Design Your Writing Space for Maximum Creativity, According to Science

1. About the Course: And though my name is Donald Ratner, I'm an architect who helps individuals and organisations maximize their creativity by applying scientific research to the shaping of space. I'm also the author of My Creative Space. How to Design Your Home to Stimulate Ideas and Spark Innovation. 48 Science Based Techniques. Being an author myself, I was inspired to develop a course specially designed to help writers like you learn how to take advantage of these techniques in your own workspace. Here are just some of the topics will be covering in the videos which colors have been found to stimulate creative insight. How ceiling height effects idea generation What types of artwork promote original thinking . The impact of sound and scent on mental processing had to turn walls into idea factories, which types of furniture strengthened creativity and which squelch it. Plan escaping lighting materials and more. Now a few things to mention before we get underway. To begin with, I chose to focus on home in my book because that's where we tend to get the most creative ideas and because that's where we tend to spend the most time. Unfortunately, it's also where many, if not most, writers practice their craft. That said, you'll find these techniques applicable to a wide array of settings from the workplace to the coffee shop. So if you happen to have a day job that demands creative problem solving or if you also write in settings outside of the home, you can still apply many of these tips in those places as well. Another thing is that you'll be seeing lots of photographs of attractive interiors in the course of the videos, nearly all taken from the book and many done by my fellow architects and designers. However, you don't have to hire or be an architect or designer, have a design background or have a large or elaborate space or budget to benefit from the course. What I do recommend is that you consistently strive to make your creative spaces appealing to yourself as possible, because then you'll want to spend more time in it. Last, I'm confident you'll find this material valuable whether you write for pleasure, for profit or both. So here's a rundown of what's to follow. First, I'm gonna talk about how we've come to realize that our physical surroundings have a huge impact on our ability to think creatively. After that, we'll dive head first into the techniques themselves, finally closing with a detailed case study of an actual creative space time now to turn to our next module home and the psychology of space. 2. Home and the Psychology of Space: There are three main frameworks through which we can analyze the unique relationship between creativity and home environments. The first category examines home as an object of creativity, a kind of three dimensional canvas on which we as design and building professionals, homeowners and D I wires exercise our imaginations. The second looks at home as a container of creativity, a place that shelters creative pursuits of personal and professional. But the approach that we're going to take in this course falls in the third category, one less traveled than the 1st 2 This category explores home as a catalyst of creativity. By catalyst, I mean something that causes an event toe happen without itself being affected. In the context of this course, the catalyst in question is the home in both its material and Ambien characteristics. The event is a boost in creative performance. One reason this framework is less common than the others is that it's only recently that we've become aware that home can have this effect on us. But looking back in time, we can identify certain key milestones that would eventually lead us to a present understanding. The first milestone comes courtesy of Sir Winston Churchill, of all people who not once but twice in his life said this. We shape our buildings, and afterwards our buildings shape us. What it, Sir Winston mean by this? Well, I think the first half is pretty straightforward. We are people, whether architects, designers, developers, builders, artisans, government officials, homeowners, the public at large, pretty much anyone who has a hand or say in what the built world looks like. So no mystery there. But it's the second half of the quotation where things get a little more intriguing afterwards are building. Shape us? Well, how do they shape us? What ship do they put us in and how do we know they're shaping us? It would take another quarter century or so, but eventually science would turn its attention towards answering these questions. And when it did so, it took the form of a discipline cold environmental psychology. Now, environmental psychology is pretty much what it sounds like. It is the study of how the built or natural environment influences how we, as people think, feel and act. It is the science of person to place interaction, and, as I say, it starts to coalesce as a standalone field of study in the 19 sixties 1970. But we're going to jump ahead again, this time to 1984 because it's in that year that a truly groundbreaking experiment was performed, one that very neatly sets the table for everything I'm going to talk about in this course. The man behind the study was at the time a young professor at the University of Delaware named Roger S Ellrich. Although trained as a medical biologist, what Ullrich was really interested in was the relationship between health care facilities and human well being. Wanting to test a hunch he had nurtured since childhood, he ventured north to a town about an hour west of Philadelphia called Pay Oley, Pennsylvania, where there was and still is, a large hospital. There, with the cooperation of the hospital administrators, he undertook his study for subjects. All returned to patients who had previously been treated at the hospital, not just any patients, but people who fit certain pre established criteria. For example, everyone in the study had to have been at the hospital at roughly the same time, and everyone had to have been admitted for exactly the same procedure which happened to be gold bladder surgery. But most importantly, given our interests, they all have to have stayed in identical rooms on the second and third floors of one particular wing of the hospital and on one side of the corridor, which meant that everyone was looking in the same direction when they looked through their windows while laying in bed. There was one and only one significant difference in their environment, and that was what the patients saw through the window. Roughly half the group when they looked out so leaves on trees that have been planted it in a courtyard outside their room. The other half say the people in rooms located farther down, the Carter looked clear across the courtyard and onto a blank brick wall belonging to another part of the hospital, the trees having been planted on Lee at one end of the yard. The question already asked himself, was this Did the difference in view have any effect on patient outcomes, So he's combing through the records, crunching the data, and lo and behold, he discovers that there were indeed several striking differences between the two groups. Those who glimpse the foliage had shorter hospital stays, required less medication and exhibited fewer complications than those who face the blank brick wall. I'll let that sink in for a moment. We're talking about something completely outside the body, meaning in the environment having absolutely nothing to do with the medical care the patients were receiving. Nonetheless, altering their core physiology is altering the healing process itself. The power of the environment to influence that we think feel and act cannot get any more profound than that. Now scientists have a name for this phenomenon. They call it brain prime ing. Brain primate consists first oven input that comes in the form of an external stimulus entering human consciousness through one of the five senses sight, sound, smell, taste, touch where then triggers an output, meaning a change of condition or behaviour. In the case of Allred's experiment, the input was the view through the window. The output improved human wellness. Now, in this course, we're gonna be dealing with a special subcategory of primes, which I call design triggers. I use that term because everything about the hospital environment in question came about quote by design, meaning through human agency, from deliberate human decision making by the people responsible for shaping the hospital environment. Nothing was pre existing, and nothing was there by chance. Even the decisions where to plant the trees and how many to plant and whether they would be disingenuous or evergreen were intentional. This has strong implications. For one thing, it means everything could have been different. It could have been trees planted all the way down the courtyard that could have been no trees planted. The wing could have faced in a different direction. That might have been no windows and so on. For another, it bags an important follow up question, which is, if all wreck were able to discover one positive correlation between the environment and patient outcomes. Well, what about all the other elements that make up build space? What about color materials and finishes? Artwork, lightings, furnishings? Could we not repeat over? Expect ideology again and again on Lee each time. Isolate a different variable to see if we can find other positive or negative correlations between our surroundings and human well being. The answer to that question is obviously yes, and in fact, is precisely what's happened in the decades since all Rick's experiment to the point where it's morphed into a design approach called evidence based design or E v D. For short. What evidence based design proposes is that in addition to the traditional criteria we use to shape the world, whether it's aesthetics, budget functionality, history or context, we should also filter our decisions through the prism of scientifically determined evidence in order to achieve the best possible outcome for the people who are going toe occupy the places we create. And here you see a good example of E V D. There's all rex tree on prominent display notices, well, the expanded area of glass through which to view, said Tree, as well as bringing abundant natural light. In fact, I could trace back half a dozen features of the room directly to the scientific literature , so that's all good. But here's the question that leads us to the heart of the course. If scientists have been able to discover multiple correlations between physical space and improved human wellness, could they not also use the same methods to uncover environmental cues, leaving to improved human creativity? The answer to that question is again a resounding yes, and we'll start looking at them in the module following 3. Tactics Group 1: Color: at the end of our last module, I told you that scientists have been able to uncover design triggers, leading to improved human creativity, just as they've been ableto identify environmental cues that improve human wellness. In fact, researchers have discovered so many of these triggers over the past say, 15 to 20 years that I found it useful to organize them into three groups. We're going to take a sampling from each, starting with what I call creativity techniques, Group one appearances and appurtenances thes air primes that stem from things. You see whether the fixed elements of a space such as walls, floors, ceilings and built ins or the movable objects contained within it. Let's begin with one of the most visible aspects of built space color. Should it matter what colors we see