One of the things that I learned about the process of creativity long ago and has fascinated me ever since is playing around with connecting random unrelated things – hip-hop and econometrics, the quarterback position and Buddhism, North Korea and foursquare (or North Korea and virtually anything else!).
It’s illustrative of some beliefs I have. One, due to some common humanity and potential we all have, there are always connections between things. Two, figuring out these connection often leads our minds to land on interesting insights. Three, we often compartmentalize ourselves into more and more specialized fields, but it’s counterproductive for deep creativity and also leads us to forget we are capable of contributing to multiple areas in life, often completely different. Fourth, this all leads to a more interesting life.
On this score, I read today in the FT of a new book on creativity by a young wonder kid named Jonah Lehrer, “Imagine: How Creativity Works.” It seems worth picking up. I liked these particular excerpts from the FT piece:
Get Lehrer talking about the book, and it’s clear he loves his material. At one moment he will be explaining how jazz pianists inhibit certain parts of their rational brains in order to improvise. Moments later, he will relate an anecdote about how Proctor & Gamble researchers came up with a new kind of mop . Throughout, he is creating bridges that connect academia and the mundane. “The funnest part for me is finding a connection between the two,” he says. “The liminal space between the lab and the real world, that’s what I’m drawn to.”
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In part, it is this more democratic understanding of creativity that makes Imagine so appealing. Lehrer doesn’t suggest we can all be brilliant artists, but he does lay out a set of conditions – relaxation, curiosity, divergent interests and determination – that make creativity more likely.
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