As creatives, we sometimes get stuck. It’s as if someone emptied our head of anything like a creative idea. And it doesn’t feel good. We get depressed. We tell ourselves and everyone near us we’re in a slump. What we fear is that the magic of our creativity is gone forever.
Sometimes personal life events have hijacked our minds. Sometimes events outside of our personal lives grow overwhelming. There are also times when we single-mindedly obsess over projects or deadlines and work hard. The problem with that is that we can starve our creativity and develop a form of functional fixedness. If that makes you feel your creative magic is gone, what you need is cross-pollination. But before we can discuss the solution, let’s get clear on what these terms mean.
What is Function Fixedness?
Functional fixedness is a term used by neuroscientists. It is “the tendency to perceive something only in terms of its most common use.” It’s an error in thinking that many confuse with cognitive bias.
In cognitive bias, we humans create our own subjective realities based on what our beliefs are and our past experiences have been, despite the facts. Functional fixedness is also based on our perceptions. It’s a limited perception of how to use an object.
For example, most people see a cardboard box only as a container meant to hold things inside. But with less functional fixedness, a box can be many things. For example, a large box turned upside down becomes an end table. Or a box placed on its side with the opening facing the user, becomes a spray paint station to contain over-spray. Two or more boxes opened on both ends and taped together become a tunnel for a child.
Functional fixedness increases efficiency when one is doing a repetitive task. It can narrow relationships to others or belief systems.
The opposite of functional fixedness is creative thinking, the ability to see objects, patterns, or problems in new and unconventional ways.
Being able to see alternatives and the ability to put two unlikely things together was the subject of a study by Roger Beaty, assistant professor of psychology at Penn State, and colleagues in 2018.
Clues to the Neurology of Creativity
Scientists have struggled with developing concrete, objective definitions and measurements for creativity. Since the development of MRIs and other technological advances, scientists are learning more and more about creativity and the human brain. They’ve learned that creativity involves several cognitive processes. Memory is crucial to creativity. So is the way our brains organize our memories.
Memory is what we already know. Creativity involves going beyond what we know — but if we don’t know anything, we can’t create anything new.” — Roger Beaty, assistant professor of psychology at PennState
Focus and spontaneity are also important abilities for creatives. Finally, creatives have an ability to pair things that seem unrelated. Not all people have developed this ability.
In the 2018 study, Beaty and colleagues used a functional MRI to watch people’s brains work to complete an assignment to list alternate uses for a list of random items. Different areas of the brain lit up during these scans. The team judged the answers as more or less creative, and they computed the linkages between the areas that lit up for each individual. Essentially, they mapped the areas of the brain used for creativity. Once they had their map, they ran the same study over another group of people. This time, they used the individual’s map to predict how creative the individual’s answers would be.
The scientists learned there were three specific areas of the brain involved in this type of creative thinking.
1. The Default Network—this area activates when a person is relaxing, daydreaming, or not thinking anything in particular. It is also strongly related to memory.
2. The Executive Control Network—this area is involved in focusing our attention on accomplishing challenging tasks. This area rarely works together with the default network.
3. The Salience Network—this area acts as a toggle switch between the default and executive control networks.
The three networks create the magic of creativity—a repetitive cycle between idea generation and evaluation. According to this study, the degree of an individual’s creativity depends on the strength of the connections among these three areas of the brain.
Can You Train Your Brain to Make More of those Connections?
Yes. You can.
If you are one of those who thinks not, remember scientists have not proven that creativity is inherited or linked to our genetics. There may be some of us who cannot make those areas of their brain talk to each other, but most of us are creative. Just look at how often it appears from children using their imagination to play, to people using a pencil to secure their long hair, to substituting or adding an unexpected ingredient in a recipe, to problem-solving—it’s visible everywhere every day.
The strength of a person’s creativity, the areas where it’s strongest, and the frequency it’s used vary. But even someone who believes they haven’t been creative since they held their first crayon can create opportunities for their brain to make those important network connections faster and easier. You can too.
Cross-Pollination
We learned about cross-pollination in school. One plant’s pollen placed on a different plant leads to a new hybrid plant. It’s a similar process when we are talking about creativity. Only we’re going to take ideas from one area and apply it to another, different idea.