when we're trying to be creative? That was the question to researchers from the University of British Columbia set out to answer in 2009. Well, they very wisely narrow down their scoop to just two of the primaries red and blue. Now, for this particular technique, I'm going to go into detail about the research methods thes scientists use so you can become familiar with other methods besides the type used by all Rick, which is called a field study since he went out into the real world to collect his data. The British Columbia experiment, on the other hand, took place under laboratory conditions in a university setting more specifically, in a computer lab. Why a computer lab? So that students who are the subjects of the study could be put through a series of exercises or problem solving tests designed to measure two types of mental processing one called analytical. The other creative we more commonly referred to them is left and right brain thinking. But for reasons I might get into later on, I try to steer clear of that particular trope. So how would we characterize thes two cognitive styles as they're known? Well, by analytical, we mean a kind of thinking that's based on reason and logic thinking that unfolds sequentially, meaning first you determine one thing, then use that information to determine the next and the next thinking that's concrete, detailed and narrow and focus the kind of thinking you used to solve problems having just one correct answer, as well as problems that compel you to draw on objective knowledge. For example, if someone asked you how much is two plus two and whole introduce, you're gonna say four, not because it's your personal opinion or something you feel inside, but because you relied on the objective laws of mathematics to calculate the answer, which will remain the answer, whether you or I think so, or even whether we exist it all. And finally, analytical processing is generally used to exploit, take advantage of things or knowledge. Already, existing creative thinking is more or less the mirror opposite of analytical. Instead of reason and logic, we use intuition, insight, imagination Instead of linear thinking, our thoughts tend to bounce around in zigzag and circuitous patterns. Instead of a concrete outlook, we see things in abstract, non specific terms. Instead of a narrowly focused perspective, we take a broad, big picture view. Instead of trying to come up with just one solution to a problem, we generate multiple possible answers. Instead of looking to knowledge outside ourselves, we look within and finally, instead of accepting what is, we use this kind of processing to explore the possibility of the new of what could be. As for the kinds of exercises employed. A standard type of analytic test would be where you're given a page of text and instructed to correct any grammatical spelling and punctuation errors. You confined by drawing on standards of grammar and so forth. Alternatively, I might give you a list of 10 words to memorize and recite back to me. As with the proof reading exercises, there won't be any ambiguity as to whether your responses are correct or not. Either you're right or you're wrong. So not much creativity there. But now let's say I gave you a brick and asked you to write down as many ways to use this brick other than as a traditional building material as you can. Oh, and that you have two minutes to do so now. What happens you're going to reach into your imagination to try to come up with is many answers as possible. Maybe you write down doorstop or paperweight, a horseshoe scraper or bug zapper, and on and on you go. The more inventive and original your ideas, the better. The same would happen if I asked you to take a typical household product like a broom and list all the ways you could improve on it. As for how the students were primed, the researchers were pretty clever about it. What they did was to inset the test materials inside the frames of the computer monitors, leaving a fairly wide margin around the sides, which they then cull arised in red, blue or white purpose of the white was to serve as a control group, meaning a baseline or datum from which the scores of the red and blue groups could be measured. The thinking was that since white constitutes the absence of color, any deviation in test scores up or down among the red or blue subjects could be reasonably attributed to the prime ing effects of either color. Okay, so the experiment finally gets underway. Some students are primed with blue, some with red, some with white summer performing analytical tests. Others are engaged in creative problem solving. The data comes in, gets collated. And what do the researchers find? They find that one of the two color groups did indeed outperform the other on tests measuring creative thinking. The question I put to you is, which one was it? Was it the blue or was it the red. If your answer was blue, then you were correct. Students exposed to the blue prime scored higher on the creativity assessment tests than the red or white groups. Which is not to say that the Red group didn't have its moment in the sun. It actually top the blue and white groups on the analytical exercises. So now you know one good color to use in your idea space, and not just for walls, either. You can apply it to upholstery J pary, wallcoverings, artwork, decorative objects, floral arrangements, furnishings and, yes, computer backgrounds offset it with neutral whites, blacks and greys as well as natural finishes to provide visual relief. And yet, to me, knowing that blue is creativity, positive is only a beginning because I like to dig a little deeper toe. Also understand why? Why do we respond to these inputs the way we do? How can the mere sight of a particular color materially change how we think the answer coming up 4. Color Explained: in the last segment, I suggested that it was important not only to know the what behind creativity, enhancement techniques, but the why. Except here's the issue the moment we ask the question why, when dealing with matters psychological, we necessarily enter the realm of speculative theory. Since it's nearly impossible to prove why our minds work the way they do with the logical certainty we can prove that two plus two equals four. Nevertheless, scientists can draw on their expertise to construct some pretty convincing arguments for the root causes of human behavior. By amassing evidence and formulating a coherent narrative in support of their position. I'd also note that there can be more than one plausible explanation for our behavior without any necessarily contradicting another. After all, we are complicated and multi dimensional beings. Anyway, I'm going to share my own theory as to what happened in British Columbia. Starting with this thesis statement, our mental, which is to say idea space expands and contracts in direct proportion to our perception of physical space. In other words, the more open and expansive we perceive the space around us to be the more open minded we become toward new ideas, new perspectives and new ways of doing things, open mindedness being a classic personality trait of creatives, the more closed and constrained we feel the space, the more closed minded, narrowly focused, detail oriented and therefore analytical, are thinking becomes I should mention that others have alluded to the connection between openness and creativity. Besides me, people like Virginia Woolf, who once wrote that I like toe have space to spread my mind out in in reference to taking long, thoughtful walks in the countryside. Okay, all very interesting, you might be thinking, but what the space and color have to do with each other. There's nothing in my thesis statement that suggests this connection. And aren't we dealing with color based primes? In the case of the British Columbia study? Fair question. So let me be respond by calling my first witness to the stand the Mona Lisa. Take a look at the famous picture. Notice how Leonardo uses color to represent varying degrees of depth in the three main sections of the canvas. In the upper tier, he uses blue to convey an illusion of deep space where the landscape recedes behind Lisa into the far distance in the middle tier, his palate turns somewhat warmer, creating the impression that the landscape is located closer to the viewer until finally, in the lower third, he's painting with fully saturated warm tones, such as the deep red sleeves of Lisa's dress and the warm flesh tones of her hands, which produced the effect of placing the figure right at the picture plane. Leonardo's choice of colors is in no way arbitrary. He understood that optically cool colors such as blue appeared to receive from the eye, while warm colors like red convey the illusion of coming toward the viewer. And while he didn't know that this has to do with how light coming in, a different wavelengths is processed by our brain. He certainly would have observed how these effects occur in nature. Stand outside on a sunny day, for instance, and you'll see that far away objects really do look blue, whereas colors in the foreground appear warmer and more saturated. And here's some more tantalizing experimental evidence. In 2000 and six, an architect by the name of Shashi Conran experiment at a design trade show in New York City. As part of the experiment, she set up several event tens, two of which were colorized blue and red. She went to great lengths to make the color experience as pure as possible, even get guest, where White has Matt suits to filter out any competing his What's fascinating is how people behaved in the two different color environments. Visitors to the Blue 10 tended to scatter along the perimeter wall singly or in pairs, as if an unseen centrifugal force that propelled them there. Whereas guests in the red environment clustered at the center. Translating this behavior within the framework of creativity, I'd suggest that the guests prime by the color blue or drawn to survey the limits of their physical space just as creatives test the boundaries of conventional thinking that they did so independently or with a single partner suggests a willingness to largely go it alone. Ah, whole mark of eminent creatives throughout history. People in the red tent, on the other hand, tended to converge in groups as if the walls were pushing them inward and as if seeking comfort in knowledge from the collective rather than oneself. Still another piece of supporting evidence comes in the form of a model of creative thinking, developed by a famous psychologist named JP Guilford. Let's take some time to walk through Gilford's model together. Besides helping to explain the results of the British Columbia experiment, it's also going to tell us a great deal about creativity as process a subject we haven't really delved into. Up to now to start, let's say you're about to undertake a writing project. What does every project need to begin? It needs a problem to be solved. You know our diagram. The problem is represented by the question mark on the far left. In real life, a problem could take the form of AH, concept for a book you want to write a writing job. You just got hired for simply the next sentence you plan to compose. Once the scope of the problem has been established, you initiate what Guilford calls the dye virgin phase, also known as the ideation, or generative phrase, so called because this is where you generate ideas for possible solutions to your problem. If it's a sentence or trying to write, then it's where your mind is running through all the possible words and combination of words it can think of in this face, it's quantity rather than quality that counts. The more possible words selections you