12.Arne Dietrich, How Creativity Happens in the Brain (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015), 3–6.
13.Anthony Brandt and David Eagleman, The Runaway Species (Edinburgh: Canongate, 2017), 24–27.
14.Ibid., 27–29.
15.Teresa M. Amabile and Michael G. Pratt, “The Dynamic Componential Model of Creativity and Innovation in Organizations: Making Progress, Making Meaning,” Research in Organizational Behavior 36 (2016): 157–83.
16.Scott Barry Kaufman, “The Real Neuroscience of Creativity,” Scientific American, April 19, 2013.
17.William James, The Principles of Psychology (New York: Cosimo Classics, 2013), 402.
18.Michael I. Posner, Charles R. Snyder, and Brian J. Davidson, “Attention and the Detection of Signals,” Journal of Experimental Psychology 109, no. 2 (1980): 160–74.
19.Michael I. Posner and Steven E. Petersen, “The Attention System of the Human Brain,” Annual Review of Neuroscience 13, no. 1 (1990): 25–42.
20.Scott Barry Kaufman and Carolyn Gregoire, Wired to Create: Unraveling the Mysteries of the Creative Mind (New York: TarcherPerigee, 2016), xxvii.
21.Roger Beaty et al., “Creativity and the Default Mode Network,” Neuropsychologia 64 (November 2014): 92–98.
22.Randy L. Buckner, “The Serendipitous Discovery of the Brain’s Default Mode Network,” NeuroImage 62, no. 2 (August 15, 2012):1137–45.
23.Laura Krause et al., “The Role of Medial Prefrontal Cortex in Theory of Mind: A Deep rTMS Study,” Behavioral Brain Research 228, no. 1 (2012): 87–90.
24.Brandt and Eagleman, Runaway Species, 55–104.
25.Lucina Uddin, Salience Network of the Human Brain (Amsterdam: Elsevier, 2017).
26.Posner, Snyder, and Davidson, “Attention and the Detection of Signals.”
27.“The Creative Brain Is Wired Differently,” Neuroscience News, January 23, 2018.
28.David Eagleman, author interview, 2017; Scott Barry Kaufman, author interview, 2019. Also, in psychology they call this “latent inhibition”; see Shelley Carson, Jordan Peterson, and Daniel Higgins, “Decreased Latent Inhibition Is Associated with Increased Creative Achievement in High-Functioning Individuals,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 85, no. 3 (2003): 499–506.
29.Scott Barry Kaufman, “The Myth of the Neurotic Creative,” Atlantic, February 29, 2016, https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2016/02/myth-of-the-neurotic-creative/471447/.
16: Hacking Creativity
1.John Kounios and Mark Beeman, The Eureka Factor: Aha Moments, Creative Insight, and the Brain (New York: Windmill Books, 2015), 89–90.
2.G. Rowe, J. B. Hirsh, and A. K. Anderson, “Positive Affect Increases the Breadth of Attentional Selection,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 104 (2007): 383–88; see also Barbara Fredrickson, “Positive Emotions Open Our Mind,” Greater Good Science Center, June 21, 2011, https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=1&v=Z7dFDHzV36g&feature=emb_logo.
3.Glenn Fox, author interview, 2020; and Kate Harrison, “How Gratitude Can Make You More Creative and Innovative,” Inc., November 16, 2016.
4.Lorenza S. Colzato, Ayca Ozturk, and Bernhard Hommel, “Meditate to Create: the Impact of Focused-Attention and Open-Monitoring Training on Convergent and Divergent Thinking,” Frontiers in Psychology 3 (2012): 116; Viviana Capurso, Franco Fabbro, and Cristiano Crescentini, “Mindful Creativity,” Frontiers in Psychology (January 10, 2014).
5.John Kounios, author interview, 2019; see also Penelope Lewis, Gunther Knoblich, and Gina Poe, “How Memory Replay in Sleep Boosts Creative Problem Solving,” Trends in Cognitive Sciences 22, no. 6 (2018): 491–503.
6.For a really good discussion of the hemispheric differences, see Iain McGilchrist, The Master and His Emissary (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2009).
7.Kounis and Beeman, The Eureka Factor, 171.
8.Mark Burgess and Michael E. Enzle, “Defeating the Potentially Deleterious Effects of Externally Imposed Deadlines: Practitioners’ Rules-of-Thumb,” PsycEXTRA Dataset (2000).
9.Ruth Ann Atchley, David L. Strayer, and Paul Atchley, “Creativity in the Wild,” PLoS ONE 7, no. 12 (December 12, 2012).
10.Andrew F. Jarosz, Gregory J. H. Colflesh, and Jennifer Wiley, “Uncorking the Muse: Alcohol Intoxication Facilitates Creative Problem Solving,” Consciousness and Cognition 21, no. 1 (2012): 487–93.
