Walking And Creativity

• 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.

This technique requires 2 steps:

• Deep immersion into a subject matter without specifically looking for an answer to your problem.
• Letting go completely while you process that information (actually walking away from it), to allow good ideas to bubble up from the subconscious and into clear view.

This is the ability to reach beyond a specific field of expertise and create new uses for an older thing. It’s about taking one thing and using it for a different purpose than intended.

For example: Apply a cooking recipe to a marketing strategy or use a spreadsheet program to organize words for your poetry.

People who are concentrating too hard will sometimes block the creative processes necessary for problem-solving.

A drink or two might just help calm your brain.

Music can put you into a “mind-wandering” state that’s perfectly conducive to coming up with new and creative ideas.

• opportunities to engage in it, 
• encouragement to go after such opportunities, 
• and rewards for doing so.

Creativity is no different from any other habit, good or bad.

• Look for ways to see problems that other people don’t.
• Take risks that other people are afraid to take.
• Have the courage to defy the crowd and to stand up for their own beliefs.
• Seek to overcome obstacles and challenges to their views that other people give in to.

Instead of thinking of a cut-and-dry end goal to certain situations, creative people sit back and examine the problem in different ways before beginning to work.

If you find yourself stagnating by focusing on generic problems, try to re-conceptualize the problem by focusing on a more meaningful angle.

For example: Instead of thinking “What would be something cool to paint?” rather ask, “What sort of painting evokes the feeling of loneliness that we all encounter after a break-up?”

Creating “psychological” distance may be useful for breaking through a creative block.

Try to imagine your creative task as being disconnected and distant from your current position/location - this may make the problem more accessible and can encourage higher level thinking.

• Walking helps you to get away from your daily sources of stress, thus reducing anxiety in the short term.
• Walking improves the process of creating new analogies in your brain.

Doing something intricate with your hands – a Rubik’s Cube, squeezing a ball, fiddling with dice – excites various parts of your brain and might actively change the way you are thinking.

It means producing something novel or original, evaluating, solving problems, whether on paper, on stage, in a laboratory or even in the shower.

Geniuses know “how” to think, instead of “what” to think.

People who are more creative can simultaneously engage brain networks that don’t typically work together.

If you can't find a creative solution to a big problem, start by working on smaller problems so you can work your way up to the bigger problem.

Sometimes a lack of inspiration can come from working on too many projects. 

Cut out extraneous tasks and focus on solving one problem at a time.

This myth encourages the belief that creativity is a passive process. It suggests you have to wait and hope that you’ll make a breakthrough.

That Eureka moment is actually the last step in a long, involved process and not the only step. For this to happen, your unconscious mind needs material to work with. You have to put in the hard work of studying and mastering your field and exposing yourself to different perspectives.

In reality, creativity is a team sport.

The lone genius myth is a stereotype and it’s unhelpful because it suggests the route to innovation is to cut oneself off from colleagues and collaboration. You need a modest amount of intelligence to be creative, but extremely high IQ is neither sufficient nor necessary for being an innovator.