can come up with, the greater your chances of landing on a good one. What you might want to avoid is constantly going with the first choice of words that pops into your head, because then you risk engaging in with creativity. Experts coal premature closure where you choke off a promising direction by being judgmental, too early in the process. Gilford's term dive urgency is therefore an apt description of your cognitive state during this period, the boundaries of your mental space diverging or widening as you try to capture as many options as you can. Like a fisherman who casts a wide net to scoop up the biggest catch possible, there are limits to dive urgency. Of course, you don't want to spend an hour conjuring up every possible combination of words for your sentence or 10 years coming up with a concept for a book. So at some point you naturally begin to go in the opposite direction, winnowing out your less successful efforts while advancing those worth developing. To determine which word combinations liver die, you exercise with Guilford calls convergent thinking the aim now being to converge toward a final solution by making choices rather than creating more of them. That means, in part, drawing on your rational faculties to judge whether a potential sentence structure works. Hence the synonyms, validation and verification for the convergent phase. By now, you probably noticed that several ways color, space and cognition overlap in the model take divergent thinking. Just as dive urgency correlates with expanding mental space, so too does the color blue imply expanse of physical space as we saw in Nature and the Mona Lisa. Likewise, just a czar Mental outlook has too narrow for us to pare down our options in the convergent phase, so, too, does red trigger the impression of shrinking physical space. You might have also noticed that the divergent phase shares a lot of characteristics with my description of creative thinking, exploring multiple solutions to a problem, thinking intuitively, rather than rationally exploring what could be rather than what is thes air traits that fit either term the same with convergent and analytical processing, both of which colon reason and logic, focus thinking and detail level analysis in order to move the process towards a definitive solution. Given this confluence of mental and physical space, it could well be My faces is correct that the students in the British Columbia experiment to saw a blue, the better on their creative tests because their mental space expanded in tandem with the optical expansion of physical space. Students exposed to read would naturally then do best on the analytical exercise, which is what happened. A few less comments on Gilford's model before we move on, the first concerns a matter of semantics. These terms, creativity and creative. They can be a bit slippery. For instance, the way creative is used at the bottom of the screen could be interpreted to mean that we're Onley creative during the divergent face, and that is how people often use it. Get the title at the top of the screen suggests the model refers to creative thinking as a whole, implying that both cognitive styles are part of the equation. So which is it? Well, I've seen arguments for either usage. At the end of the day, though I personally believe creativity should be understood as whole brain thinking, entailing both divergent and convergent processing. For one thing, it's consistent with the classic definition of a creative idea, as one that's both novel and useful. Think about it. If you only get us faras the divergent phase. As a writer, you might end up with a sentence. That's novel, in fact, so novel that nobody can understand it, which makes it pretty useless all in all. But if you verify the meaning of your sentence by putting it through the rigors of linguistic analysis, grammar and so forth, and presumably others besides, you will comprehend it's meaning. Having said this, I will often use the term creative in its narrower sense of straight out idea formation. As we go through the course, I do this for no other reason than that it's just really hard to constantly come up with synonyms for creative when referring to idea generation. I'm also concentrating on dive urgency because that's the part of the creative process. Where we could use the most health are schooling, teaching us to be pretty good convergent thinkers by rewarding us for coming up with the right answer to test problems, thinking logically, sticking to the rules and so on. All right, but now maybe you'd like to ask if there isn't a more straightforward way to test my original hypothesis, equating physical and mental space like, say, by simply having subjects perform their creativity and analytical thinking, exercises in a large versus a small space and then comparing the results. Actually, you don't have to wonder about it all because it's been done, as I explained next. 5. Ceilings, Openings and Artwork: I promise at the end of the last video to show how researchers have manipulated the physical size of a testing environment in order to judge whether our sense of space effects creative thinking. Actually, what they did was put students in the same room Onley under two different ceiling height conditions, because remember spaces and just lateral side to side or forward to back. It's also vertical, which is what makes it three dimensional. Using the same room but with higher or lower ceiling IEDs would seem the perfect way to gauge the effects of space perception on cognitive style, since everything else about the room would be consistent. In here is the labrum. The photo on the right shows it as it normally exists, where the ceiling is 10 feet above the floor. The photo on the left shows it after a false ceiling was installed at eight feet above the floor. You can see the difference in the absence of a gap above the light fixture. Anyway, After hearing my thesis, it shouldn't surprise you to hear that the results mirrored those from the blue versus red experiment. Exactly. Subjects assigned to the 10 foot ceiling condition outperformed the eight foot group on the creativity assessment tests, while those in the eight foot room vested their peers on the analytical problems. Now maybe you're thinking that you're out of luck on this one, what with your ceilings being under 10 feet and no chance of raising them up any time soon . Don't give up yet because there are tricks of the trade that can help you create the illusion that you're spaces taller than it really is. And that's the important thing. When it comes to the psychology of space, it matters far less with something really is than what your mind proceeds it to be. One step you could take is to paint vertical stripes on your walls or install a wallpaper with a vertical patterns, such as you see on the left. This will prompt your eye to move in an up and down direction and to prioritize the vertical over the horizontal. Another technique is to place furniture pieces with vertical proportions in the space, like the shelving unit to the left of the chimney breast. In the middle picture, same goes for decorative objects. Look how the mirror above the fireplace is in a portrait rather than landscape orientation and how it's ornamental. Cresting further propels the eye upward. Even small objects can play a role in the perception of a space. Check out how the candlesticks on the mantel shelf continue up the details of the fireplace surround below. But maybe my favorite moves in this room involved the treatment at the top of the wall. I really appreciate how the wall color is extended up into the ceiling, physically extending the height of the wall beyond its normal limits. And the way the vertical plane transitions to the horizontal plane by means of an outward flair is very effective in softening the abrupt break that often exists between them, making it still more difficult to discern where the wall ends and the ceiling begins. Obviously, there's a lot going on in this space, but sometimes you can achieve the desired effect with a single move like here, where leaning a big mirror against the wall makes the ceiling look further away. Of course, it also makes the room as a whole seem bigger, which is the overriding go being that color and ceiling height are confined to the interior of a space, however, they can only go so far and stretching our perception of its boundaries to really Q A sense of expansiveness. Your work area would ideally have some kind of opening out into the world beyond, since that will expand your sense of space exponentially. Openings, as you know, usually take the form of windows or maybe a French door, which is a door with class in it. The nice thing about having access to it least one in your space is that while deep vistas into the landscape or streetscape, outsider certainly attractive and conjour a Matic Lee stimulate a creative mindset. You don't need a $1,000,000 view to reap its cognitive rewards. In fact, you also don't have to face directly out through the opening while you're writing to prime openness as the images on screen a test there are even occasions were doing so might undermine other conditions favorable to creativity, a situation I'll talk about later in the course for anyone who is lacking and opening in their space, I've got good news. There are still ways to manipulate your decor. So is to make your brain think it does exhibit a artwork in particular artwork that portrays images of deep space, such as thes landscape scenes printed on old travel posters. Indeed, none other than our friend our Roger s already ran an experiment in which he hung posters similar to these in a workplace setting to gauge whether they'd have any effect on creative output. Among staffers. They did. It went up that a visual representation of recessive space could have the same effect as the actual experience of it. Highlights an important point about prime ING Primes don't have to be literal toe affect cognition. Our minds will respond to metaphorical and indirect representation of environmental cues about the same as they will tow actual ones. We saw as much in the case of the blue every and red experiment, where the mere sight of colors intimating depth were enough to trigger a mental response. Landscape imagery apparently produces similar reactions, only less by inference than by representation. The notion that primes could function through allusion as much as literal representation should greatly interest you as a writer because it suggests that words alone could function is primes. And in fact, there have been several experiments where subjects were primed entirely. with words. One famous example had a group of subjects doing word puzzles in which terms associated with advanced age, such as Florida forgetful, retired, ancient old gray and bingo were sprinkled among the exercises. A second group was put through the same kinds of test, but with strictly elderly neutral words. As each participant left the lab, a lab assistant secretly time there walked to the elevator. And what do you know? Those primed with words related to old age walk slower than those without the prime? This evidence would strongly suggest that printing the names of the destinations on the travel posters are compounding their prime effect. Assuming the Observer is nowhere near these places when viewing them, there's one other prime that might be in play here. I'll talk about that in the segment that follows. 