How can I be focused and creative?
What happens to creative abilities once you focus your attention on only one thing?
Attention may be a little bit of a mystery when it involves the science of how it actually works. Your senses are consistently taking information into the brain as neurochemical or electrical signals, many signals every second, where each signal is then staged through various sections of processing.
Your brain works during this amazing thanks to filter signals which will not be important to your well-being – things just like the color of socks a stranger is wearing – which suggests only factors that are seemingly important will make it to higher levels of thinking, everything else is nearly completely ignored from our thoughts; and therefore the brain does all of this without your consciousness having to try to to any of the work. Only inputs that really matter make it to a better level of thinking where they will be further processed.
Our ability to focus like this poses a couple of problems for creativity however.
When we’re focused on a task or a thought , we set a kind of neurological filter for our brains to figure with, ignoring anything unrelated thereto core theme. Sometimes this unintentional filtering means we’re getting to overlook potential ideas or solutions which will be just outside the scope of our task. Like rummaging through the lens of a camera and not seeing anything outside the frame.
This is a drag because creativity is, after all, partially the experience of connecting the previously unconnected, the bits you couldn’t see just outside of your scope. Focusing means we may never make the connection we'd like most. We may never see the truly interesting subject just outside of our frame.
Focus does play a positive part within the creative process, therein once we've our solution or “big idea” we will specialise in it and adapt it or improve it or implement it, but when it involves creative flow it’s important to possess moments where lower level processing in your brain (the process liable for less logical thought and lower level filtering) can let the signals in your brain flow freely. You don’t want to chop off potential options within the early stages of brainstorming, so focusing your attention early will actually hinder your output.
The next time you’re trying to find ideas or an ingenious spark, take a step back, attempt to defocus, and let your brain do what it does best: process everything.
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