To Be More Creative, Cheer Up

Creativity can be learned as a cognitive skill using the following steps:

• Preparation: The basic rules, languages, and instructions in any skill.
• Incubation: When ideas wander in your brain's neural network, lost in the wild.
• Illumination: This is the Aha! Moment, the light bulb coming on.
• Verification: Where it is verified that the idea is real or just a random dream without legs.

The neural pathways in our brain, that drive creativity is where incubation happens; this process involves the entire brain, not just the right-brain side, as assumed by most.

These neural pathways fostering incubation are known as the default mode network (DMN). It jostles and dances for space and sparks with another pathway known as the cognitive control network (CCN), forming an outer layer of pathways.

Divergent thinking is a tuning out process that widens the mental ‘net’ and is akin to shifting the focus from micro to macro, or changing the focus altogether. Divergent thinking is a hallmark of incubation and eclipses even ‘IQ’ as a predictor to one’s creative powers.

Incubation is critical to restrain or inhibit habits that might otherwise hamper our creativity.

One way to continuously be in a state of mind that is prepared for a stroke of genius is to be happy-go-lucky, staying in a positive mood, with a relaxed, flexible state of attention.

For creative achievement to be realized, there are three broad cognitive abilities that are required:

• The ability to generate new ideas.
• Response inhibition, that is the ability to break out of a routine with ease.
• A working memory that retains ideas.

Creativity is a never-ending slog and it’s best to keep writing, practising and just being in a river-like flow.