6. Distancing, Time and Creativity: at the end of her last module, Light indicated that there was one other prime, possibly at work, among the travel posters. That third trigger turns out to be the element of time or, to be precise, the passage of time. After all, a partners can be measured in more than one metric. Researchers at the University of Southampton, for example, discovered that subjects who were first asked to recall elements of their past then demonstrated greater aptitude and linguistic fluency in creative writing exercises. Compared to those who performed the same task without thinking back, You can add the fact that these are vintage posters to the possible causes for their positive influence on worker creativity. In Ullrich's experiment, you can then apply this finding in multiple ways to your own space. Besides putting up artwork evoking other eras, you could also surround yourself with antique furnishings and decorative objects like the desk in bric a BRAC. In this image, I'm especially found of the owner's collection of old globes, both for their vintage provenance and also for their illusion toe, large scale space personal memorabilia, whether photos of your ancestors souvenirs you've picked up in your travels or that swimming trophy you want an eighth grade can also work their magic on a knack architectural scale, utilized lighting fixtures, hardware, materials and finishes and other building elements to project the aura of time as well. Oh, and one other thing, while the subject of artwork is still in the air, generally speaking, creativity begets creativity, meaning that people are often inspired by displays of creative work to become more creative themselves as a creative work product. Art of any kind could therefore have a triggering effect, as could the site of books on shelves or writing instruments on a desk. If writing is your medium, think about keeping artifacts of your own work in prominent view, such as any books you've published or awards of one thes kind of inputs can instill a much needed self confidence as well as trigger creative activity. Anyway, with all these distance based primes uncovered through research, wouldn't you think that somebody besides me would have noticed the pattern and proposed a comprehensive theory to explain this pervasive phenomenon? And sure you would end. To be honest, they have. That theory is known as construe all level theory, or CLT. It's a somewhat awkward name, but it gets the point across. What CLT proposes is that the farther away a person construes an object or event to be the more abstract and broadminded their thinking becomes. The closer they are, the more focused and detail oriented. The mindset a good way to visualize. See lt's to imagine yourself up in an airplane. You're flying over farm country and you look down and what do you see? Mostly you see fields of color pattern, lightened shade, maybe a few scattered objects that you can just barely tell what they are. Your eye being too far way to take it enough information to identify them, but that let's say you parachute out the plane and land directly below. Now, what can you make out? Pretty much everything and in quite fine detail to from the lettering on the tractor toe. What kind of crops are growing in the field around you? If some of the terms I just use make you think back to an earlier slide, well, they should. Abstract broad brush thinking is exactly the kind of mental processing we do when we're in creative mode, so it makes sense that pursuit perceiving things at a distance, literally and figuratively, affording us a big picture view of the world aligns with ideation. In that regard, it makes equal sense that being close to something induces an analytical mentality, since proximity allows us to focus more narrowly on the object of our attention and to process it at a much more granular level of information. But wait, there's more. Proponents of construe all level theory have proposed other media through which abstract big picture thinking can be initiated, including by dress. Yes, what you wear when you write could make a difference in the creative quality of your work. The operative principle here is something called social distancing, a term that's become nearly universal thanks to the Cove in 19 Pandemic. But it actually originated sometime ago and in the context of dress has a different meaning . It refers to the perception of distance that's created between people, depending on the formality and symbolism of their attire. To appreciate the concept, visualize someone dressed up enough snazzy wide suit and matching fedora like the famous author Tom Wolfe did on regular basis. Or maybe they're wearing a long ball gown or a tuxedo or just a really nice business suit. Or how about a scientist wearing a white lab coat? Psychological effect of clothing like this is to elevate the perceives social status and authority of the individual relative to the observer, inculcating in the mind's eye an element of separation expressed in social rather than spatial metrics. Something similar happens in terms of how we view ourselves. Think of yourself putting on a really nice outfit for a special occasion. Do you sense a heightened self regard that you might not feel when you're throwing on some every day close to putter around the house? If so, that's a self directed form of social distancing. Take away. Consider taking your tire up a notch from the purely casual. When you write, it might just change your mind up next. Walls and furnishings 7. Walls and Furnishings: What good are rules? Obviously, they're useful for enclosing space, affording privacy, keeping out the weather and noise and things you'd rather not look at. But did you also know they can be a great idea tool? One way to turn your walls into a creative asset is to coat them with whiteboard or chalkboard pain so that you can write and draw on them. Taking this step enables you to externalize your ideas right within your workspace and in real time externalized. I mean getting your ideas out of your head and into the world. Intangible form concretize ing Your insights bastos important benefits. For starters, it means you've captured them. That might sound minor, but it's actually vital for the creative process, because here's the sad truth. Like everyone else, you're going to forget the vast majority of your ideas within a very short time of having them unless you record them, as many writers do with their notebooks. That's simply a function of what's called our working memory, which is where we temporarily store new information. Think of working memory like a small hard drive. Fill it up and you've got to all flow data to clear out room for the next batch. Now as effective as notebooks or these days, smartphones can be. They do have their limitations. For one, they tend to be small, pocket or hand sized. That makes it hard to invite others into them. It also makes it challenging to perform certain functions, like doodling or mind mapping at a large scale. That's where inscribe a ble walls come in because they tend to run eight feet, orm or toll and however many feet wide, they effectively stretch your idea space far beyond anything in nowhere notebook can provide. And where you can draw big, you can think big. A further advantage they offer is that other people can simultaneously occupy your physical and mental space, which makes it possible to engage them in a collaborative exchange. And here's an extra bonus. Because the walls remain visible day and night. There's always the possibility that another member of your household or relative or friend might happen upon them, sparking some thoughts in their own heads, which they can share with you later. You'd be surprised how much creativity is generated by accidental collisions rather than deliberate effort, and by the way, when I speak of drawing. I'm not talking about artistry. I'm referring to doodling, diagramming, scribbling and whatever forms of manual activity allow you to bring out and develop ideas. Whether it's mind mapping a chapter, book or passage, flushing out character profiles or place settings recording bits of factual information, you want to keep it the ready outlining pretty much anything that helps you work through a creative problem. The reasons for this go back to our biological roots long before we learn to traffic in words. We saw the world in pictures and long before we invented speech. We made things and did things with our hands. In fact, the connection between brain and hand is so strong that researchers have found ideas to flow from hand to head as readily as the other way around. So don't worry if you feel you can draw like Picasso. If you could hold a marker in your hand and write your name than working walls are your friend. As enormous as their cognitive benefits are, let's not lose sight of the practical value of working walls, used them to expand your storage space, organized documents and materials, managed time and tasks display artwork, Mementos and work product and add visual interest to your space. Let's now turn our attention to a different topic. Furnishings, beginning with arrangement by which I mean how furnishings dispose people in relation to each other and have those relationships can then influence creativity. To do this, I want to step into the corporate world for a moment. Space you're seeing on screen is an example of what's commonly described as an idea space or sometimes an innovation room. That this is an example of one is evident from the graphics visible on the partition across the corridor. These include a line drawing of a human brain with sparks coming out of it. Ah, well known symbol of creative inside called the Idea Bulb, and a quotation that reads, Quote Everything that can be invented has been invented unquote. It would be hard to miss the intended irony behind the quote. Those words, having been uttered by no less than the director of the U. S. Patent office in 18 99 with the help of these graphics management, is sending a pretty clear message to the people in the room. As a forward facing organization, we're expecting you to be creative, get insightful ideas and support of our mission and do it together as a group. That's why we put in all those chairs. There's just one problem. There's something in the room conflicting with that very message, and that is the table. Actually, there are two problems. The first is that there's a power and balance among the people. See around it because, as we all know, the person seated at the head of the table is a person of authority, whereas the people down at the far ends are likely to be juniors or shy people or the new guys on the block. So what do you think is gonna happen during a creative session when the person occupying the power seat throws out an idea? I suspect that idea will be well received on the whole, given the political cost to rejecting them. Such reactions are also a function of what's known as an authority bias, which is our tendency to ascribe greater knowledge and competence to people in elevated positions than is necessarily warranted. Take that same idea suggestion, however, and have it tendered by someone in a subordinate position and well Maybe it will fly and maybe it won't. Proximity to power Confers Power Distance Weakens it That isn't what you want in an innovative organization. You want ideas to be evaluated on the basis of their merits, rather than on who originate him. Otherwise, good ones might be lost in lesser ones put into practice for all the wrong reasons. Another thing that suffers when people are arranged in grids is the free flow of ideas. For instance, the frequency of exchanges among people seated around rectangular tables tends to be unequal because the distances between them are unequal. Among other things, it's easier to talk in a normal tone to someone close by and then toe have to raise your voice to be heard at the other end of the table. Same with visibility. People who sit across the table or next to each other will interact the most because they're in their immediate fields of vision. By contrast, those who sit in the same row or at the extreme ends of the same row are compelled to lean forward and crane their necks to make eye contact, be discomforting position that discourages conversation. Studies of jury room deliberations around tables with the same rectangular shapes have documented these dynamics consequence being a reduction in creative couple collaboration. So what can we do about it? My recommendation would be to move away from gridded a raise and toward radial and centralized patterns. Instead, this brings three distinct advantages. One. It eliminates hierarchically privilege positioning, since everyone is now quit distant from a common CenterPoint, endowing all the seats with the same status to it directs attention from the table perimeter to the table center, transforming the middle of the surface into a kind of idea basket into which everybody can toss that proposed solutions and expect to have them evaluated without prejudice. And three, It's much easier for participants around the table to see, hear and share ideas with each other. You can follow similar principles even when there's no table in play. For instance, notice how the two chairs opposite the fellow on the couch opposite are slightly angled toward each other. Just that slight modification of the grid is enough to significantly improve eye contact and connection among the people in the seeding group, and with it the opportunity for good ideas to flow from the exchange a couple of technical terms that you may run into well studying the psychosocial effects of space on human behavior. The first is so seo few Guell, a mash up of the words social and centric fickle term refers to gritted configurations that direct energy outwardly and toward a location along a perimeter and second socio petal. Ah, fusion of social and centripetal, signifying the inward and centralized focus of circular and radial arrangements. By the way, there are times when soc if you Google arrangements aren't necessary and desirable, such as when information is being delivered in a top down manner, which is what I'm doing right now. But for creative activities, a so cio pedal configuration will generally be optimal up next, furnishings and posture. 8. Furnishings and Posture: just so you don't think I'm ignoring the widespread belief that sitting is the new smoking . By dwelling on seating arrangements, I want to look at a couple of alternative postures that have been linked to improve creativity and well being. The most frequently cited option is to stand rather than sit, and certainly history is filled with high achievers who've utilize standing desks among them Ernest Hemingway, Virginia Woolf, August Wilson, Winston Churchill and Thomas Jefferson. Many contemporary swear by them as well. If you already use one, good for you. If not, you might want to consider doing so for a while. I think there's still more research to be done to definitively link them to accelerated idea flow. There's little question that being upright rather than glued to a standard desk chair for long periods can improve physical health. One important recommendation I do have for you, though, is that if you do use a standing desk, make sure to play some kind of resilient cushion or movable platform under your feet. Our bodies are simply not engineered to stand on Super heart surfaces more or less motionless for long stretches. If you do, you could find yourself with serious back and muscle ailments. The purpose of having a device like a rubber pad or bobble lord underfoot is that it will make you shift. Your weight in small increments was to keep you limber and in motion. Less commonly known but more validated scientifically, is to recline when doing creative work. Some notable writers take this approach. Author Michael Chabon nestles into this classic Eames Lounge chair for his work sessions. The aptly named Edith sit well, would lie in an open coffin for a while before she began her days writing, If you can believe it, Truman Capote, only slightly less manic on the subject, went so far is to declare himself a completely horizontal writer. An accurate description is many pictures of him in work mode, a test. As for why this particular posture fuels the imagination. One speculation is that it has to do with a part of the brain called the locus Saru Lius. When activated as it is when we prepared a stand up or spring into action locus SARU aliases releases a hormone variously called nor epinephrine or nor adrenaline. The effect of this substance is to raise alertness, energize memory and focus attention all helpful functions for someone about to be physically active. But in conflict with e. D focus, mind wandering, dreamlike style of mental processing that engenders breakthrough ideas. Reclining has the opposite effect. De activating the locus surreal ius, reducing the supply of norepinephrine and putting us into the more relaxed mental and physical states conducive to creativity. And here we used to think that lying down on the job was bad to me, though at the end of the day, what ultimately matters most is that you avoid remaining in the same position for too long . Whether you choose to alternate between just two postures or assume all three in your daily or nightly routine is entirely up to you to determine whatever you decide, try to stick to it, as the writer Vladimir in the book of Did. He would begin his afternoon writing session by working at a standing desk, then shift to conventional deaths, eating after a set period of time. The third and final stage found him writing while lying in bed. Notice how, by then he's taking off his shoes, tie and jacket reinforcing through dress. The same message embodied by his posture that he's in and especially relaxed physical and mental state. Well, look at more aspects furnishings in the next module. 9. Furnishings Orientation and Shape: continuing our discussion of furnishings. I want to explore the question of orientation by which I mean how furnishings disposed the individual relative to the surrounding space rather than to other people. Consider this person's death set up, for example, seems pleasant enough at first glance. But think about what I said earlier regarding the cognitive value of having space around. You appear open and expansive, might butting the desk against the wall so it's tohave the user face a solid plain less than two feet away. Compromise that perception. Yes, over steps could be taken to mitigate the shortcoming, something I'll talk about later. But there's a second potential problems stemming from the placement of the desk, namely, the fact that it compels the occupant to sit with her back to the room. I say problem because it conflicts with the psychological concept known as Prospect Refuge Theory. Prospect Refuge was first advanced in the mid 19 seventies in a book by an English geographer named Jay Appleton. Appleton's contention was that we humans have been genetically programmed to position ourselves in space so as toe have a 180 degree view of everything that lies in front of us while at the same time blocking approach by others from our blind spots. Behind and above as toe have this innate GPS programming has come to be implanted in our brains, it has to do with the same compulsion that drives much of our behavior. The urge to survive those early humans who sought out habitats that balance these competing needs experienced high survival rates because they satisfied the demands of both security and sustenance. Without a protected retreat or a vantage point from which to survey the landscape before venturing out into it, a person could easily starve or be attacked. Those humans who didn't quite grasp this principle suffered the consequences, eventually declining in population until they were no more. As usual, it was the winners of their survival sweepstakes who handed down their genes to subsequent generation. That it's their DNA that we carry around inside us would explain why we still feel drawn to elevated sites with breathtaking views and hard to get to settings. Fortunately, there's often a simple solution to the orientation problem reflected in the preceding slide , and that is to swing the desk around so that it faces into the space rather than away from it. Notice how prospect and refuge er equally satisfied as a result, sitting at the desk, the user can now see nearly the entire room as well as anyone entering into it. Prospect is further broadened by having a view to the outside, too. As for refuge that's adequately provided by the presence of solid walls, built ins and ceilings behind an overhead. Of course, we all know the chances of her being salted by a wild animal or hostile tribesmen in the comfort of our home is close to nil. So jeans, air, no jeans. Why is Prospect Refuge relevant anymore? And y does acquiescing to its demands boost creativity? I can best answer these questions by introducing the next topic. The impact of furniture shape on our mental state. In 2012 a pair of researchers from Oregon State University were curious as to whether one or the other cognitive style could be triggered by sensory stimuli categorized by shape. So they showed subjects images of different furniture groupings and surveyed their reactions. What they found was that furniture with rounded silhouettes and curved contours induced a creative mindset, whereas furniture dominated by straight lines, crisp edges and pointy corners initiated an analytical framework. Any thoughts as to why we have these reactions? Well, visualize your state of mind when you're sitting at the breakfast table, spoon in hand, munching away in a bowl of cereals or Berries. Or what have you. I'd imagine you're probably pretty relaxed, barely cognizant of the fact that you're repeatedly inserting this metal. Implement into a vulnerable body cavity. Instead, your mind is elsewhere. As you chat with a family member, stroll through the day's news or simply let your thoughts wander. Now picture yourself going to the counter and picking up a sharp kitchen knife toe cut a priest of fruit or something. How would you describe your mental state now? Most likely, you've become quite alert, perhaps trepidatious and even a bit stressed on a subliminal level. Your attention laser focused on the knife as it slides within millimeters of your fingertips and with good reason. You know, if you lose sight of what you're doing, you could do yourself a nasty turn with that knife. The reason. This has anything to do with creative performances that are moved or what scientists call our affect greatly impacts cognitive style. Stimuli that elevate mood that relax us that pose little threat to our safety tend to heighten our powers of invention because we're more inclined to let our guard down, take creative risks, depart from social norms, inputs that raise the prospect of self harm that make us fearful in any way, on the other hand, shift our outlook into an analytical framework because focused attention and logical reasoning are the kinds of cognitive processes best suited to keeping yourself out of trouble. Want to keep this all straight in your head? Just remember fear fosters focus. Okay, you might be thinking, I buy which you're saying when it comes to knives and spoons, but no one's ever been sliced and diced by a sofa. So what's going on here now, thanks to neuroimaging technology, we've got a pretty good sense of what's happening. But a person in an F M r I machine show them pictures of round and circular objects and you'll see the reward and pleasure centers of the brain light up, meaning blood is flowing to them. Show the same person images of straight things, and it's a little piece of the brain, called the amygdala that activates instead. This is significant because one of the functions of the amygdala is processing fear. It's also believed to be integral to our survival instinct. Thieves could be the clues to our behavior that we've been looking for, because while there aren't very many straight lines and sharp points in nature, those that do exist tend to hurt results of the brain skins. It's reasonable to conclude that we've been genetically encoded through natural selection to be wary of things that could jeopardize their survival and embrace those that provide pleasure. So deeply ingrained in our psyche is this behavior, which scientists term approach motivation, that it doesn't matter in the least, that the odds of being done in by an item of furniture are about as good as being eaten by a wild beast in our home office. In both cases were dealing with brain mechanics that took eons to form and will take E ends more to be undone. Extend the creativity enhancing effects of rounded and circular shapes to other elements within your space. Besides furnishings by means of decorative objects, artwork and patterns. More to say about nature and creativity in the next segment 10. Nature and Creative Space: in speaking of concepts like approach avoidance and Prospect Refuge in our last module, we've kind of wandered into a sub discipline of environmental psychology called evolutionary psychology. What's the difference between the two? Well, if the mantra of environmental psychology is, we are where we are that of evolutionary psychology would be. We are who we have always been to understand what I mean. Consider these five points 50.1. We are members of the species Homo SAPIENs. Homo SAPIENs first appeared on the African savanna about 200,000 years ago. Point to Homo SAPIENs were clearly bio engineered to survive and thrive in a purely natural environment. There being no other kind 0.3, if you take all the time since hominids came into being, until now, about 99% of that time has been spent in natural environments. 0.4 evolution moves very, very, very slowly, which leads to 0.5. Our brains simply haven't had time to catch up to the fact that people in the industrialized world now spend 90% of their time in indoor environments, where nature's often minimised, if not altogether, absence. This lag would explain why we experience behavioral anomalies like tensing up because our back is to a space or because we see a piece of straight edge furniture some of our brain thinks were still roaming the savannah It ziff for living space age lives with stone age brains. Being aware of these disconnects between our rational and intuitive Selves can help us optimize creative space by informing various design decisions we make, such as had to best arrange furniture and which shapes to favor in idea spaces. But to treat the problem incrementally would be to miss the larger implications of evolutionary psychology, which is that our whole way of thinking and being remains rooted in the natural world and that the more we deprive ourselves of nature based stimuli, the more we undermine our own mental and physical well being and by extension, our creativity. We can no more expect to thrive in a purely mechanistic environment than we can expect the fish to thrive out of water. Granted, that sounds bad, but what do we do about it? Obviously, we're not going back to living in caves and trees. One possible solution is to pursue a strategy for shaping the built environment known as bio Filic design by a Filic design is a strategy for restoring our connection to our natural habitat by emulating and re integrating nature into the built environment. There are a number of techniques you can implement to achieve this objective, for example, by opening up the interior to the outdoors by means of doors, windows, skylights and other perforations in the building envelope, allowing natural light to enter, utilizing naturally sourced and finish materials. And construction and decor such as wood, stone and fibers or substitutes that emulate them, such as laminate, synthetic stone and faux finishes incorporating naturally occurring sounds and smells like falling water and floral sense. Replicating nature based motifs and artwork and decorative patterns like the botanic motifs on the window shade and the figures in the tile backsplash mimicking the structural systems , proportions and principles embodied in nature, maintaining animal as well as plant life in and around the space. And as documented in a 2000 and 12 experiment that prime subjects with the color green prior to undertaking creative problem solving, exercise is building your palate around the hue. Most emblematic of organic growth. Green rest assured this is no pie in the sky stuff. To cite one bit of data, It's been found that merely adding plans to a workplace setting boosted creative output among staffers from 15th of 40%. Scientists have proposed several theories that might explain the mechanics behind Bio Filic design. One, proposed by Roger S. Elrich, is Cold Stress Reduction Theory, or SRT. SRT suggests that our stress levels go down when we see elements of nature because they signal a life sustaining environment, a piece of information that pleases our survival obsessed, crave cave people. Brains no end. Lower stress, in turn, is good for our health, which is why the patients who could see foliage from their beds and Paley Hospital had better outcomes than their nature deprived neighbors down the hall. Have you? As you've heard me say, lower stress leads to improved ideation, a relaxed mind being a creative mind. Another point has to do with I've movement or the lack that rough. Let me explain. Imagine you're looking at a blank wall finished in She Rock, which is an industrially manufactured product that has a uniformly smooth surface after its painted What is your I do after a moment or two it probably comes to arrest somewhere straight ahead, there being nothing to draw your attention anywhere else in particular. Now, let's say instead of sheet rock, the Wallace, clad in a naturally finished would had is your I act. Now it bounces all over the place from left to right and back again. Drawn by the highly variegated appearance of the swirling and non repetitive grain patterns . This rapid back and forth motion of the I is called C. Caddick eye movement, Socratic eye movement of something interesting to our brain. When her eye looks to the left, the right hemisphere of our brain is activated. When it looks to the right, the Left Hemisphere lights up effect of moving the I back and forth strengthens the connection between the two hemispheres by forging new neural pathways between them. Why is this relevant to creativity? Because of what I said earlier about the creative process, Really, In telling both cognitive styles, the generative diverge in phase and the analytical con virgin phase working in tandem with each other, the more you exercise both halves of your brain, the thinking goes, the more consummate a creative you will be. I think it is. This dual nature of the creative process that Ernest Hemingway is famously, although inaccurately said to have captured in this witty piece of advice to authors write drunk at its sober of a more serious nature is the discovery that only happened a few years ago when scientists discovered that Einstein's corpus callosum, which is the brain part that runs right down the middle and bridges the two hemispheres of our brains, was unusually large. That's illuminating when you think about Einstein is the consummate creative. Here's someone clearly capable of exceptionally complex analytical thought, a new claim that concepts came to him first and pictures and only later in words and symbols that he could think both metaphorically and analytically, visually and numerically and had a large corpus callosum. I would suggest that we do ourselves good when our creative space stimulates the I threw a lively play of detail, texture, inform time to move to the second of our three creativity tactics, groups 11. Tactics Group 2: Lighting: I shared this 1984 portrait of a young Steve Jobs in his California home by way of introducing our second group of creativity tactics. These having to do with the ambiance of space primes in this category are distinguished from those in the first group. By being more diffuse and less tangible, we'll start with lighting in more specifically lighting levels. What we want to know is first of lighting influence, creative output and, if so, has a specific level of brightness been calculated for peak idea generation to cut right to the chase. The answers are yes, and 150 Lux to put the figure of 150 lux in perspective. The recommended minimum for reading is 300 locks for general office lighting 500 for a supermarket of 1000. Lux daylight registers at a whole other order of magnitude, running anywhere from 10,000 lux under an overcast sky to as high as 100,000 lux in bright sun. By most measures, then 150 Lux is pretty darn dim. Why so dark? Well, one possibility takes us back once more to my thesis about the relationship between physical and ideas. Space, as you can see in the jobs photo wall shrouded in murkiness, appear less distinct than when normally lighted and therefore weaker and conveying the impression of enclosing space. With that dissolution of visible enclosure comes a greater openness of mind and enhanced idea flow. An alternative explanation for the low figure stems from our visual and cognitive responses to differing levels of light. Needless to say, we see much more detail under bright light than dim, and only that, but it's the well lit side of the image that grabs our attention. First, prompting are I to zoom in on the details without any conscious intent on our part. We're also able to very quickly figure out what's in the photograph by drawing on knowledge about the world we already holding her head. It's a whole different story. With right half shrouded in darkness, it's tough to make it out. The parts having become too indistinct, too non specific, too abstract to be processes anything other than simplified shapes and tones. In that sense, the right hand image resembles a work of non representational art that asked to be taken in from a distance with broad sweeps of the I rather than up close. What's more, with far fewer bits of information coming into our brain on the right, vs the left and with nothing in the external world to relate them to our mind has a tendency to turn inward on itself. Toe activate its objective powers of imagination to transform what little we can see into whatever weak, choose to see all of which aligns very neatly with my description of our two cognitive styles. Low, like being consistent with creative cognition. Bright light with analytic processing. There's an interesting confluence to be found between the cognitive effects caused by variable lighting levels and those derived from physical distancing. What links them is information when our brain receives large amounts of information, as it does when we see things under bright lights, or as I talked about previously in exploring construe all level theory up close, then our brains tend to shift in voluntarily into an analytic mode when information is scant as it is when the objects of our attention, or too far away to dissect them in detail or when lights are low. Then we're prompted to assume a creative frame of mind now. Obviously, a lot of creative work can be hard to do if you can't see much. But there are a few situations where you can exploit the research to good advantage. One is to dim the lights while you're taking a bath or shower activities. You can perform nearly with your eyes closed under normal circumstances, so often have you done them and so simple there. Mechanics. I especially recommend applying this tactic for times you're in early stage brainstorming mode or when you're trying to break a creative logjam. Remember what I said earlier about idea Capture, though it's critical that you capture any insights that bubble to the surface, otherwise, chances are good you'll lose them by the time you tavel off. That could be tricky for those of you who normally jot down their thoughts in a notebook, smartphone or computer. Since none of these products particularly enjoy getting wet solution. Get yourself a waterproof pad and pencil set. They work superbly, as I've discovered from myself. Plus, they're inexpensive and available in a variety of formats, from tear off pads that adhere to walls with suction cups, the pocket size spiral and bound notebooks. You'll never lose a great idea again. Two more tactics from this group are next 12. Sound and Orderliness: from lighting We Segway to the second tactic in the ambience category. Sound. Here's a question for you. What do you think is the optimal sound level for doing creative work? If you're like many people, you'll answer none. Zero zip. I mean, who wouldn't enjoy quiet when they're trying to come up with fresh solutions to challenging problems? Actually, according to the data, quite a few people, most of us. It turns at our at our creative best when subjected to background noise of around 70 decibels about what you'll hear in your favorite coffee shop on a moderately busy day. Kind of like this. No wonder creative types spend so much time in them, and if they're not there, you might find them in the shower where the sound of running water clock cnet you guessed it about 70 decibels. A possible explanation for the finding. Having a little bit of background noise takes just enough edge off our concentration to nudges toward a less linear, mawr de focused attention mode with total quiet the dangers that you become too self aware of being conscious and therefore prone to slip into an analytical mindset. Two. Caveats to keep in mind here. The first is that there's good sound distraction, and there's bad sound distraction. Unintelligible noises like coffee shop chatter, can bolster creative performance because they don't draw our attention to them. Same with sounds like crashing ocean waves, rainfall, chirping, crickets and the like. That's what makes them background noise. On the other hand, content specific inputs like a one sided phone conversation that you're forced to listen to can diminish idea generation because it's nearly impossible not to focus your attention on what you're hearing now. Sound is one factor where certain home environments can be at a disadvantage compared to other settings. Unless you happen to live in a bustling urban center. Possible solutions to the problem of unwanted quiet. Installing a water feature, getting yourself, ah, house on the ocean or, much cheaper downloading an app that can generate every white noise you can imagine. Like the recorded soundtrack you just heard of coffee shop chatter as well as rain crickets and rustling leaves. Another affordable option is to listen to music. If you go that route, it's generally recommended you play instrumental pieces without lyrics. They should also be pieces that are familiar to you and that you enjoy. The objective is to keep the music in the background of your consciousness without diverting too much of your attentional bandwidth away from your creative work. Another suggestion is that you choose pieces temperamentally suited to the nature of the task at hand. Try upbeat tunes for composing content with a lot of drama and energy, more subdued works for quieter passages and everything in between. One exception to these practices is when you play music at the start of a creative session in order to get pumped up or in the right mood before you dive in. In that event, you're welcome play. Whatever music suits the purpose, including songs with lyrics, new pieces you're unfamiliar with, even work that's mentally challenging. I especially recommend music that gets you moving, increased blood flow and physical locomotion being powerful drivers of creativity. Now perhaps you're saying to yourself, but I can't stand hearing anything when I'm working. And of course, you wouldn't be wrong. It's simply that we humans vary widely in our tolerances for noise. Introverts like the author Susan Cain, for instance, really do thrive under noiseless conditions. So did French novelist Marcel Proust, a notorious audio foe. Bob Proofs went to great lengths to muffle noise in his Parisian apartment, lining the walls of the room where he wrote with sound absorbing cork, bolting shut the French doors overlooking the street and covering them in heavy, sound, absorbing drapes. And still, that wasn't enough. He wore earplugs, too. Franz Kafka was of a similar bent. He once described his craving for site lands in his signature surreal style by saving. And I quote, I need solitude for my writing, not like a hermit. That wouldn't be enough, but like a dead man, unquote. Sadly, by the time he got his wish, it was too late to do anything about it. Meanwhile, at the extreme opposite end of the spectrum are the extroverts who positively revel in the din of life. It's the large majority of people who reside between these two poles, who peek at 70 decibels, and that raises an important point about scientifically derived findings and the recommendations that grow out of them. They're not about the individual, but about the crowd. That's why researchers use allies, groups of subjects for their work. They're trying to ascertain how people on the whole will react to environmental cues with the understanding that known Compper addict. How this or that individual respond. You want to be mindful of this distinction when it comes to some of the techniques in this course, rather than reject anything out of hand as counterintuitive or contrary to old habits, give yourself a chance to test it out for a while before deciding. You might be surprised at what you find. That said, certain personality traits are ingrained and unlikely to change. Your position on the introvert extroverts scale is one of them. Another is your attitude toward Miss Ah full the topics I cover when I give talks and seminars. This is probably the issue people ask about most often, I suspect that everyone's hoping to hear that they're doing the right thing by keeping their space either messy or neat, whichever they prefer. So here's the good news. According to the data, it's hard to go wrong either way. As long as you don't go overboard. Let's start with the messy types. In 2013 a research team at the University of Minnesota discovered that people brainstorming around an unkempt table turned out a greater quantity of original ideas than people seated at a tidy one and quicker to why would this be? The researchers suggested that the influence of cultural norms implies a connection between neatness and virtue. You know the old saying that cleanliness is next to godliness, since creativity by definition subverts convention, they reasoned, it follows that a dissembled environment would inspire unorthodox thinking. I would add a second possibility, since creativity is a messy, nonlinear process. By definition, it's equally plausible that the site of a disorganized work surface might have subconsciously prime subjects to mimic the state of their environment. In their thinking, I wouldn't start throwing reams of confetti across your desk just yet, though there are loads of studies showing that highly disordered environments can disrupt creativity by causing serious mental and physical health issues, including anxiety, depression, even cancers and just to show that not every creative is this lovingly sort. There have been plenty of high achievers in the tighty camp among the meat ST Laurent, Eleanor Roosevelt and, of course, the present day queen of Clean Marie condo. For these folks, I think the urge to feel in control of one surrounding supersedes everything else and while being in control might seem at first and conflict with the freewheeling, an unconstrained nature of creativity actually go hand in hand. Because if you want to be creative, you need to feel that you have agency, that you have the freedom to act autonomously the moment you sense that something else is controlling you. Whether it's your possessions or the rules of your boss, that feeling of freedom can wither along with a lot of your creative will. One last comment before we move on, did you happen to notice the enormous contrast between the chaotic state of author Will Self's desk and the manically organized rid of post its and documents on his working wall? I wanted to make sure you did, because it's a wonderful representation of the dual nature of the human mind. We keep talking about rational ordered information driven on one side, unfettered, uninhibited and helter skelter on the other. Coming up the Third and Final Tactics group 13. Tactics Group 3: Actions: Finally, in our third group, we're going to look at things you can do that, researchers have discovered, will stimulate idea formation. The value of the tactics in this category is that knowing what they are means you can plan the kinds of spaces in your home that will facilitate and encourage your doing them. So let me run through some of these behaviors on screen, starting with reading for knowledge and pleasure. Taking a walk, practicing yoga and meditation, making things by hand, exercising, sleeping and napping, taking a shower or bath, looking at a fire or a picture of one playing, cooking, eating certain foods, drinking in very prescribed limits. Of course. Listening to or playing music journaling something. No doubt many of you practice already getting with your pet, pursuing a pastime or hobby and, yes, even doing the laundry two points to make here. First, you'll notice that all of the activities I've just cited are associated with domestic life . Yet another reason why statistically, we get more creative ideas at home than in any other setting, including the workplace. And second, you'll also notice that they have virtually nothing to do with creative problem solving I mean doing the laundry, please. And yet that little fact is precisely what leads to a paradox of creativity, namely, that one of the best ways to generate fresh solutions to creative problems is to stop trying. Now, how can that possibly be? Well, let me explain by asking you to visualize thinking as a seesaw at one end of the see Saw is conscious. Thinking at the other end is unconscious thinking or, if you like, label them focused attention on the left and D focused attention on the right, or even executive functioning on the left and default mode network on the right, the two things about Season one. They have a finite length, as do our brains in the sense that we have a finite amount of mental bandwidth to draw from in performing our mental and physical functions, Thinking is therefore a zero sum game. The second thing about seesaws is that they go up and down, as does our mental version. Depending on the nature of the task or activity were engaged in one or the other mode of mental processing is going to consume the greater part of the available processing power, so For example, let's say you're skiing down a very steep slope on a mountain. Or maybe you're doing your taxes. What's the sea so going to do in those cases? Well, the conscious and is going to go way up because your attention is completely and intensely focused on what you're doing. By the same token, your executive functioning capabilities are running on all cylinders as you strive to exert maximum control over your actions in the case of skiing, because you don't kill yourself and in the case of taxes, because you don't want to pay any more than you have to, and you certainly don't want to get audited by mistakenly paying less than you have to. That leaves very little band with remaining for back of mine ruminations. So bad end of the see saw goes way down Next, picture herself, taking a shower. What does your see saw do now? It goes in the other direction, the conscious and dropping sharply. The unconscious side lifted way up. Why is that? Because you've taken so many showers in your lifetime that it's become habitual automatic behavior that you can do literally with your eyes closed without having to concentrate or think about what you're doing at all. Which means your unconscious mind, which was somewhat shunted into the background while you were skiing or doing your taxes, is now allocated the lion's share of your mental band with. And because creative ideas are believed to be born just at or below the threshold of consciousness, and because our conscious minds are like giant addicts storing our memories, bits of information and past thoughts and a chaotic jumble, it's when released, trying to be creative, that ideas are often most likely to burst out of them and into the open. Next. Why it's critical for your writing that you practice two important regiments. 