From Blah to A-ha: Simple Ways to Boost Creativity

Flow-etic

Yes, our shampoo and body wash game is air-tight and smell-tested at this point, but the real magic in the shower is that space’s reliable ability to confer a-ha moments. If we drill down and consider creativity not so much the act of materializing a new idea out of thin air, but rather combining existing ideas in an entirely novel way, it makes perfect sense. In fact, by the time you say eureka! your brain has likely been working on the problem in question for some time—trying out different pathways to strike new idea gold. And that same brain would like to tell you that it might have found that bounty sooner if you would slow the hell down, thankyouverymuch. In the parlance of positive psychology (we like to keep it glass half-full around here), flow is that state of being totally immersed and focused on the activity at hand—you know it as being “in the zone.” As a practical matter, you want more of that, please, because it actually increases your creativity and enjoyment. So we’ve rounded up some ways to turn your “blah” to “a-ha.”

Start your morning in pages.

We’ve delighted in this practice since the beginning of the year when a new-to-us book, The Artist’s Way, had us wondering how we’d missed it all along. Hardly a new book, it’s enjoyed a bit of a resurgence as of late—even showing up in the pages of Vogue. It espouses the practice of Morning Pages, which in our Verse distillation means writing three full pages in longhand each morning to start our day. Some days it yields true nuggets and interesting thoughts; others, a stream of consciousness gibberish. The only rule is to keep writing, even if you must repeat sentences. For us, the absence of the need for perfection, top form or the guaranteed creation of anything useful is freeing—and gets us in the zone.

Turn the volume down.

As much as we like to show that we can indeed walk (or drive) and talk (or listen), we have begun to find real inspiration in performing these activities sans the soundtrack. Sometimes we keep top-of-mind a definitive idea we want to work on, but most times we just let our mind wander in the quiet and take in our surroundings. If we listen very carefully? Why, that’s the call of a new idea—crystal clear without the competition of other noise. 

Start stopping.

Perhaps you’ve heard of the Pomodoro Method? The basic idea: spend 25 minutes immersed solely in one task; when the timer goes off (the app is available if you’d like to nerd out on the method) you take five—literally. Every three or four cycles, you increase your break to 15-30 minutes. You might think of the practice of deeply focusing, then stopping, as marathon training for your brain. We recommend you choose something fun for your downtime: stare out the window, watch a funny video, take it outside. We also find this a perfect cure for procrastination, since we know that in 25 minutes we’ll be further along on our task than we were before we started. When the timer goes off? We watch this Drunk History episode, every time.

Up your word count.

While we lament all the attention technology steals from our waking hours, let’s not forget that we do still have ways to train and strengthen our concentration muscles. One is called long-form journalism (pieces with 1,000-20,000 words). The practice of engaging with this beautiful medium—whether a fictional story or a topical deep dive—restores our agency in the attention wars and boosts our ability to focus. Of course, this type of journalism costs money, but we deem it worthy of all the support you can give. Our favorite outlets? Try The New Yorker for everything from current events to fiction. Graydon Carter recreates his Vanity Fair magic with the Air Mail newsletter that drops every Saturday morning. Sports Illustrated proudly advertises itself as a long-form hub for sports and Barron’s does the in-depth, beyond-the-ticker business reporting we crave.