The Unexpected Answer

René Magritte. There’s nothing more to say.

Kazam! Is a Mindset

Recommended Watching: Man On Wire

“It’s impossible, that’s sure. So let’s start working.” – Phillippe Petit

Letting It In: Creativity Vs. the Filter

If you get a chance, check out this month’s Scientific American for a fascinating article on where creativity comes from.

According to a growing body of research, creative thinking is born from cognitive disinhibition, a process where the brain lets in much more of the external stimuli than usual, stimuli that most people’s brains automatically filter out.

“When unfiltered information reaches conscious awareness in the brains of people who are highly intelligent and can process this information without being overwhelmed, it may lead to exceptional insights and sensations.”

May seem a little obvious, but the research pertaining to filtering has us interested. In Fishbird, we often discuss the work of the reticular activating system, our brains’ small clump of cells that filters stimuli through three channels: what threatens us, what we value, and what is unique or unusual. In our automatic, unaware state, we typically hold what threatens us at the forefront of our filtering, creating our futures by dodging the experiences that have caused us trouble in the past. It may be that creativity is a commitment to what we value, and by placing fear on the back burner we allow ourselves to experience the unknown, things that we would usually withdraw from.

So Einstein used to pick up discarded cigarettes for tobacco for his pipe. Dickens used to fend off imaginary urchins with his umbrella. Schumann believed Beethoven was helping him compose music from beyond the grave.

Creativity lives outside the filter.

Poster We Quote

It’s been a photo/video posting last couple of weeks. This one’s from our friends at The Imaginary Foundation. It brings up an interesting point about organizations’ unresponsiveness to change in the form of new ideas. This is something we constantly hear about in Fishbird, and it speaks to the learned belief of continuing to do what’s worked in the past in order to achieve incremental, N+1 results in the future.

The thing about old ideas, though, is that they’re only relevant to old conversations. If you’re interested in having a new conversation, you need to forget where your brain has been and throw it into places it doesn’t recognize.

No Fear, No Future

“Fear can not exist because the future does not exist.”

Sweating Out the Fear

Edward Norton wants us all to buy cheap t-shirts.