14. Regimens of Space and Time: as vital as the intermittent brain bursts of the sort you experience in the shower or on a walk are for feeding your idea bank. Owing to their small scale, these idea bits can never amount to much more than fragments of a much larger tapestry to produce work with enough heft that it can stand on its own demands. A sustained effort, as you probably already know, and to sustain such an effort requires discipline. You can help your chances of achieving a rigorous work regimen by simultaneously developing a spatial regimen by spatial regimen. I mean designating a place where you go to do you work consistently, however often and for however long you're able to, that space could be a dedicated room, like the luxurious English country home libraries occupied by Charles Deqin and Charles Darwin. Or it could be a chair at the end of your dining table. Granger is less the issue than continuity of place. Why would committing to a single setting for the bulk of your creative work jumpstart idea flow call for a moment the famous experiment with Pavlov's dogs? You know, the one where the Russian scientist rang a bell every time he fed his canine friends to the point where he merely had to ring the bell to start the animal salivating before the food even appeared. Well, we're a little like Pavlov's dogs and that we, too, will develop an automatic association between behavior and sensory stimulus. If the stimulus is repeated often enough on Lee instead of drooling over some imaginary food, our response will take the form of unconsciously shifting into a creative mindset. The moment we step into the appointed space, scientists have turned this learning mechanism classical conditioning. They've also identified a part of the brain called the hippocampus, as a possible source of our space recognition. Interestingly, the hippocampus is also believed to play a role in memory, put place and memory together, and it leads you to a second type of regimen that of time. The concept here is that you come to your creative space on the same days and at the same times of day or night, week in and week out. In order to further strengthen the mental associations forge between creativity in place, the chart you're seeing on screen reconstructs the daily work practices of about two dozen major creative figures, including a healthy number of writers. Two things quickly become apparent. First, the times of day given over to creative pursuits varies from one figure to the next. And two. There's only one line given to each figure, reflecting the fact that everybody stuck toe whatever schedule they laid down for themselves. Here, by the way, are Dickins and Darwin. You can see from the light green boxes that Dickens did his writing from nine in the morning, straight through till early afternoon. After that, he was done. Darwin schedule was much more varied, interposing creative periods in between non creative times. Lots. Well, in tonight, neither approach is right or wrong there, based on what worked for the individual and for everyone is trying to write while holding down a day job. Consider taking a page from Franz Kafka, who labored all through the night before catching a few winks ahead of going to his day job as an insurance executive and then again, given the hallucinatory character of Hiss fiction, maybe not. Yes, a creative idea can leap out at you at any moment, but if you want to build a really body of work, be rigorous about when you practice your craft As the author, W. Somerset Mom one said, Hi, Right on Lee when inspiration strikes. Fortunately, it strikes every morning at nine o'clock sharp. The final course segment is next. 15. Case Study and Next Steps: I'd like to close out this course with a case study of an actual creative space that appears in my book. As you can see, it takes the form of a pretty modest sized alcove, probably measuring about four feet wide by 2 to 3 feet deep. It might have been a storage closet that someone converted into a death space. Or maybe it was planned this way from the start. I don't know for sure, but I do know that it packs a lot into a small area, which is one of the reasons I chose it for a case study. Let's begin by analyzing the constraints the designer of this space had to contend with and then see how he or she overcame them. By drawing on some of the techniques you've learned about in this course, I would say they were initially four main limitations. The first was its small size that was going to make a challenging to achieve the sense of openness and spatial expansiveness I talked about early on is being closely linked to a creative mindset. The second was the total lack of any openings in the alcove, which made the problem of spatial constraints that much more severe. The third was orientation. By being nestled into a Nalco, the user is automatically compelled to sit with his or her back to the adjoining space, raising a conflict with the instinct to maintain prospect Refuge And the fourth constraint was budget. True. At first glance, this space looks rather rich, what with the built ins, the abundance of decoration, the nicely finished woods on the casing and flooring and the very professional looking paint job on the inside walls. And that was certainly my initial impression. But then I looked a little closer and thought a little more, eventually deciding this wasn't entirely the case. For one thing, a person with really deep pockets but probably not have been limited to such a confined space For another. When you examine the decorative objects, none of them turned out to be a particular expensive. In fact, they could be just good flea market finds. They do reflect someone with a pretty good I end the ability to combine things in pleasing arrangements, but that's a matter of skill, not cost. The final giveaway was the molded plastic chair, which might well have come out of a Nike, a cataloger other source for affordable design. Okay, so those with limitations. What I like about this space is how its creator address them to make something that ultimately works both practically and in terms of design psychology. Point number one. Notice how the designer compensated for the shallow depth of the alcove by painting the backs and sides. Ah, beautiful blue. A recessive color that you remember from an earlier segment has the effect of optically deepening space, relieving the sense of compression that might otherwise negatively impact on the user Point to notice the abundant of artwork, starting with the botanic prince above the top shelf and continuing down with smaller pieces scattered about including a few small landscapes. Not only does the presence of creative work products stimulate creativity in and of itself , but the fact that it all references nature leads us 2.3 and adept use of bio filic design elements. Besides the artwork, these include several small flower groupings, both artificial and real, a glass cylinder filled with river rock, a small busts and the clear finished wood flooring in trim 0.4. Assuming at least some of the flowers air riel, most likely the ones on the desk. We could add the positive stimulant of sent to the list of bio Filic elements employed 0.5 . The presence of books among the shelf suggests that this person is a reader. I probably don't need to tell you that reading is good for creativity in that it both expand your knowledge base and compels you to develop a flexible outlook by seeing the world from more than just your own perspective. 0.6. By complexity, I mean the fact that there's a lot for the eye to see a lot for it to bounce around on. As you now know, C. Caddick eye movement fosters whole brain thinking by stimulating interaction between the brains hemispheres 0.7 A few years ago, researchers scanned people's brains while they looked at images of paintings or listen to music that they had judged earlier to be either beautiful or ugly. What the researchers found was that the parts of the brain associated with reward and pleasure lit up when people experience the beautiful inputs, while the ugly ones activated areas associate ID with fear. As with other triggers, positive emotional responses generally foster creativity. Negative one. Suppress it. All of which is to say, beauty is not just a thin veneer to be laid over physical space. Nor is it necessarily a commodity that Onley the affluent can afford. Rather, it's something integral to our physical and mental well being, including our capacity for creativity. And remember, making your space is appealing to yourself as possible will make you want to spend more time in it. And the more time you're in it, the more you're likely to accomplish. And finally 0.8 commitment in the sense of having a place to which you come again and again to do your work and in which you've invested the time and resource is equal to your commitment to the creative life. I hope you found this course helpful and maybe even inspiring. If so, consider these possible next steps. First, evaluate your existing creative space. Is it helping hindering? Are having no effect on your writing? If you think there's room for improvement, analyze it in its current configuration. In terms of the techniques and concepts you've learned about in the course, consider altering one or more aspects of the space to more closely align it with what you now know and take it out for a road test. See how you like it. Keep the change. Is trying new ones explore other avenues? I want to dig still deeper into the psychology of creative space. One option is to check out my website donald ratner dot com. There you'll find lots of resource is from books to degree programmes, videos to podcasts, including quite a few. Where I've been the on air guest. And speaking of books, I invite you to get a copy of mine. It goes into all the science back techniques you've learned about in the course and a whole bunch more. It also has over 200 high quality photographs of great creative spaces from some of the most talented people around. With that, I'll leave you with a little background music, crediting for the work you've seen throughout the course in my thanks to you for joining me so