How to Boost Your Creativity?

The popular term "hacking" gets a bad rap; Its purpose is to take over a computer system (usually for immoral purposes), and the word has evolved slightly into popular culture as a "quick fix" or "shortcut".

Note: This article is adapted from the work of writer and journalist Steven Kotler, in which he shares his experience in enhancing creativity.

None of these definitions apply here in this article; First, because the system we're trying to control is our own neurobiology, and second, when it comes to high performance, there are no shortcuts.

When I use a term like "hack" to describe an approach, what I'm really saying is: "Discover how to make neurobiology work for you, not against you"; Since this has been my approach to achieving high achievers, I will present three scientific strategies for enhancing your ability to come up with new and creative ideas:

The first strategy carefully understanding the activity of the frontal cortex

Researchers often refer to a phenomenon known as "insight" when they talk about creativity. We've all experienced this feeling; As it is the experience of sudden understanding; That is, that moment when we realize the meaning of a joke or solve a complex puzzle or an ambiguous situation.

In the early 2000s, neuroscientist Mark Beeman of Northwestern University and cognitive psychologist John Kounios of Drexel University highlighted this subject: They gave people a series of tests to associate between unrelated objects - also known as tests of insight or perception - then used electroencephalography (EEG) and magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) techniques to monitor their brains as they tried to solve these problems.

These tests are puzzles; They are given subjects of three unrelated words, for example: “jam,” “pancake,” and “Sham,” then they are asked to do one thing; It is to find a fourth word that completes all these three words, and in this case the word is: “apple”, so the phrases become: “apple jam”, “apple pie” and “Sham apple”.

Some people solve this problem logically; Simply by testing one word after another, others solve it intuitively; Which means that the correct answer simply appears in the mind; As few people combine both strategies.

What Beeman and Kounios revealed was a remarkable shift in brain function. Just before people noticed a problem that could eventually be solved by intuition, there was increased activity in their brains' anterior cingulate cortex (ACC). This part of the brain plays a role in stimulating Attention and regulation of responses, which is the part that handles error correction by detecting conflicting signals in the brain.

"This involves alternative strategies for solving a problem," Konios says. "The brain cannot use two different strategies at the same time, some are activated strongly because they are the most obvious, and some are weak and only remotely related to the problem, such as strange thoughts, and others that are long-term, such thoughts are the creative ones".

When the brain's anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) is activated, it can detect these vague and underactive thoughts and direct the brain to shift attention to them, and this is the moment of awareness and understanding."

Beeman and Kounios discovered that activity in the brain's anterior cingulate cortex occurs when we think creative or crazy thoughts. Which raises a key question, "What drives activity in the anterior cingulate cortex?" The answer is: good mood.

When we are in a good mood, the anterior cingulate cortex of the brain is more sensitive to strange thoughts and suspicions; In other words, if activity in the anterior cingulate cortex is the condition for responding to a clairvoyant state, then a good mood is the prerequisite for an active anterior cingulate state.

The reverse is also true, while a good mood increases creativity, a bad mood promotes analytical thinking; The brain limits our options to thinking only of what is tried and true; The logical, obvious, and certain thing we know is what will be activated in the brain.

When we're in a good mood, we feel safe, we can give our anterior cingulate cortex more time to pay attention to weak signals, and we're more ready for adventure, which is important. Because creativity is always dangerous, new ideas generate problems, and they can be completely wrong, challenging to implement, and threaten stability.

But this also means that negativity costs us dearly. Bad moods not only limit the brain's anterior cingulate cortex's ability to detect these weaker signals, It also limits our willingness to act on the cues we detect.

While a good mood is the starting point for increased creativity, practicing gratitude daily — taking time to think and feel the positive things you are grateful for — practicing mindfulness, regular exercise, and a good night's rest are always anyone's best recipes for increasing happiness. All four of these practices are enhancers. An innovative multi-tool that increases our ability to turn new ideas into valuable things.

Gratitude trains the brain to focus on positive thoughts and changes its natural tendency towards negative thoughts. This affects mood, but it also increases positive thoughts. Since we are used to negativity, Positivity is often unexpectedly different.

Gratitude feeds the brain's salience network, which in stimuli gets triggered by more initial thoughts, and the good mood they produce gives the brain's default mode network a better chance of using thoughts to create something new.

