Mark Beeman

The brain’s building blocks are neurons: nerve cells that receive and transmit signals along neural pathways. Certain pathways are forged at birth. Others can be manipulated by learning. 

So when you’re stuck in a rut, your brain’s neurons could literally be stuck on a neural pathway you’ve carved out through your behavior. But you can get unstuck by choosing to make new connections.

After a problem has been examined and analysed, creative thinkers often hit a roadblock, which is actually an ‘incubation period’ where the brain works in the background to process information at an unconscious level.

This results in an ‘aha’ or a ‘Eureka!’ moment when the solution or idea pops inside the head later when we are not consciously thinking about it.

Certain unthought of combinations, associations, innovations and links between remote objects or ideas can be stimulated by specific kinds of music, provided it helps us focus ‘away’ from the problem rather than focussing more on it.

Most music that one listens to while doing creative work is just a distraction, and rather than helping us, it creates more cognitive load on our brain, which has to block out the sound.

• In various studies, it is found that creative people tend to be more driven, impulsive, and self-confident.

• They are less conventional and unorthodox in many aspects of life.

• Openness to new ideas, curiosity and disagreeableness comes as common traits of creative individuals, as they are opposite of normal or popular, and like Steve Jobs, are a prickly personality.

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.