J. K. Rowling has said that the idea for Harry Potter popped into her head while she was stuck on a very delayed train. We have all had similar 鈥� although probably less lucrative 鈥� 鈥渁ha鈥� moments, where a flash of inspiration comes along out of the blue. Where do they come from? And is there any way to order them on demand?
Experiments led by John Kounios, a neuroscientist at Drexel University in Philadelphia, suggest that the reason we aren鈥檛 all millionaire authors is that some brains come better set up for creativity than others. EEG measurements taken while people were thinking about nothing in particular revealed naturally higher levels of right hemisphere activity in the temporal lobes of people who solved problems using insight rather than logic (). Kounios says recent work hints that this brain feature might be inherited, but even if you happen to have a more focused, less creative brain, there are plenty of general tips on how to get it into creative mode.
Boringly, the first is to put in the groundwork to build up a good store of information so that the unconscious has something to work with. Studies on subliminal learning have poured cold water on the idea that knowledge can drift into the brain without any conscious effort, so it pays to focus intently on the details of the problem until all the facts are safely stored. At this stage, anything that helps with focus, such as caffeine, should help.
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Once that鈥檚 taken care of, it鈥檚 time to cultivate a more relaxed, positive mood by taking a break to do something completely different 鈥� like watching a few entertaining cat videos. Studies where people have either watched a comedy film or a thriller before coming up with new ideas have shown that a relaxed and happy mood is far more conducive to ideas than a tense and anxious one (). Not only that, but it pays to turn down the focus knob a little, and the easiest way to do that is to look for ideas when your brain is too tired to focus properly. A 2011 study showed that morning people had their most creative ideas late at night, while night owls had theirs early in the morning ().
Mental exhaustion might be a more realistic state of mind than relaxation when an important deadline is looming, but if the ideas are still refusing to come there may one day be an easier solution. Brain stimulation studies, in which activity was boosted in the right temporal lobe and suppressed in the left, increased the rate of problem-solving by 40 per cent (). So the stressed creative of the future might be able to pop on a 鈥渢hinking cap鈥� to help those juices flow.
Read more: 鈥�Mind expanding: 7 ways to fine-tune your brain鈥�
