Creativity Notes

On my flight from my Grandparent's in August, I picked up the July issue of Newsweek. Inside an article "The Creativity Crisis" by Po Bronson and Ashley Merryman caught my attention. While there are many interesting points in the article, these are the ones I thought I'd share.

• American creativity scores are falling each year since 1990 (based on the Torrance's creativity index)
• The test has shown that kids with higher creativity grow up to be more accomplished adults
• The correlation to lifetime creative accomplishment was more than three times stronger for childhood creativity than childhood IQ.
• "The argument that we can't teach creativity because kids already have too much to learn is a false tradeoff. Creativity isn't about freedom from concrete facts. Rather, fact finding and deep research are vital stages of the creative process. Scholars argue that current curriculum standards can still be met, if taught in a different way."
• "Creativity requires constant shifting, blender pulses of both divergent thinking and convergent thinking, to combine new information with old and forgotten ideas. Highly creative people are very good at marshaling their brains into bilateral mode, and the more creative they are, the more they dual-activate."
• Those who practice creative activities learn to recruit their brain's creative networks quicker and better. Therefore creativity can be taught and strengthened.
• Telling someone to "be creative" leads to them just freezing. Instead, suggest that they do something only you would come up with - that none of your friends or family would think of.
• Becoming aware of other cultures increases creativity.

And Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, one of my all time favorite researchers, was sited in the article too. I highly suggest reading any of his work. He has a unique perspective about finding happiness in everyday events, such as work. 

And also some photos from the trip that I never did share: