides suggest you allow for a work session of at least 90 minutes.

Mindfulness is similar to flow. Dr. Ellen Langer, author of one the classic books on mindfulness, says “The concepts are very similar. The major difference is that mindfulness is a state of mind that is available to everybody virtually all the time. It’s not an unusual thing.” Mindfulness exercises won’t confer all the benefits of a true flow state, but studies show a regular mindfulness practice will improve the overall quality of your work. Even a few minutes of mindfulness practice during your workday will provide you with the restorative benefits of a short rest.

Here are a few other tips that will help you focus and renew your creative energy:

  • Take frequent breaks - Remember that focusing takes energy. Not only do you need to give your central executive mode time to rest and recover, you also need to give your mind time to wander. Taking a break from work mode gives your mind time to explore and build connections between the things you’ve been working on. Those connections are the foundational structures of creativity.

  • Change your scenery - Get out of your office. Walk—outside if you can. Give your mind something new to pay attention to so that the part of your brain you’ve been working can rest. Make sure that you look around when you’re out. You may see something that suddenly sparks an idea related to a problem you’ve been noodling on… Credit your wandering mind.

  • Nap - An afternoon nap, even a short twenty-minute nap, can recharge your creative energy. Naps increase your alertness and decrease your fatigue. They also improve your memory. It’s not uncommon to wake from a nap with a solution to a problem you’ve been struggling with all day.

Deep Play

Another form of rest that’s beneficial for creative renewal is deep play—activities that provide an opportunity to use familiar and enjoyable professional skills in a new context. An often-cited example is Winston Churchill’s passion for painting. Churchill likened painting to political argument: both require a clear vision of what’s in front of you and what you want to achieve, as well as bold, decisive action.

Alex Soojung-Kim Pang, author of Rest: Why You Get More Done When You Work Less, writes, “Because play is voluntary, intrinsically rewarding, mentally and physically engaging, and imaginative, it’s often absorbing and effortless; even when it’s physically challenging or uncomfortable, it’s not difficult in the same way a hard day at work is.” Creative work becomes deep play when it has at least one of the following four characteristics:

  • It’s mentally absorbing, with both challenges to face and problems to solve that don’t require significant effort on the part of the player.

  • It provides a new context to use pleasurable skills learned and used in the player’s work.

  • It offers the satisfactions of work, but with different, clearer rewards.

  • It provides a connection to pleasurable aspects of the player’s past.

For Churchill, painting was analogous to politics. He wrote: “In all battles two things are usually required of the Commander-in-Chief: to make a good plan for his army and, secondly, to keep a strong reserve. Both these are also obligatory upon the painter.” Painting gave him a way to use the military and political skills he had developed and enjoyed in a context with far lower stakes. Painting also connected him to the landscapes and joys of his childhood. “Just to paint is great fun” he said, “The colors are lovely to look at and delicious to squeeze out.”

Deep play sustains your capacity for creative work because it allows you to exercise skills and knowledge you enjoy in a context that’s wholly separate from the stresses of work. It provides a meaningful connection between work and rest, and provides a low stakes arena for teasing out solutions to problems tangentially related to work.

Deep play is personal. For you it may be sculpting, playing music, acting, or some other form of artistic expression. It may be hiking, sailing, mountain climbing, or another form of physical activity. Or perhaps it’s woodworking, welding, gardening, or another form of working with your hands. Experiment: you’ll know you’ve found a form of deep play that works for you when you find yourself deeply engaged in it and refreshed.

Your Creative Renewal Regimen

Rest and renewal are personal. It’s up to you to experiment and design a regimen that works for you. Remember that what you’re looking for is an increase in your ability to sustain your capacity for creative thinking and work, not just in a single session, but day after day, week after week, month after month, and year after year.

Further Reading on Creative Renewal