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This is the art of charm.
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Learn everything you need to know to crush it in business, love, and life.
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Today we re talking with my friend Scott Barry Kaufman, author of Wired to Create.
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We re gonna talk about creativity, what it is according to neuroscience, some of the science behind creativity, how creative people have messy minds, what creative thinking actually is, and how to hone your creativity by being open to new experiences, taking something called the outsider s mindset, and other ways to actually hone in on creativity, both in your unconscious mind and in the flow state.
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So enjoy this one with Scott Barry Kaufman, and welcome.
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to The Art of Charm.
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I m Jordan Harbinger.
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The Art of Charm brings together the best thought leaders, teachers, and exceptional individuals to teach you how to be a top performer in life, love, and at work.
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Imagine having a mix of experienced mentors teaching you their expertise, packing decades of research, testing, and tough lessons into a curriculum.
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We may not have all the answers, but we definitely have all the questions.
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Make sure to stay up to date with The Art of Charm and get some great stuff that we can t share on the show or don t share on the show by signing up at theartofcharm.com.
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We ll email you our Fundamentals Toolkit that covers topics like body language, nonverbal communication, persuasion, business networking, public speaking, negotiation, and a whole lot more.
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And I m doing regular weekly videos with drills and exercises to help you level up every single week.
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We ve got our live programs running in Los Angeles.
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Get in touch.
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I m Jordan at theartofcharm.com.
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You ll hear more about those later in the show.
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And I also want to encourage you to join our Social Capital Challenge.
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at theartofcharm.com slash challenge or text charmed to 33444.
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This challenge is about improving your networking and connection skills and habits and inspiring those around you to develop a personal and professional relationship with you.
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This will make you a better networker, it will make you a better connector, and if you want to have some accountability, invite your friends as well.
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That s theartofcharm.com slash challenge or have them text charmed to 33444 so they can join the challenge too.
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Alright, here s Scott Barry Kaufman.
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Tell us what you do in one sentence.
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I m a scientist who studies imagination and creativity, because that s what I do.
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You ve published numerous books.
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Would you say that Seligman is your mentor, or is he just like your supervisor?
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He s technically my boss.
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Your boss, and he s your boss, right.
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But he s my colleague as well.
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We run the Imagination Institute together.
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Anything called the Imagination Institute sounds pretty badass.
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Tell us about what that entails and what you learn and teach over there.
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It does sound badass, that s true.
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It makes me think of the Epcot Center ride, Journey into Imagination.
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It was actually called the Imagination Institute.
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It was one of my dreams growing up as a kid to be that figgy dinosaur.
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The Imagination Institute is doing a couple of things.
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One main thing that we re doing is we re giving money away to researchers to develop the new IQ, the Imagination Quotient.
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We re giving $3 million to researchers to tackle it from different aspects.
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Some are going to look at illumination, some are going to look at virtual reality environments.
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how we can create new worlds, and we re gonna have some educators trying to see how we can hold schools accountable for imagination, so it s not always the students  fault.
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So lots of different kinds of things.
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The other thing we re doing is I m trying to find 50 of the most imaginative people on this planet and study them.
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bring them to Philly and scan their brains and give them tests and spend two days discussing their creative process.
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And we re gonna be looking through lots of different domains from like physics to music to medicine to comedy improv to video game design, things like that.
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Awesome, how are you even defining imaginative?
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You know, I see imagination as being able to envision new worlds, new realities that don t currently exist.
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And people differ in their ability
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to imagine things and have this sort of great vision and foresight.
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Imagination s a really important part of creativity.
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It s not all there is to creativity, but it s a really important part of creativity.
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I imagine what you guys do is highly imaginative yourselves and just coming up with a new way of, like a niche for yourself.
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I imagine it s a very crowded niche that you re in and you guys have really become the forefront of this new movement, so.
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Let me know when you want to scan my brain in Philly then, bro.
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Would you want your brain scanned?
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Yeah, why not?
