Discoveries by neuroscientists studying the brain say that novel experiences are key in increasing brain power and creativity. When the brain experiences, or imagines a familiar situation, it already has a shortcut to understanding – it’s got that categorized in a neat little mental box. Novelty, new experiences and stretches of the imagination keep the mind limber, and more creative.
Fast Company reports:
Most corporate off-sites, for example, are ineffective idea generators, because they’re scheduled rather than organic; the brain has time to predict the future, which means the potential novelty will be diminished. Transplanting the same mix of people to a different location, even an exotic one, then dropping them into a conference room much like the one back home doesn’t create an environment that leads to new insights. No, new insights come from new people and new environments — any circumstance in which the brain has a hard time predicting what will happen next.
Fortunately, the networks that govern both perception and imagination can be reprogrammed. By deploying your attention differently, the frontal cortex, which contains rules for decision making, can reconfigure neural networks so that you can see things that you didn’t see before. You need a novel stimulus — either a new piece of information or an unfamiliar environment — to jolt attentional systems awake. The more radical the change, the greater the likelihood of fresh insights.
Fast Company: “Neuroscience Sheds New Light on Creativity”
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Great to see that corporate America is catching on to this sort of subject-matter! I started discovering exactly this same thing last year while doing exercises to increase my dexterity and hand-eye coordination. Through a combination of left-handed writing (I’m right-handed), juggling, pen-twirling and baoding balls, I started to see how you could open up, break down and re-imprint old habits into newer more effective habits, consciously chosen. I’m excited to see these concepts being applied in creative ways by other people!
September 25th, 2008 at 4:50 pm
http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/129/rewiring-the-creative-mind.html
is the link to the article.
September 26th, 2008 at 7:47 am
Dig this:
http://globetrotter.berkeley.edu/people5/Dreyfus/dreyfus-con5.html
“When you’re skillfully coping in flow, without thinking, without rules, your body and its skills are drawing you to get this optimal grip on the situation. And the situation is always completely concrete. It’s something that you’ve never been in before and the other people haven’t been in before and you’ll never be in it again because having been in it this time has changed you.
Aristotle already saw that. It was lost, sort of, until Heidegger found it in Aristotle. Aristotle says if you keep acting and getting experiences and making mistakes and learning, you will finally become phronemos, a person of practical wisdom, and that means you’ll do the appropriate thing at the appropriate time in the appropriate way, to talk like Aristotle. And that’s being a master. That’s the highest thing you can be.”
September 26th, 2008 at 5:52 pm