I believes many of these claims will be debunked as the 'The Human Connectome Project' and 'The Human Brain Project' nears completion. But I think many things like creativity will always remain subjective.
So I need to be sad, bored and happy to be creative
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Re: So I need to be sad, bored and happy to be creative
#42Might I add yet another bit of input on how to be creative? John Cleese had a few words to say about being creative a while ago: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DMpdPrm6Ul4
I've observed that many hacker types flinch from the megahertz, ironically enough, as a way to keep up with the speed of the systems they've built.
Killing creativity is the least of it. Many snap judgments rot the brain.
Re: So I need to be sad, bored and happy to be creative
#43What's it with creativity today ? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8916115
Re: So I need to be sad, bored and happy to be creative
#44Re: So I need to be sad, bored and happy to be creative
#45Earlier quoted context omitted.
Actually I used to work as a rafting guide. Didn't earn a lot of money, but I had a lot of free time (in nature), and met a lot of people. I notice that I had way more ideas then than I do now that I have settled into a 9-6 lifestyle. Sometimes that creativity starts coming back when I am on holiday for a while. I think a "normal" office job / lifestyle is very stifling to creativity.
Might be true, but it's easy to misjudge this: in your 9-6 you have lots of time to process any interesting ideas that come your way and then move on to the next thing, whereas while you were a rafting guide you probably chewed on the same ideas for longer and at odd times, making them appear more salient and profound.
Re: So I need to be sad, bored and happy to be creative
#46All these studies suffer from inadequate efforts to properly operationalize the concept of "creativity". On the bright side, I believe that information sciences and statistics can shed a great deal more light on this particular problem in the near future.
Re: So I need to be sad, bored and happy to be creative
#47See also: http://kill-or-cure.herokuapp.com/
"being southern causes cancer"
"being black causes cancer"
"being male causes cancer"
"fatherhood causes cancer" / "childlessness cause cancer"
"work causes cancer"/"working causes cancer"
"bras cause cancer"
"bacon causes cancer"
"burgers cause cancer"
I feel sorry for deodorant-wearing, southern, black, working fathers (or not) that cross-dress and enjoy bacon-burgers - they clearly don't stand a chance against cancer! Who knew?
@JonnieCache - Thanks for sharing! Kill or cure does a great job highlighting how research can be contradictory, as well as how research headlines are often made sensationalist.
Re: So I need to be sad, bored and happy to be creative
#48Moods correlate with states of focus and attention, and hence some states of mind are more useful in particular phases of the creative process.
I think it makes sense to some extent, as a happy person has no needs and can let their mind float aimlessly while an unhappy person wants to strive, focus and achieve to change his/her condition or to at least forget about the state of mind he/she is in.