Process
Status Items Highlights Done See section below Claims None Questions None Output None
Highlights
Location 225
“insight experience.” The first stage is the impasse: Before there can be a breakthrough, there has to be a block. Before Bob Dylan could reinvent himself, writing the best music of his career, he needed to believe that he had nothing left to say. If we’re lucky, however, that hopelessness eventually gives way to a revelation. This is another essential feature of moments of insight: the feeling of certainty that accompanies the new idea.
Location 255
“It needs to see the forest and the trees. The right hemisphere is what helps you see the forest.”
Location 283
A giant inverted steel pyramid is perfectly balanced on its point. Any movement of the pyramid will cause it to topple over. Underneath the pyramid is a $100 bill. How do you remove the bill without disturbing the pyramid?
Location 359
But these negative feelings are actually an essential part of the process because they signal that it’s time to try a new search strategy. Instead of relying on the literal associations of the left hemisphere, the brain needs to shift activity to the other side, to explore a more unexpected set of associations. It is the struggle that forces us to try something new.
Location 369
“neural correlate of insight”: the anterior superior temporal gyrus (aSTG). This small fold of tissue, located on the surface of the right hemisphere just above the ear, became unusually active in the seconds before the epiphany.
Location 426
find the strange thread connecting those disparate voices. During those frantic first minutes of writing, his right hemisphere found a way to make something new out of this incongruous list of influences, drawing them together into a catchy song.
Location 445
Unless poets are stumped by the form, unless they are forced to look beyond the obvious associations, they’ll never invent an original line.
Location 448
the difficulty of the task accelerates the insight process.
Location 528
flexible attention policy.
Location 545
The essential element is a steady rhythm of alpha waves emanating from the right hemisphere. While the precise function of alpha waves remains mysterious, they’re closely associated with relaxing activities such as taking a warm shower.
Location 553
Why is a relaxed state of mind so important for creative insights? When our minds are at ease—when those alpha waves are rippling through the brain—we’re more likely to direct the spotlight of attention inward, toward that stream of remote associations emanating from the right hemisphere. In contrast, when we are diligently focused, our attention tends to be directed outward, toward the details of the problems we’re trying to solve.
Location 569
Another ideal moment for insights, according to Beeman and John Kounios, is the early morning, shortly after waking up. The drowsy brain is unwound and disorganized, open to all sorts of unconventional ideas.
Location 994
divergent thinking. He needs these unexpected thoughts when logic won’t help, when working memory has hit the wall. In such instances, the right hemisphere helps expand the internal search. This is the kind of thinking that’s essential when struggling with a remote associate problem, or trying to invent a new kind of pop song, or figuring out what to do with a weak glue. It’s the thought process of warm showers and blue rooms, paradigm shifts and radical restructurings. The Apollonian artist, by comparison, relies on convergent thinking. This mode of thought is all about analysis and attention. It’s the ideal approach when trying to refine a poem, or solve an algebra equation, or perfect a symphony. In these instances, we don’t want lots of stray associations—such thoughts are errant distractions. Instead, we want to focus on the necessary information, filling our minds with relevant thoughts. And so we slowly converge on the ideal answer, chiseling away at our errors.
Location 1500
dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, that chunk of tissue responsible for impulse control.
Location 1550
frontotemporal dementia,
Location 1560
Once we fall asleep, the prefrontal cortex shuts itself down;
Location 1591
TMS, which can temporarily silence a specific circuit of the brain with a blast of magnetic energy.
Location 1884
The doll was eleven inches tall and had platinum-blond hair, long legs, and an ample bosom. Her name was Bild Lilli. Although Handler didn’t know it at the time—she didn’t speak German—the doll was actually a sex symbol, sold mainly to middle-aged men.
Location 1923
But the ventral route is not the only way to read. The second reading pathway—known as the dorsal stream—is turned on whenever you’re forced to pay conscious attention to a sentence, perhaps because of an obscure word, an awkward subclause, or bad handwriting.
Location 1998
Uzzi’s data clearly demonstrates that the best Broadway shows were produced with intermediate levels of social intimacy.
Location 2116
“third places,” which he defined as any interactive environment that is neither the home (the first place) nor the office (the second place).
Location 2144
“This suggests that increasing the number of colleagues with whom an employee consults contributes independently to performance.” The key word in that sentence is independently. According to Allen’s data, office conversations are so powerful that simply increasing their quantity can dramatically increase creative production; people have more new ideas when they talk with more people.
Location 2214
There’s just one problem with brainstorming: it doesn’t work. Keith Sawyer, a psychologist at Washington University, summarizes the science: “Decades of research have consistently shown that brainstorming groups think of far fewer ideas than the same number of people who work alone and later pool their ideas.” In fact, the very first empirical test of Osborn’s technique, which was performed at Yale in 1958, soundly refuted the premise. The experiment was simple: Forty-eight male undergraduates were divided into twelve groups and given a series of creative puzzles. The groups were instructed to carefully follow Osborn’s brainstorming guidelines. As a control sample, forty-eight students working by themselves were each given the same puzzles. The results were a sobering refutation of brainstorming. Not only did the solo students come up with twice as many solutions as the brainstorming groups but their solutions were deemed more “feasible” and “effective” by a panel of judges. In other words, brainstorming didn’t unleash the potential of the group. Instead, the technique suppressed it, making each individual less creative.
Location 2226
part, this is because the acceptance of error reduces its cost. When you believe that your flaws will be quickly corrected by the group, you’re less worried about perfecting your contribution, which leads to a more candid conversation. We can only get it right when we talk about what we got wrong.
Location 2246
the reason criticism leads to more new ideas is that it encourages us to fully engage with the work of others. We think about their concepts because we want to improve them; it’s the imperfection that leads us to really listen.3
Location 2249
In contrast, when everybody is “right”—when all new ideas are equally useful, as in a brainstorming session—we stay within ourselves. There is no incentive to think about someone else’s thoughts or embrace unfamiliar possibilities.
Location 2266
Beginning a group session with a moment of dissent—even when the dissent is wrong—can dramatically expand creative potential. The power of dissent is really about the power of surprise. After hearing someone shout out an errant answer—red is called pink—you start to reassess your initial assumptions.
Location 2280
“It could get pretty depressing if all we did was shoot each other down. And that’s why, when we do engage in criticism, we try to make sure the criticism is mixed with a little something else, a new idea that allows us to immediately move on, to start focusing not on the mistake but on how to fix it.”
Location 3019
The point isn’t that Shakespeare stole. It’s that, for the first time in a long time, there was stuff worth stealing—and nobody stopped him. Shakespeare seemed to know this—he was intensely aware that his genius depended on the culture around him.
Location 3226
When students are given explicit instructions, when they are told what they need to know, they become less likely to explore on their own. Curiosity is a fragile thing.
Location 5178
the visual cortex was going quiet so that the brain could better focus on its own obscure associations.