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Feeling stuck at work? This brief video offers a helpful tip to overcome creative blocks and spark new ideas.
It’s Monday afternoon, and perhaps that second cup of coffee isn’t quite firing up your brain as you had hoped (though according to a Harvard neuroscientist, maybe another three would help).
When you find yourself facing a creative block, this video from New York Magazine‘s Science of Us suggests entering “tinker mode.” Research indicates that people often don’t devote enough time to this stage of creative problem-solving. The answer? Keep working at it. The longer you engage with a problem, the more likely you are to come up with innovative solutions.
Tinkering is essential—the brain possesses what science writer Sharon Begley describes as “leaky filters.” When given sufficient time, various ideas can combine to create something new—this is the heart of creativity. “Unless you undergo a personality or brain change, you can enhance your natural creativity simply by persisting.”
“Original ideas tend to be distant,” believes Mark Runco, a creativity studies professor at the University of Georgia and founder of the Creativity Research Journal. This means that the first ten uses of string that come to mind are often typical, but if you push beyond that, the next ten could be much more imaginative.
The takeaway? When it comes to creative blocks, original ideas often arise later in the creative journey. Therefore, we should give ourselves the time and environment needed to discover these “distant” ideas—allowing our leaky filters to merge concepts that haven’t previously interacted and create something unique.
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