One of my creativity research posts at Psychology Today. The study shows that simply thinking about the detail and vividness of your dreams each day can boost creativity. Click the dreamcatcher if you’d like to read the post.
Category: creativity research
Can Conformity Be Creative?
I wanted to share one of my creativity research posts from Psychology Today, a great place to learn about topics in Psychology. This post is about how copying ideas that challenge your assumptions can increase your creativity. Click the abstract picture to read it if you’d like to know more. It opens in a new tab or window.
Walking Meetings? Proceed with Caution
If you work in an office of any size, you’ve heard about “walking meetings,” and probably even participated in one. Instead of cramming into a small boring room, with everyone sitting around a table, you can take a walk together in the beautiful outdoors, with plenty of room to let your bodies and minds roam freely. And there are good reasons to meet that way, not the least of which is your health. The devastating health consequences of our sedentary lifestyles, filled with hours of sitting, have been widely publicized. There are also excellent research studies that show that walking boosts creativity, so walking meetings are likely to benefit group performance if the meeting goal is to come up with creative ideas. BUT, there are also findings from those same studies that show decreased performance on other types of tasks, and those Continue reading Walking Meetings? Proceed with Caution
Walk a Mile in My Shoes (But Not Too Fast), While Thinking of Different Ways to Use Them
You’re at your desk, trying to make progress on a project when that familiar urge to get up and walk to the vending machines – or anywhere other than your workstation – nags at you. What do you do? Should you give in? Will walking help or hurt your performance? Two competing research studies say “it depends.” It depends on the intensity of the activity and whether or not your project requires creativity. Continue reading Walk a Mile in My Shoes (But Not Too Fast), While Thinking of Different Ways to Use Them
The Value of What’s Old About New Ideas
Will Tumonis of Swaycraft, Ltd. recently blogged about how using abstract representations of problems can boost creative thinking. But he also rightly noted that abstraction is not enough; without concrete ideas to link your efforts to the pragmatic realities of a task, serious innovation isn’t possible.
I think he’s right, and his observations go to the core of how we define creativity. The two ingredients most students of creativity agree on as a minimum are Continue reading The Value of What’s Old About New Ideas
Creativity for You 