Mindfulness teaches the brain to be calm and focused; This increases the ability to regulate the response but also places a small distance between thought and feeling and gives the brain's anterior cingulate cortex more time to consider distant alternative possibilities; But what kind of mindfulness training do you use? Divergent thinking requires an open observational method of reflection; This means a meditation technique while being aware of everything that is happening around you, so instead of trying to ignore thoughts and feelings, you allow them to enter without effect or distraction.'

Exercise reduces stress levels, flushes cortisol out of our system while increasing the release of feel-good hormones, reduces anxiety hormones, including serotonin, norepinephrine, endorphins and dopamine, and is also beneficial for improving mood and the ability of the anterior cingulate cortex to detect more distant possibilities, in addition to that, the time provided by the exercise acts as an incubation period for these thoughts.

A night's rest provides additional benefits and increases energy levels and abilities to face challenges. A sense of security lifts our mood and increases our willingness to adventure, enhancing creativity. Moreover, sleep is the most important period for incubation and processing of thoughts ever, Whereas when we sleep, the brain has time to find all kinds of hidden connections between all of the thoughts.

These four practices - gratitude, mindfulness, exercise and sleep - are critical steps to maintaining a high level of performance and are the key to success. We often remove these four practices from our schedules when life gets complicated, and we neglect to perform them, but on the contrary, Relying on these four practices rather than ignoring them will help you achieve the creativity needed to complicated life.

The second strategy: understanding the importance of being alone in time and place

Free time is my term for the period between 4 am - when I start my morning writing session - and 7:30 am - when the rest of the world is awake - this free time belongs to no one but me.

At this time there will be no fear of the pressing stresses of the day; So there will be time for that sheer luxury; Patience, who cares if a sentence takes two hours to complete? Creativity sometimes needs this amount of freedom; Meeting deadlines can often cause stress and anxiety, which forces the brain to focus on the details, activates the left hemisphere and obscures the bigger picture of things.

Even worse, the pressures of work and commitments often cause us stress and effort, and we are not satisfied with haste; Which spoils our mood and increases our focus, so the lack of time can act as a discouragement of creativity.

We need to include our free time in our schedules. Free time is a time for daydreaming and psychological distancing; Daydreaming activates the default mode network; This allows our subconscious mind to find a connection between thoughts, and this time also takes us away from our problems and allows us to see things from multiple points of view, and to consider the points of view of others; While if we don't have that free time to get that emotional space and take a break from the world, we won't have the luxury of alternative possibilities.

Solitude is also important, and it is certain that a great deal of creativity requires cooperation, but the incubation stage of ideas requires the opposite. Taking a break from the influences of the outside world gives your brain more motivation to think distant thoughts; For example, a 2012 study by psychologists at the University of Utah found that the participants who spent four days alone in nature, scored 50% better on standardized tests of creativity.

Try to start your day with 90 to 120 minutes of continuous focus; As it is a free time for the good flow of ideas and achieves great profits in the long run

The third strategy, thinking inside the box

The saying goes: “Think outside the box”; That is, in a creative way, but we'll reverse it now. where limitations can lead to creativity; As the greatest jazz musician Charles Mingus once put it: "You can't improvise from nothing; you have to base your improvisation on something."

In studies conducted at Rider University on the relationship between boundaries and creativity, a group of students were given eight names, and they were asked to use them to write rhyming syllables, and another group was not given names, but only asked to write rhyming syllables. Then both groups' work was judged on creativity by an independent panel of experts;

Time after time, participants in the group that had to use eight names outperformed the group that had to use eight names. The important point is that sometimes we don't have to start completely from scratch, where we will not benefit anything; This is why one of my basic rules at work is to always know where to start and where to end.

If you are aware of these two basic things - the beginning and the end - everything you do, whether it is writing a book, writing an article or a speech, is simply about connecting ideas. An important reminder: many people believe that time constraints, which is deadlines, promote creativity, and this may or may not be true, and as I said earlier: Feeling pressure of time isn't the key to enhancing creativity, however it is also true that deadlines can protect creative ideas from faltering.

Just set deadlines far enough in the future that you can fit extended periods of free time into your schedule, and your creative deadlines should be far enough away; This is so that you can take full advantage of the time and not tire you out and cause you stress.