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I don t know, it sounds a little scary, but anything for science.
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I don t know, I like that attitude.
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Why is creativity important in the first place?
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Your new book, Wired to Create, you go through the 10 habits of highly creative people, which I want to hear about, but why is creativity important at all?
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Because a lot of times I think when people think of creativity, maybe I m just the only one, but I m thinking like little kid, finger paints.
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You know, a lot of people say things like kids are naturally creative and then we kill their creativity through standardized testing and everything like that.
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But yeah, creativity is more than just coming up, just more than just playing or coming up with novel crazy ideas.
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It really is also really figuring out exactly what is novel, how it could be practical, how it could be
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You have to have a really good sense of your audience.
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You have to know, well, is this going to resonate well with my audience?
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Are they going to find this meaningful at all?
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So it often does also involve that meaningful part of it.
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But really, creativity, as we talk about in the book, is really a way of being.
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It s like a lifestyle that you can live.
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And we talk about these different habits that creative people tend to do these things frequently.
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Do you consider yourself a creative person?
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No, not really.
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But I ve talked to a lot of people that talk about creativity, and they disagree with me on that.
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I think the reason is because, like I said, when I think creative, I think of people that draw, which I can t do, paint, which I can t do, build things, which I don t do.
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Creating a talk show, I m just like, whatever, I m just talking with people, and it gets recorded, and then engineers go through it and make it sound good.
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but this is just a conversation.
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This is the same type of conversation that I would be having in a restaurant only there s not other loud noises nearby and we re focused on a certain topic or two.
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I would say you re more creative than you realize because I remember our last conversation we did for your podcast.
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I remember thinking how spontaneous you were and how funny you were and basically you came up with an analogy, a funny analogy to compare everything I said to something completely absurd
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And that to me is part and parcel of creativity.
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I will say that when it comes to analogies, I can be quite absurd, but I will say that they do end up illustrating things that people write in all the time about absurd analogies being why they remember a certain concept.
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So I will accept that one.
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However, also applying the label of creative to yourself is somehow super D-bag-ish.
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Right, it s kind of just like, I m very creative.
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Like, dude, don t take yourself too seriously.
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That s kind of what I think.
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If anybody ever said that around me, I would probably be like, well, we certainly know who has a high opinion of themselves, don t we?
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I appreciate that, I appreciate that.
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But there are, you know, a lot of people that resonate with this book because creativity is part of their identity, at least.
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You don t mind other things being part of your identity, right?
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I mean, why are some things more D-bag-ish than others?
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I don t know, maybe it s a little self-congratulatory.
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To be like, I m creative.
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Yeah, it s also like gifted, right?
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And that s another topic I ve covered in the past.
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If someone comes up to you and they say I m gifted, that probably is not gonna go down well.
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Right, like those kids got beat up the first time they said that and they never said it again.
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and they deserved it.
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Right, exactly.
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I m just kidding.
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Yeah, poking like somebody who got beat up for being too honest as a kid, Scott Barry Kaufman.
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I got beat up for being considered stupid.
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Really?
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That s so funny because you re a freaking scientist working with a world-renowned scientist and people thought you were stupid.
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I think it s a big part why I m an advocate for creativity, though, because as a kid, what I certainly was was different, like an outsider sort of mindset.
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Being put in special ed kind of does give you this outsider s mindset, and I really did feel as though I wanted to challenge the system, I wanted to challenge assumptions, and all the kids around me, I won t say all of them, but a lot of them I thought were just, who got these labels like ADHD and behavioral problems, I was like,
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People are actually really creative.
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And so I think early on in my life, I got this purpose as well to extol the merits of creative thinkers.
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Why did you start studying creativity in the first place?
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I mean, it seems totally random.
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Is it because that you knew you were gifted even though you had a learning disability?
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So you just thought, look, there s something that doesn t match here.
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You got interested in that?
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Or was this something that occurred later in your life?
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I don t think it really crystallized until later in my life when I was reading the science of this stuff and realizing there s a whole field of investigation where we can actually study the creative mind.
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I don t know, I think I really resonated with that level of detail, that level of discovery.
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and I ve always was a really curious kid, never felt as though curiosity was appreciated.
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I guess a lot of the things that the way I was and the way that a lot of my friends were, I just don t feel like those characteristics were appreciated in such a one-size-fits-all school.
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got diagnosed as an adult with quote unquote ADHD and I ll tell you right now, it is the biggest asset because I can focus and switch focus really quickly whereas I ve done tests as well because I was super curious about it.
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I can switch focus really quickly and I can stay focused on things for a long time which is actually very useful when running a small business and you have to do a ton of different things.
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I m not saying multitasking.
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I don t believe that that s really something most people can do, and the science agrees with me on that.
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But I can switch focus, and I can focus intently on things, and then I, of course, switch to something else, aka the whole ADHD type thing.
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But a lot of creative people that I know are the same way.
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And a lot of the people who are really, really good students and fit into the one-size-fits-all school really, really well, they later went on to do things that are not things that I would be cut out for at all.
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But I don t think they would be cut out to do what I do either.
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For sure, do you get bored easily?
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Oh gosh, yeah, I get bored on vacation when I m supposed to be relaxing and I start working.
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And that s part workaholism, but that s part just, okay, I gotta do something.
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We re sitting here on a beach, how long are we gonna be here?
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I can t, you know what I mean?
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I literally say things like that when we re on vacation.
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So vacations now have to have a lot of activities, otherwise I go nuts.
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Yeah, you seem to be the kind of person to me that really likes adventures.
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Yeah, when I was younger, when I finally did get to travel alone, I was never like, I would go to these youth hostels and be backpacking, and there d be people like, I m just gonna go to this cafe, or go to this castle, and then I m gonna read in there, and hang out all day, and I m like, no.
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I m gonna take a boat here, and then I m gonna go do this, and then I m gonna check out this place, and I m gonna come back, and I m staying up late, and I would basically just pass out at night, wake up in the morning, and do it all over again.
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Don t get me wrong, I wish I was satisfied with less activity, but I don t know if that s possible for me.
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You probably will when you get older.
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Yeah, it is easier as I get older, that s for sure.
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And I think kids will probably wear me out, and then I ll wish for solitude.
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But until that happens.
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What s the science of creativity?
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Because it seems like such a nebulous, I mean, skill set, is that even the right word?
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Or attribute, or set of attributes, or traits.
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What is creativity?
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I mean, literally, what is it?
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Well, we define it as something that is novel and useful.
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So it has those characteristics.
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But it s hard, right?
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Is it like, you know, pornography in the sense like you know it when you see it sort of thing?
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I don t know if you know it when you see it, but I mean, you know when like someone is being really zany, we know when someone, and that s not necessarily creative, like for instance, like if someone s just hallucinating.
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or like a schizophrenic patient or something, that we don t tend to say that s creative.
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That s part of it, but it s not completely not creativity either.
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It also seems to be something that s original, bringing something into being that never existed before, that was never in existence before, bringing it into being, and having that being that you bring into existence make sense to yourself or others.
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I mean, that s as close as I can get to defining it.
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And we can study it in the laboratory in lots of different ways.
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We don t just use one measure.
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We try to coordinate lots of different measures and see if they all kind of agree with each other.
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And we do find they do agree with each other to a large extent.
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So people who say that creativity is a central part of their identity also tend to be higher creative achievers.
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They tend to be higher on tests of divergent thinking.
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So if I ask you, and I bet you re amazing at divergent thinking tests,
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Yeah, what is that?
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I don t even know what that is.
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Let me ask you a question.
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Imagine if you could become invisible at will.
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Give me three implications of that right now.
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Right now, if I could become invisible at will?
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Oh my gosh.
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I think about this all the time.
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Is that weird?
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One thing that I would do is I would
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This is so not what everybody else is thinking.
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I would go to meetings with guys like Elon Musk and Richard Branson, and I would hear how they talk, what they re talking about, stuff like that.
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Of course, I would also go to extremes and be like in Kim Jong-un s palace, listening to what that guy s doing.
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Everything from historical, crazy, out-of-this-world type of figures and sort of
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not necessarily spying on them, but definitely figuring out how their minds work, I would do that.
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I think if you asked me this in high school, the answer would have been totally different, but those are the first two, let s see.
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Invisible at will, I think I honestly, I would probably go and listen to a lot of interactions between different people, not just the Elon Musks and the Kim Jong-uns,
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but even just normal people in their own private lives and see what they were really thinking when they were at their most honest.
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Because that s how I kind of got started with Art of Charm in the first place, because I was 13 years old and I figured out a little bit of wiretapping stuff and I was listening to a neighbor who, I hope the statute of limitations is up on this,
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and he was getting a divorce, and I heard him talking to his would-be ex-wife, and he was one person talking to his friends, he was another person talking with his sister, he was crying on the phone, talking with his mom, he was all remorseful and upset.
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I just saw the different multitudes of personalities that people have, and the different sides of people that exist in the same person, and that was what was fascinating.
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And that s kind of like dot, dot, dot, art of charm, right?
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That s what got me interested in human behavior in the first place.
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Amazing, you re 13.
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That s what we call in the book a crystallizing experience.
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We actually have a whole chapter on passion and you find a lot of people have those kinds of origin stories.
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By the way, your diversion thinking answers were great.
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Do you want me to give you some examples of what some of our participants said that were rated very highly?
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Yeah.
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So very shy people would have sex while being invisible.
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You could see only beautiful people on the beaches.
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Cops would wear infrared goggles.
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Paparazzi would be more effective.
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You could escape a bad date.
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I really like that one.
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And it would be harder to play hide and seek.
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Oh, this is if everyone could become invisible at will.
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Yes.
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Oh, I thought you just meant me only.
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Oh, no, no.
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It s like the implications of if that was a thing.
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Oh, see, I totally answered that as if I had that superpower alone.
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Yeah, and that s okay.
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I mean, the way you interpreted it, your answers were very creative.
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I could tell that s what you were thinking, and that makes complete sense.
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It turns out that these kind of divergent thinking questions and others are like, how many uses are there for a paperclip, how many uses are there for a brick?
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And so, I mean, they correlate with creativity like 50 years later.
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Like elementary school students get these tests and they follow these people up 50 years later, and there s some predictability there.
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But it s not all there is to creativity, of course.
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We look at other things.
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We look at how much do people have
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intrinsic interest for something.
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E. Paul Torrence found that the extent to which we have a future image of ourselves, it was a huge predictor.
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Not just do we have it, but we fell in love with a future image of ourselves, was a huge predictor of creativity 50 years later.
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That must have taken forever, by the way, to try to quantify things like creativity.
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I mean, it s so abstract.
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But in order to make it scientific, you gotta figure out some guidelines for it, eh?
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Absolutely, there s still so much we don t know, but there s some stuff that we ve learned at least.
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In your work in the book Wired to Create, I want to say that s where I found this, but creative people have what s called messy minds.
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That probably doesn t surprise anybody, but what does that mean?
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I mean, it sort of fits our stereotype, right?
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When we think of the artist who s always
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always wearing pajamas or like never wears a shirt and is covered in paint and works in a garage, sleeps on like a rug in the corner and then gets up and does his sculpting or whatever.
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That totally makes sense, right?
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Messy minds.
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What does that actually mean though?
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Yeah, I don t mean it in the sense of like having a messy desk or like just being like a messy person.
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Just generally having a totally messy life.
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That s also not totally uncommon, right?
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Among artsy fartsy super creatives.
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No, it s true.
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They do tend to be more disorganized, but that s not exactly what I m talking about.
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I mean in the sense that they reconcile lots of different singularly incompatible traits, and they are okay with embracing these different parts of ourselves that all of us have.
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They can look like a bundle of paradoxes.
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They could make no sense whatsoever.
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I saw a documentary on Steve Jobs.
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I was like, he doesn t make any sense.
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Biographers of Michael Jackson said it s like trying to understand Michael Jackson is trying to understand electricity.
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What you find is that they re very flexible, adaptable.
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They can switch back and forth between sensitivity and resiliency, for instance, or daydreaming and mindfulness, collaboration and the need for a long balance of solitude, things like this.
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They have messy minds in the sense they are much more adaptable in switching back and forth between these things that seem to be segregated in most people.
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What role does openness to something like new experiences, or like you said, oh, you must like a lot of adventure.
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I mean, it s totally true.
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Does that have a role in creative brains or creativity in general?
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Because I feel like a lot of the, when I go to places like North Korea, those trips are loaded with artists, entrepreneurs.
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I mean, it just seems like there s a lot of people who are very similar.
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going on those types of trips and have creative brains.
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SPEAKER_00
You know, when I go there, I take like Neil Strauss and other internet marketer type guys who have, you know, genius copywriters and authors and things like that.
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So that s no coincidence.
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I m glad you brought this up because openness to new experiences is the number one best predictor of creativity.
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It s the most consistent predictor of all the other personality traits.
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We find it encompasses a lot of things.
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It encompasses having intellectual curiosity, appreciation of beauty is a big one, openness to your emotions, both your negative emotions and your positive emotions.
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your openness to fantasy and imagination.
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Also, it s very much being open to literally new experiences that you may fear, but that may cause you personal growth.
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So people who are high in openness to experience also tend to go towards things that they know will make them grow as a person in some way, and that seems to be very much related to better creativity as well.
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Interesting.
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Yeah, I think it seems like for me I like different and varied input because it helps me with different and varied output.
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It s got to be the right kind of input.
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I don t like television or something that s really passive as much as I like trying something new or going someplace new and being surrounded by stuff that s totally different.
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Okay, so we can geek out for a second.
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I talk in the book about two different dopamine pathways.
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Now, you probably are dopamine of the kazoo.
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That probably explains your personality.
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If I measured your genes, I would find your DRD7 repeat allele.
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You don t need to know what that means, but I just guarantee that I d find that in you.
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But what that means is that dopamine is a neurotransmitter that has a lot to do with motivation, but with expectations, positive expectations, you re gonna get some kind of reward.
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Doesn t mean you re gonna enjoy the reward, but that there might be some reward.
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But there are multiple pathways of dopamine.
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One is repetitive kind of rewards.
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Like, do you get really excited by possible mates?
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Do you get really excited by money, by status?
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Social status is another big one.
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So all that stuff, that s one dopamine pathway.
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By the way, you don t have to answer that question.
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That was rhetorical.
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SPEAKER_00
You know, I hate cocaine, I just like the way it smells.
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I have a girlfriend now, but yeah, of course.
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I mean, I feel like most men at some point are, you know, the dopamine hit goes when you see attractive women.
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There s probably a lot of differences.
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I mean, I m sure if you hooked something up to my brain, you d see this like workaholic, semi-addictive personality that s lucky they didn t have any serious problems with that in the past.
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Exactly.
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I also think you re fueled a lot by the second dopamine pathway I was about to get to, and that s not the repetitive rewards I just mentioned.
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Actually, it s a more recent discovery, and it has to do with the reward value you get from consuming information and knowledge and understanding and discovering things.
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And it s a little bit different than the rewards you get from social status, money, sex, food.
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You actually can get rewards from understanding things and seeking out new information.
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So it has to do with the reward value of information.
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That s the second pathway.
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I would predict you re high up the kazoo in both pathways.
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SPEAKER_00
All right, back to Scott Barry Kaufman.
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I ve never even thought about that at all, because I know people that are, quote unquote, like adrenaline junkies and stuff, and there s a lot of stuff I won t try.
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I won t wanna go and do things that look really dangerous.
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I m not gonna get out there in a wingsuit and fly around.
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I mean, that doesn t appeal to me at all.
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but those same people, when I tell them I m going to North Korea, are often like, dude, just race motorcycles, what s wrong with you?
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That place is dangerous.
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So, I think you re right, there just must be different neural pathways for the dopamine, and I just have one that says, North Korea fun, motorcycle racing bad.
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But I also think that in general, there s all these fine distinctions, but in general, dopamine does play a role in breadth of experiences and diversity and seeking out diversity of experiences, just in the most general level.
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And it s very clear that that is what motivates you a lot in life, so it is consistent with that.
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This has turned into a psychoanalyst session here.
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expert craftsmen slash artists, they re often in flow state when they re really kicking butt and creating something amazing.
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And when we have just knock-it-out-of-the-park shows that are just amazing, it s usually, Jason will hit me up and say, man, you re on fire today, or something like that, and it s just flow state.
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And I feel like it s just, everything is clicking, and it seems very subconscious.
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SPEAKER_00
Is there a documented role of the unconscious mind when it comes to creativity?
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SPEAKER_01
There is, I feel like you asked two questions though.
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Because the flow state and the role of flow state for creativity and then there s the question about the unconscious mind.
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I guess I didn t separate the two because I didn t know they were separate.
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I m happy to separate them though.
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Have you heard of Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi?
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I have and I can sort of pronounce his name as well.
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So he s done some work showing that these optimal experiences of life seem to have a similar characteristic.
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It s when we re fully absorbed in an activity, all time recedes in the background.
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We really are one with what we re creating.
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Also, we don t tend to feel anything in that moment.
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We may tend to feel profound experience when we re out of it, but we re just so completely absorbed that we re not being self-critical and anything of that nature.
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And we re seeing from a neurological level that researchers have been rappers in the fMRI machine, and jazz improvised artists, and you see that when they re improvising, that flow state, the brain signature tends to resemble that flow state where the self-critic has gone away, and you re just going at it automatically, and you re not even consciously trying to control it in any way.
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So that s the flow state that does seem to be very conducive to creativity.
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But then also, the influence of the unconscious mind, like intuition and things like that, is always happening underneath the level of awareness.
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The unconscious mind is constantly trying to fill in the pieces of a problem, trying to help us come up with some sort of insight.
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That s why it s often good, when we re trying to come up with insight, to learn as much as possible and put it in your working memory, and then go do something completely different that s relaxing.
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and kind of let that unconscious mind make these connections and come up with this holistic gestalt, which is what we experience in our consciousness as an insight, as a complete thing.
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Now, all our insights are not necessarily good or true, but they all seem to have that common feeling of, aha, there s this complete picture that has been incomplete for a while.
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And our unconscious mind does help us do that, come up with that complete picture.
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SPEAKER_00
All right, so tell us practically how we can apply this.
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SPEAKER_00
So obviously, be open to new experiences.
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SPEAKER_00
Sounds like it s a really important thing to do.
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Trying new things, being intellectually curious, taking a little bit of risk.
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How important is that to enhancing our creativity?
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Or maybe I m jumping the gun here.
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Can we work our creativity out?
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Can we enhance it by doing these things?
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We can, I view all these things as habits that any one of us can wake up right now and be like, you know what, I m going to go out, I m gonna live a creative lifestyle.
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I mean, it really is, to me, like a lifestyle.
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When you feel that feeling of like, there s something you really want, but then you start to feel that feeling of like, oh, I feel really nervous about what would happen, you actually take that as, oh, I m the kind of person who is creative, I m gonna go towards that, because that s gonna be for my personal growth.
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So you just force yourself to do it.
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Also, get yourself in situations where you can kind of take an outsider s mindset.
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You know, be an observer.
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Go to like, check out like different subcultures.
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and see how people who are completely different than yourself are and kind of experience that outsider s mindset and then bring it back to what you were originally working on and you might have a completely different perspective.
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So is that outsider s mindset like the zen beginner s mind or something like that?
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Is that kind of what that is?
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Like thinking like a kid, trying to see things with fresh eyes.
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Is that what that means or what?
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I wonder sometimes, like, what s the point of all the scientific research we re doing?
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Because I hope that it s adding some insight somewhat.
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Because we re finding that, you know, while trauma seems to be related to creativity, where a lot of creative people tended to have a lot of trauma when they re young, what we re finding is it s not the trauma itself that is necessary for creativity.
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It is that sort of outsider s mindset.
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It s anything where someone has their normal assumptions about the world has been shattered in some way.
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And I wonder how
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We can create these experiences for ourself in a safe way without losing a parent or having a mental disability or a learning disability or all the other things that lots of these creative people throughout the history books have had, how we can create these safe ways of doing that.
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Some of my colleagues have done something, for instance, they ve created a virtual reality environment where they put people in this environment and it just defies the laws of physics in every way.
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You walk towards something, it s supposed to fall off the table and it lifts up as it falls off.
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or the researchers ask people to butter your bread differently, or if you put your milk in the cereal first, do it the opposite way.
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And you find that when people do things differently like that, they actually score better on tests of mental flexibility, tests of divergent thinking.
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So I guess I m saying the diversity of experiences is a big one, but also kind of intentionally putting yourself in a situation where you re doing something really differently.
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One of the things that I do that you re just reminding me of now is I m obsessed with those escape rooms.
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Do you know what these are?
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SPEAKER_02
No, talk to me.
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So, basically, they all have some sort of cheesy plot, like, you re in a science lab, and they ve invented a time machine, but you re trapped in the past, and you gotta figure out how to get out, or whatever, and you go in there, and there s all these codes, and puzzles, and different things, and you ve gotta figure out how to put things together in the right way to get codes to unlock boxes to eventually unlock the door, and usually there s a hidden room in there, and stuff like that, and I go in with a bunch of my friends, me and Jenny do this a lot, and it might be anything from
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there s a bunch of transparencies in a locked box on a floor.
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You gotta put the transparencies together and there s a picture that s basically a cipher that helps you decode something painted on the wall.
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Once you do that, you push in a certain place or something and another door opens, you get a black light, there s stuff written on another wall in another room and you ve gotta, it s just stuff like that all the time.
3
SPEAKER_02
All the puzzles are all different and we ve done like 40 of these.
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SPEAKER_01
That is freaking cool, that is freaking cool.
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And they re always challenging because they don t reuse the same puzzles.
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It s not a franchise, it s completely invented by these game designers.
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And they can be absolutely insane.
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From one of the puzzles that I ve done, you re trapped in a room and all that s in there is a dentist chair and a bunch of dental equipment and a picture.
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of that chair with people using the equipment, and you and your team have to pose in exactly the same way, and somehow they rigged it so that when you do that, the wall slides open.
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But you have to figure out to do that.
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There s no instructions.
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Were you good at the video game Myst?
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SPEAKER_02
Yeah, I remember that game, right.
3
SPEAKER_02
It s very similar, only more complex than that.
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Except in less codes.
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I hated the codes.
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Yeah, I know.
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Yeah, there s research on that, by the way, that kids are much better at these kind of droodles.
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There are these ambiguous figures and you have to come up with as many possibilities of what it could be.
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Kids are much better at coming up with possibilities than adults.
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If you ask college students to think like a 10-year-old, they do better on these droodles as well than if you don t.
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So there s something about that kind of young mindset where your expertise and your knowledge and ways of seeing things can really get in the way of our flexibility.
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Now, last but not least, in your work, you talk about what most of the great geniuses of our pastimes have created is garbage, is crap.
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The same is true for anybody creating anything, but nobody needs to know about your misses.
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Why is this an important concept?
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Because it almost seems self-evident, but do you find that people obsessing over things not working stifles their creativity?
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Is that why this is so important?
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No, what it is is it s actually a rule, the equal odds rule.
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The more that we create things, no matter the quality, the greater the chances we ll have a masterpiece.
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And it s because the great creative geniuses throughout the history books have created more crap than anyone else in their generation.
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They needed to get through that, they needed to get through the average stuff, and then they leave one or two things that happen to be the best of their generation.
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But they did a lot of trial and error
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They did a lot of things that were literally some of the worst things in their generation.
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Sometimes they could do something amazing and then follow it up with something horrible.
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SPEAKER_01
Shakespeare did that a lot.
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He would have amazing play like Hamlet, and he would follow it up with Pericles.
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SPEAKER_01
No one s heard of that, Pericles.
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SPEAKER_01
It looks like there s not necessarily an upward trajectory or linear trajectory.
3
SPEAKER_01
We get to the Messy Minds part again there.
3
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, creative people also seem to have messy processes.
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SPEAKER_01
Really?
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That s the point I wanted to make, yeah, which I think is relevant to what you re saying.
3
SPEAKER_01
What does that really mean, then?
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When you look at the trajectory of some of these great works of art, you don t find that there was upward progression of quality, and that s what s really interesting.
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Like, you look at Picasso s Guernica, for instance, we talk about in the book, and scientists have done systematic analysis of it, and you find that he would have something that was in the final version, but then he would follow it up with a bunch of drastic things
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He completely took it away from the final version, and he had to cut that, and you never see that in the final version.
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But when you look at the trajectory of this, it looks like he was almost operating blind.
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And he talked about, you don t really see these things until you re there, and that seems to be a common theme with artists and writers and things, is that you kind of, at the end, you see, oh, that s what that was all about.
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But there s not necessarily a linear path to that end goal.
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Scott, thanks so much for your time and for your expertise and for sharing your expertise with the AOC family.
3
SPEAKER_02
Is there anything that I haven t asked you that you want to make sure you deliver?
3
SPEAKER_01
No, that was really great, Jordan.
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SPEAKER_01
I really appreciated that chat.
3
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I should say my co-author on this book is Carolyn Gregoire, a journalist at Huffington Post, and it was a pleasure working with her on this project.
3
SPEAKER_02
Yeah, writing a book, no small feat.
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SPEAKER_02
So check that out.
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SPEAKER_02
We ll have that linked up as well, Wired2Create.
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SPEAKER_02
That ll be in the show notes.
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SPEAKER_02
And thanks so much, Scott, for coming through.
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SPEAKER_01
Thank you, Jordan.
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SPEAKER_01
Always great to be on your show.
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Interesting stuff.
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I m personally interested in creativity, never really thought of myself as a creative person.
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However, I think science of creativity and studying creativity and anything that lets us become more that way can only help us in our personal lives to become a little bit more fulfilled and certainly can help us in our business as well.
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And last but not least, teaching our kids how to be more creative has value that I probably need not explain.
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So, interesting.
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Scott s a scientist with a learning disability
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wasn t considered necessarily gifted when he was younger, but clearly, clearly is, working with Martin Seligman as well, pioneer in human behavior field.
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If you enjoyed this one, don t forget to thank Scott on Twitter.
3
SPEAKER_02
We ll have that linked in the show notes as well as his book, Wired to Create.
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You can tap the album art in most mobile podcast players.
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That s a little picture of...
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Me and AJ.
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To see the show notes, write on your phone.
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I m also on Twitter.
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SPEAKER_02
I post a lot that never makes it to the show.
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SPEAKER_02
Articles, insights, you can engage with me there at The Art of Charm.
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Bootcamp details, bootcamp.theartofcharm.com.
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Sold out a few months in advance, so get in touch and we ll get you some info and make it happen.
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SPEAKER_02
Subscribe in iTunes, write us a nice review.
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SPEAKER_02
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Now have a great week and leave everything and everyone better than you found them.
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Thanks for listening to the Art of Charm.
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Get more confidence, relationship skills, life hacks, and more at theartofcharmpodcast.com.