Examples of cross-pollination leading to breakthroughs:
Space technology benefits dentists
Physicists call it The Cheerios Effect
Channel Surfing Led to The Hunger Games
Ways to Cross-Pollinate Your Brain
Help your brain generate new and creative ideas. Feed your brain opportunities to make unusual connections. How do you do that? Feed your brain new information regularly.
Read Widely
Read fiction and nonfiction. Go to your local library in person or virtually and check out something you’ve never tried before. The more variety you feed your brain, the more ideas will churn when you need them.
Follow your Curiosity
Did you read or watch something and wonder if there were any truth behind something? Indulge yourself and look it up.
Look up the answer to questions that cross your mind.
Find out if there are schools or museums or industry or academic experts in your area that you can visit and ask for more information. Most people love to share about their area of work.
Attend Local Networking Events or Conferences
Go to industry, academic, or cultural events or conference in your area. Take handouts on topics that interest you. Ask questions. Listen more than you talk.
You’re there to soak up information—even stuff that isn’t as interesting as you thought it might be. You never know when that fragment of information you remember will mesh with another idea. Some of the best ideas I’ve gotten have been from a small, local gathering celebrating an unfamiliar-to-me culture.
Try New Connections
Join a new online or in-person group. Take a new for-fun community or academic class. Try a new craft. Learn an instrument.
A knitter who learns to paint may learn something about shapes or shadow or color palates that generates an idea for a new pattern.
A writer who learns to play an instrument may create a new character or setting.
Try it. You’ll feed your brain fodder that will one day become inspiration.
Brainstorming
Host a virtual or online brainstorming event. Give each participant ten or fifteen minutes to describe their “problem,” then allow each participant to respond one at a time with two or three ideas.
Brainstorm on paper. You know I’m a big proponent of journaling. It’s my favorite way to brainstorm. Sometimes, my brain works so much faster than my fingers can type that I’ll dictate my brainstorming session on my computer or cell phone.
Mind Maps can work as well. You can handwrite or use software designed for mind mapping.
Yes-And
Yes-And is a type of brainstorming. This is where you take an initial idea and add to it. Let’s say we want to write a vampire novel. The temptation might be to something negative like that’s boring, makes him different from other vampires. Instead of thinking in terms of negatives, we’re going to add things. For example: yes, and this vampire lives on hot peppers instead of blood. The point of the exercise is to not allow no to stop you. You can winnow the ideas down after the initial brainstorming.
Worst Idea
This is an unconventional type of brainstorming. This time, you brainstorm the “worst” most ineffective, impractical, or absurd ideas. After you’ve listed all the worst ideas you can think of, it’s time to go back through your list. This time, flip the worst idea around to a workable idea. For example: I’ll knit a raincoat out of vinyl records might become I’ll knit with recycled plastic bags. Or I’ll melt vinyl records to be ways to keep my balls of yarn in one place.
Random Word Matching
Use a random word generator online, or choose an old magazine or newspaper and circle every fifth word to generate a list of random words. Then come up with two or three different uses or applications for each of the words. Pair two random words to generate a different idea.
This could be fun to do as a group activity. Where each individual gets the same list. Each person privately makes a list of different uses. Then the group shares the ideas and perhaps gets new ideas.
What Am I Good For?
Pick a random item in your home. Something you use or see every day. Come up with different ways to use it.
Make Cross-Pollination Part of Your Creative Process
There will always be times when a creative person runs out of juice for a while. Shorten episodes and time periods of lower creativity by making cross-pollination a regular part of your creative life.
- Schedule regular time to read a new genre or nonfiction topic
- Practice Cross-pollination idea generation
- Join communities outside your area(s) of expertise
Beyond Random Inspiration
I don’t know about you but, I’ve grown up with the idea that distractions, trivial time-wasters, and procrastination are bad for productive adults. The price that comes with avoiding those things can be a single-mindedness that makes creativity difficult if not impossible. All creatives need constant input. Not just the same input from the same sources, but a variety of sources and types of inputs. Ideas do come from everywhere, if you are cross-pollinating.
Do you practice cross-pollination in your creative life? What is your favorite source?
If you haven’t tried it before, what will you try now?
Resources
Image Credits
Top image by Jürgen from Pixabay
Second image by kaylaflam from Pixabay
Final image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay