• Creative individuals tend to operate at the extremes.
• The creative process is recursive, not linear. Mental meandering to allow the commingling of ideas is an essential process.
• Creativity comes from the heart. There is no other motivation other than the joy of discovering...

• Preparation: Immersing oneself in the problem and sparking curiosity
• Incubation: Time to allow the ideas to church around in the subconscious where unusual connections can be made
• Insight: The “Aha!” moment
• Evaluation: Deciding whether the insight is valuable and wort...

• The evidence suggests that unusual and beautiful surroundings may in face help us see situations more holistically and from novel viewpoints.
• How one spends time in a beautiful natural setting seems to matter as well. Just sitting and watching is fine, but taking a leisurely walk see...

• When we live creativity, we banish boredom.
• Stop wasting energy on selfish goals. Explore the world around you for its own sake. Be curious.
• Try to be surprised by something every day.
• Try to surprise at least one person every day.
• Keep a journal and write the...

• There are clear goals every step of the way.
• There is immediate feedback to one’s actions.
• There is a balance between challenges and skills.
• Actions and awareness are merged.
• Distractions are excluded from consciousness.
• There is no worry of failure.

• Creative people are curious
• Parental support is instrumental in helping children succeed amidst a poor or socially marginal background.
• Creative people seem to come from exceptionally supportive childhoods or very deprived and challenging ones. Very few come from middle-class...

One must be in a position to access the domain in which one plans to work. Information is not distributed evenly in space but is clumped in different geographical nodes.

• Creative people all love what they do. It is not the hope of achieving fame or making money that drives them; rather, it is the opportunity to do the work that they enjoy doing.
• Most people enjoy “designing or discovering something new.”
• We are also motivated by the force of ...

Creative people have complex personalities. They have the ability to move from one extreme to the other as needed.

Creativity does not happen inside people’s heads but in the interaction between a person’s thoughts and a sociocultural context. It is a systemic rather than an individual phenomenon.

• We are exhausted by too many demands.
• We are easily distracted.
• We are lazy and lack discipline for controlling the flow of energy.
• We do not know what to do with the energy we do have.