11.John Kounios, author interview, 2019.
12.Kiki De Jonge, Eric Rietzschel, and Nico Van Yperen, “Stimulated by Novelty?,” Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin 44, no. 6 (June 2018): 851–67.
13.David Cropley and Arthur Cropley, “Functional Creativity: ‘Products’ and the Generation of Effective Novelty,” in James C. Kaufman and Robert J. Sternberg, eds., The Cambridge Handbook of Creativity (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 301–17.
14.Gene Santoro, Myself When I Am Real: The Life and Music of Charles Mingus (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001), 197; apparently, this was said by Mingus to Timothy Leary. Personally, I would love to know what Leary said in response.
15.Catrinel Haught-Tromp, “The Green Eggs and Ham Hypothesis,” Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity and the Arts 11, no. 1 (April 14, 2016).
16.Chip Heath and Dan Heath, The Myth of the Garage: And Other Minor Surprises (New York: Currency, 2011); see also Keith Sawyer, Group Genius: The Creative Power of Collaboration (New York: Basic Books, 2017).
17.Scott Barry Kaufman, author interview, 2019.
18.Lee Zlotoff, author interview, 2015; see also The MacGyver Secret (website), https://macgyversecret.com; Kenneth Gilhooly, Incubation in Problem Solving and Creativity (New York: Routledge, 2019).
17: Long-Haul Creativity
1.This is not to say that other people haven’t poked at this idea. One book I love on how aging impacts creativity and why long-haul creativity is possible is Gene Cohen, The Creative Age (New York: William Morrow, 2000).
2.John Barth, author interview, 1993. One thing to note, I’m recounting this conversation from memory; the exact wording may have changed over the years.
3.For Pynchon geeks such as myself, the two stories are “Byron the Lightbulb” and the story of Franz Pokler, the rocket scientist whose daughter has been kidnapped by the Nazis.
4.Tim Ferriss, author interview, 2017.
5.See Paul Graham, “Maker’s Schedule, Manager’s Schedule,” Paul Graham (website), July 2009, http://www.paulgraham.com/makersschedule.html.
6.Tim Ferriss, author interview, 2017.
7.It’s not just Ferriss who feels this way; researchers at Stanford found the same thing: Marily Oppezzo and Daniel Schwartz, “Give Your Ideas Some Legs,” Experimental Psychology, Learning, Memory and Cognition 40, no. 4 (July 2014): 1142–52.
8.There’s a great article about the interview (which has become famous itself): Cristobal Vasquez, “The Interview Playboy Magazine Did with Gabriel García Márquez,” ViceVersa, August 25, 2014.
9.Ernest Hemingway and Larry W. Phillips, Ernest Hemingway on Writing (New York: Scribner, 2004).
10.Sigmund Freud, Civilization and Its Discontents, volume 21 in The Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud: The Future of an Illusion, Civilization and Its Discontents, and Other Works (Richmond: Hogarth Press, 1961), 79–80.
11.Roger Barker, Tamara Dembo, and Kurt Lewin, Frustration and Regression: An Experiment with Young Children, Studies in Topological and Vector Psychology II (Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 1941), 216–19.
12.Mark Beeman and John Kounios, The Eureka Factor: Aha Moments, Creative Insight, and the Brain (New York: Windmill Books, 2015), 102–3.
13.Edward Albee, The Zoo Story (New York: Penguin, 1960); see http://edwardalbeesociety.org/works/the-zoo-story/.
14.Sir Ken Robinson, “Do Schools Kill Creativity?,” TED Talk, 2006, https://www.ted.com/talks/sir_ken_robinson_do_schools_kill_creativity?language=en.
15.Ken Robinson, author interview, 2016.
16.Burk Sharpless, author interview,
2014.
17.Gretchen Bleiler, author interview, 2016
18.Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, Creativity: The Psychology of Discovery and Invention (New York: HarperPerennial, 1996), 51–76.
19.Ibid.
18: The Flow of Creativity
1.George Land, “The Failure of Success,” TEDxTuscon, February 16, 2011, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZfKMq-rYtnc.
2.For more on this story, see George Land and Beth Jarman, Breakpoint and Beyond: Mastering the Future—Today (New York: HarperCollins, 1992).
3.John Kounios, author interview, 2019.
4.For a great discussion on creativity, flow, and networks, see Scott Barry Kaufman, “The Neuroscience of Creativity, Flow, and Openness to Experience,” BTC Institute, July 17, 2014, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Un_LroX0DAA.
Part IV: Flow
1.Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, trans. Helen Zimmern (Hampshire, UK: Value Classics Reprints, 2018), 212.
19: The Decoder Ring
1.For a fuller recounting of this story, see Steven Kotler, West of Jesus: Surfing, Science and the Origin of Belief (New York: Bloomsbury, 2006). Also, I spoke about this at length on the Joe Rogan podcast: “Steven Kotler on Lyme Disease & The Flow State,” Joe Rogan Experience, February 16, 2011, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X_yq-4remO0.
2.Rob Schultheis, Bone Games: One Man’s Search for the Ultimate Athletic High (Halcottsville, NY: Breakaway Books, 1996).
3.Andrew Newberg and Eugene D’Aquili, Why God Won’t Go Away: Brain Science and the Biology of Belief (New York: Ballantine, 2001), 120–27.
4.Andrew Newberg, author interviews, 2000–2020.
20: Flow Science
1.Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra (Digireads.com, 2016), 25.
2.Charles Darwin, On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or, The Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life (London, 1859; digital reprint, Adam Goldstein, ed., American Museum of Natural History, 2019), https://darwin.amnh.org/files/images/pdfs/e83461.pdf.
3.The Academy of Ideas has done an excellent video lecture series on this topic. For a really good discussion of Nietzsche and many of his ideas presented in this section, see https://academyofideas.com/tag/nietzsche/.
4.Friedrich Nietzsche, Ecce Homo: How One Becomes What One Is, trans. R. J. Hollingdale (New York: Penguin, 2004), 44.
5.Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, trans. Helen Zimmern (Hampshire, UK: Value Classics Reprints, 2018), 90.
6.“Nietzsche and Zapffe: Beauty, Suffering, and the Nature of Genius,” Academy of Ideas, December 6, 2015, https://academyofideas.com/2015/12/nietzsche-zapffe-beauty-suffering-nature-of-genius/; see also Nitzan Lebovic, “Dionysian Politics and the Discourse of ‘Rausch,’” in Arpad von Klimo and Malte Rolf, eds., Rausch und Diktatur: Inszenierung, Mobilisierung und Kontrolle in totalitären Systemen (Frankfurt: Campus Verlag, 2006), https://www.academia.edu/310323/Dionysian_Politics_and_The_Discourse_of_Rausch.
7.Friedrich Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols (New York: Penguin Classics, 1990), 55.
8.Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience (New York: HarperPerennial, 2008). If you’re interested in his methodology, see also Joel Hektner, Jennifer Schmidt, and Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, Experience Sampling Method (New York: Sage, 2007).
9.Richard Ryan, The Oxford Handbook of Human Motivation (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005), 128.
10.Christian Jarrett, “All You Need to Know About the 10 Percent Brain Myth in 60 Seconds,” Wired, July 24, 2014.
11.Arne Dietrich, “Transient Hypofrontality as a Mechanism for the Psychological Effects of Exercise,” Psychiatry Research 145, no. 1 (2006): 79–83; see also Arne Dietrich, Introduction to Consciousness (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007), 242–44.
12.Arne Dietrich, interview, 2012.
13.Rhailana Fontes, Jéssica Ribeiro, Daya S. Gupta, Dionis Machado, Fernando Lopes-Júnior, Francisco Magalhães, Victor Hugo Bastos, et al., “Time Perception Mechanisms at Central Nervous System,” Neurology International 8, no. 1 (2016).
14.Istvan Molnar-Szakacs and Lucina Q. Uddin, “Self-Processing and the Default Mode Network: Interactions with the Mirror Neuron System,” Frontiers in Human Neuroscience 7 (2013).
15.Charles J. Limb and Allen R. Braun, “Neural Substrates of Spontaneous Musical Performance: An FMRI Study of Jazz Improvisation,” PLoS ONE 3, no. 2 (2008).
16.Frances A. Maratos, Paul Gilbert, Gaynor Evans, Faye Volker, Helen Rockliff, and Gina Rippon, “Having a Word with Yourself: Neural Correlates of Self-Criticism and Self-Reassurance,” NeuroImage 49, no. 2 (2010): 1849–56.
17.The first time I heard about this was from Dr. Leslie Sherlin, who has yet to publish this work, but the story is fully recounted in The Rise of Superman. See also Kenji Katahira et al., “EEG Correlates of the Flow State,” Frontiers in Psychology (March 9, 2018); E. Garcia-Rill et al., “The 10 Hz Frequency,” Translation Brain Rhythm 1, no. 1 (March 24, 2016). Finally, Csikszentmihalyi and many others have looked at the brains of chess players in flow and found something similar. For a pop-culture version of this story, see Amy Brann, Engaged (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015), 103–5.
18.Mark Beeman and John Kounios, The Eureka Factor: Aha Moments, Creative Insight, and the Brain (New York: Windmill Books, 2015), 71–7.
19.Gina Kolata, “Runner’s High? Endorphins? Fiction, Some Scientists Say,” New York Times, May 21, 2002, https://www.nytimes.com/2002/05/21/health/runner-s-high-endorphins-fiction-some-scientists-say.html.
20.Arne Dietrich, “Endocannabinoids and Exercise,” British Journal of Sports Medicine 38, no. 5 (2004): 536–41, https://doi.org/10.1136/bjsm.2004.011718.
21.Henning Boecker, Till Sprenger, Mary E. Spilker, Gjermund Henriksen, Marcus Koppenhoefer, Klaus J. Wagner, Michael Valet, Achim Berthele and Thomas R. Tolle, “The Runner’s High: Opioidergic Mechanisms in the Human Brain,” Cerebral Cortex 18, no. 11 (2008): 2523–31; see also Henning Boecker, “Brain Imaging Explores the Myth of Runner’s High,” Medical News Today, March 4, 2008.
22.Gregory Berns, Satisfaction: Sensation Seeking, Novelty, and the Science of Seeking True Fulfillment (New York: Henry Holt, 2005), 146–74.
23.Corinna Peifer, “Psychophysiological Correlates of Flow-Experience,” in S. Engeser, ed., Advances in Flow Research (New York: Springer, 2007), 151–52; A. J. Marr, “In the Zone: A Behavioral Theory of the Flow Experience,” Athletic Insight: The Online Journal of Sport Psychology 3 (2001).
24.For a norepinephrine overview, see Eddie Harmon-Jones and Piotr Winkielman, Social Neuroscience: Integrating Biological and Psychological Explanations of Social Behavior (New York: Guilford Press, 2007), 306; also, for a great look at all of the neuroscience surrounding attention, see Michael Posner, Cognitive Neuroscience of Attention (New York: Guilford Press, 2004). Finally, for a look at the relationship between norepinephrine and flow, see Harvard cardiologist Herbert Benson. For the lay version of this work, see Herbert Benson and William Proctor, The Breakout Principle: How to Activate the Natural Trigger That Maximizes Creativity, Athletic Performance, Productivity and Personal Well-Being (New York: Scribner, 2003), 46–68.
25.Paul Zak, author interview, 2020.
26.Scott Keller and Susie Cranston, “Increasing the ‘Meaning Quotient’ of Work,” McKinsey & Company, 2013, https://www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/organization/our-insights/increasing-the-meaning-quotient-of-work.
27.ABM CEO Chris Berka gave a great TEDx talk about this research: “What’s Next—A Window on the Brain: Chris Berka at TEDxSanDiego 2013,” February 5, 2014, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rBt7LMrIkxg; see also “9-Volt Nirvana,” Radiolab, June 2014, http://www.radiolab.org/story/9-volt-nirvana/; Sally Adee, “Zap Your Brain into the Zone,” New Scientist, February 1, 2012.
28.Teresa M. Amabile, Sigal G. Barsade, Jennifer S. Mueller, and Barry M. Staw, “Affect and Creativity at Work,” Administrative Science Quarterly 50, no. 3 (2005): 367–403.
21: Flow Triggers
1.Jeanne Nakamura and Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, “The Concept of Flow,” in The Oxford Handbook of Positive Psychology (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009), 89–105.
2.For one of the more interesting attempts to get at the neurobiology of both flow’s triggers and its phenomenological effects, see Martin Klasen, Rene Weber, Tilo Kircher, Krystyna Mathiak, and Klaus Mathiak, “Neural Contributions to Flow Experience during Video Gaming,” Social Cognition and Affective Neuroscience 7, no. 4 (April 2012): 485–95.
3.Flow triggers are a very recent concept and have been identified and expanded upon over time. For a full discussion, see Steven Kotler, The Rise of Superman (New York: New Harvest, 2014). The concept also receives attention in Johannes Keller and Anne Landhasser, “The Flow Model Revisited,” in Stefan Engeser, ed., Advances in Flow Research (New York: Springer, 2007), 61.
4.Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, “Attention and the Holistic Approach to Behavior,” in Kenneth S. Pope and Jerome L. Singer, eds., The Stream of Consciousness: Scientific Investigations into the Flow of Human Experience (Boston: Springer, 1978), 335–58.
5.Ernest Becker, The Denial of Death (New York: Free Press, 1997).
6.John Hagel, author interview, 2016.
7.Wanda Thibodeaux, “Why Working in 90-Minute Intervals Is Powerful for Your Body and Job, According to Science,” Inc., January 27, 2019; see also Drake Baer, “Why You Need to Unplug Every 90 Minutes,” Fast Company, June 19, 2013.
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