I wrote recently about different models of the creative process and how remarkably similar they all are. One of the most important similarities among them is the importance of rest in the process. On the surface, it seems obvious: generating novelty, like many other activities, is easiest when you’re not tired. But at a deeper level, it appears that creative insights are somehow born from idleness.
As I have discovered, many creatives are advocates of deliberately choosing to do nothing and be bored as an aid to the creative process.
[Ana] Balarin describes boredom as a pillar of self-care. “The same way we exercise to become healthy, soon we will have to train ourselves to be idle in order to be more creative,” she says. “I guess that’s why so many creative types are turning to meditation.*”
(source)
A closely allied distinction concerns the relationship between linear thinking (e.g., problem-solving) and creative thinking (e.g., novelty-generation).
As Stanford’s Emma Seppälä writes: “The idea is to balance linear thinking—which requires intense focus—with creative thinking, which is borne out of idleness. Switching between the two modes seems to be the optimal way to do good, inventive work.”
(…)
Creativity engages the brain’s daydreaming mode directly and stimulates the free flow and association of ideas, forging links between concepts and neural modes that might not otherwise be made.”
(source)
I agree that boredom is its own virtue and that people should train themselves to both daydream more and be more comfortable with being idle. But boredom and idleness alone are not likely to aid the creative process. In fact, as Julia Cameron makes abundantly clear in many of her writings, these states of mind can be dangerous for the creative process. If we are not careful, our inner critic(s), insecurities, and demons can colonize this empty space and render us “blocked.” Look no further than the discourse among creatives around anxiety-driven and compulsive distractions such as doomscrolling for a case-in-point.
Why is the idea that boredom, idleness and purposive rest are key to the creative process so widespread? I’m not going to get into an intellectual genealogy here, but I think at least part of it has to do with the fact that it makes intuitive sense that relaxing our attention and replenishing our concentration reserves would enhance our ability produce new ideas.
It also seems, however, that not any old kind of rest will do. The most “restful” rest for the creative process in fact—whether deliberately pursued or not—is to engage in a flow activity. Allow me to explain.
I found versions of the Rest Thesis in many of my sources, but Cal Newport’s “Deep Work” provides a typically pithy exposition drawing on attention restoration theory. In Newport’s framework, the kind of Deep Thought needed to produce new ideas requires a great deal of concentration. Crucially, to will yourself to concentrate requires directed attention. Such attention is a finite resource that requires replenishing once exhausted.** The best way to recharge your capacity for directed attention is to seek out interesting stimuli to keep the mind occupied, but to avoid the need to actively aim attention on a creative problem. His examples include nature walks, conversations with friends, listening to music, playing games, and exercise, among others.
I am in broad agreement with the facts here, but I disagree with the Rest Thesis about the role that such rest actually plays in the creative process. Interestingly—and in apparent contradiction to the above—Newport claims the mental faculties do not tire like an arm or a leg and the mind is capable of more-or-less continuous exertion, it just needs a change of scenery to recharge.
But this seeming inconsistency actually points to the way out of this conundrum: the problem with the Rest Thesis is that it tempts us to think of rest as “distracting ourselves” from creative problems. In fact, it is precisely during such “rest” activities that creative insights about something are most likely to emerge, rather than when intensely focused on that something.
The ideal form of mental rest is to get into the zone, to enter a flow state. As it happens, such an activity can outwardly appear “restful.” For example, all of the following could count: lying around, meditating, daydreaming, forest bathing, intently observing the world around you. The activity doesn’t matter so much as the state of mind that it puts you in.
Put another way, creative rest of this kind is what allows your brain to turn the crank of the Rock Tumbler. The unconscious processing, mental mastication, and forevoluntary mental events that result in eurekas, a-ha’s, and lightbulbs are much more generative when our consciousness is fully engaged in some practical activity.
Simply, if you sit around waiting for a eureka, it is unlikely to come. The key is to build time for flow activities into our days, which is what—more than idleness—makes the Rock Tumbler spin.***
Anyway, there is much more banked up in my vault of notes on this subject, especially with regard to the neurophysiological processes involved with rest, boredom, attention, distraction, and creativity, as well as the role of meditation, psychedelics, and mystical experiences in the creative process. I will certainly come back to this subject, particularly to reflect on Julia Cameron’s insights into it, especially her exercise of “Artist’s Dates” whose purpose is to fill our “creative wells.” For now, I’m going to go sculpt.
Coda (5/4/21)
I was reading “Practicing the Power of Now” by Eckhart Tolle and encountered this passage, which harmonizes with what I was trying to relate above. The method advocated here works, but it is only one of many available. Any activity that causes thought to cease and attention to be heightened will enhance the quality of your intuition.
“If you need to use you mind for a specific purpose, use it in conjunction with your inner body. Only if you are able to be conscious without thought can you use your mind creatively, and the easiest way to enter that state is through your body. Whenever an answer, a solution, or a creative idea is needed, stop thinking for a moment by focusing attention on your inner energy field. Become aware of the stillness. When you resume thinking, it will be fresh and creative. In any thought activity, make it a habit to go back and forth every few minutes or so between thinking and an inner kind of listening, an inner stillness. We could say: Don’t just think with your head, think with your whole body.” (68)
***
*Regarding the first quote: there does seem to be some disagreement in the sources about the question of stillness versus meditation and their role in the creative process. Questions include: is there a difference between meditation and idleness/rest in producing ideas or are they equally effective? When do the insights, eurekas and ideas come: during or after meditation or resting? There is also the unresolved matter of intentionality. What is the distinction between purposive problem-solving and coming up with new ideas? For many of these questions, the answers appear to be both/and or highly contextual. Consider these quandaries to be just a few among the pebbles I’ve currently got in my rock tumbler. More on this later.
**Drawing on Anders Ericsson, Newport points out that even expert performers across domains can consistently put in about only four-to-five hours of intense concentration per day, rarely more. For example, elite violinists were found to average approximately 3.5 hours per day of focused practice, sometimes over the course of two or more sessions. A novice can spend about one hour per day of intense concentration on a new thing. So we need to be realistic with ourselves about our expectations. On the one hand, it seems that our capacity for creative exertions is actually pretty limited to begin with. When you throw all of the rest of modern life and its demands on our attention on top of that, it makes you wonder how we find the time and energy to be creative at all. For me, finding time is a question of priorities and organization, and I usually think of it more in terms of “making time” anyway. Finding the energy, on the other hand, has proven to be somewhat more elusive over the years. As it turns out, often what is required is “hitting the reset button,” “filling the well,” or “disconnecting.”
*** As useful as these small daily moments are, sometimes we need a bigger break, though—a vacation. David Ogilvy recommends the following recipe for a refreshing vacation:
Don’t stay at home and putter about. You need a change of scene
Be on your own
Shut yourself off from work and over exposure to the news
Take sleeping pills first few days
Get plenty of air and exercise
Read a book a day
Broaden your horizons within reasonable financial and physical limits
Excellent advice, maybe even somewhat applicable to our regular lives, not just when we’re on vacation.