Have you ever entered a Zen-like state of productivity? You know, where your thoughts and execution seem to operate in perfect harmony with one another? It’s a place where you are literally thinking less and accomplishing more, and I’m sure that given the choice, most of you would choose to live on that edge rather than simply experience it every once in a while.
In reality, these Zen-like states are not nearly as unpredictable or as unattainable as you might think. In most cases, they occur as natural fallout from a well-constructed creative process. If you want to live on that free-flowing edge, then you must learn how to force your brain through the sequence of triggers that will result in your own cognitive Zen.
Understanding Your Brain
Ever read an instruction manual?
I’m sure you’ve noticed, then, that the process described therein was stepwise in nature. By design, we humans are quite comfortable with processes like this — we can easily move from step one, to step two, and so on.
It just makes sense.
Instructions, steps, order, and reason are all characteristics of the left brain. They are sensible, practical, and in many cases, obvious.
We’re so accustomed to going through life in a regimented, left-brain-dominated fashion that we seldom realize there’s an entire half of our brain being left out of the equation.
The Zen-like state feels so harmonious because that’s exactly what it is — it’s a method of operation that results from a balance between left and right brain function.
Your left brain is able to follow a process seamlessly, but the problem is that it cannot divine this process on its own. This, of course, is where the right brain comes into play.
The right brain provides the creative direction, while the left brain takes orders and executes them. If you want to operate in the Zen zone, then you’re going to have to balance right and left brain activity in order to find that harmonious flow.
What you need is a good, right brain workout, and I’m not about to leave you hanging!
The Rhythm of the Cerebrum
You can fool your lazy right brain into action by exercising it. One activity that really seems to strike a chord with bloggers (and writers in general, for that matter) is stream-of-consciousness writing.
The premise here is simple: open up a secondary blog or blank word processing document, and commence typing!
As thoughts and ideas pop into your head, record them as fast as you possibly can. Hell, they don’t even have to make sense — in all likelihood, you’ll jump between topics so fast that you’ll look like Frogger trying to cross the road.
Remember, your right brain is the hub of creative thought, so if that side of your brain is controlling the writing, you’ll know because you won’t really be able to perseverate on one aspect of your central topic for too long. In fact, you probably won’t even have a central topic.
Your right brain tends to see the entire picture at once, and as a result, it cannot extrapolate minor details in an orderly fashion. If your writing comes out looking pretty refined and cogent, then that’s a good indicator that your left brain is trying to stick its nose where it doesn’t belong.
The bottom line is that your goal is simply to unleash the creative chaos in the right brain, temporarily freeing it from the suffocating bully that is your left brain.
Your left brain can’t handle the randomized signals coming from your right brain, but the fact is, Zen won’t happen without ‘em!
Everybody likes results…
For the past few days, I’ve been experimenting with stream-of-consciousness writing, and I’ve gotta tell ya that I’m really feeling this. If you’ve been reading pearsonified for any length of time, then you probably know that I rarely recommend you take a specific course of action…But in this case, I think I’m going to have to make an exception.
It really works. It’s like stretching before a workout.
You think a sprinter would go into a race without limbering up first?
Try loosening up with 15 minutes of this stuff in the morning, and just watch as your mental signals clear up and untangle themselves.
I swear you’ll have to go to confessional because you’ll be doing so much Zenning!
77 Comments ↓
Chris,
I write the 401k newsletters for 3 major airlines and I can second your conclusion. I call it stream of consciousness writing.
Dave
Dammit Pearson !
Quit showing off all the time with these out-freakin’-standing designs;-)
Oh by the way - the post is good,too. I call it “The Selling Zone.”
Wonderful post, it really hit home for me. I wonder, how well would one be able to apply the stream-of-consciousness thing to programming?
Chris, I now Officially Am Jealous Of Your Talent!
Darn you and your awesomeness!
Darn you! ARghh!
I should start a club
ARghh
Lawton “Black Bear” Chiles
Black Bear Marketing
Tallahassee Florida
“Claw your way to the top”
The “warmup” is a great point. I run into the same state (call it “zen” or “the zone” or whatever) when I hit a groove during a race, or a photoshoot, or an ad layout, or a blog post.
It’s like focused play.
It’s a creative groove.
It’s always pure genius.
Great article. Those who grew up in the sixties, know stream of conciouness writing. Great description. And I love the balloons, especially how they multiplied in the second photo.
This design = hot
Thanks! I’m going to do a write up on the new look and its coolest features as soon as I get some free time.
I was at a party this weekend and one of my friends that I don’t get to see very often asked me why I wasn’t updating my blog much. At first I was stunned because I had no idea she even knew I had a blog, but also because I didn’t even realize I wasn’t doing it.
After some thinking, I figured out that I just had nothing I felt like writing about…like the creativity was gone.
And then this post. Great timing, thanks. I’ve been trying this for a couple days now, and not only am I writing more, but I just feel better and more with it.
Thanks.
Your zen is a beautiful thang here..It’s all zen..Good witful mind..sharp like a surgical pen but ,only zanier until you realize you cut your eyes while trying to write..Can’t top ya,But I tried.
Zenkyoo!
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Terrific post, Chris. I can attest to the fact that it does really work.
I also do stream of consciousness doodling. Blank paper, lots of doodles, and it really gets the old gears a turning. I use to do mind mapping in a similar way, but found that just by doing random doodles, I was able to enter in to the creative zone faster. I can even go back and look at past pages and guess what kind of day I was having based on the types of doodles on the page.
Anyway, great stuff. Thanks.
[...] Creative is needed for so many tasks - especially writing and doing some other artistic work. However creative requires free-flowing thinking from brain. It requires the harmony between your left brain and right brain to work together. So how to get into this zen-state? (via: How to Find Your Creative Zen - Pearsonified) [...]
[...] How to find your creative zen [...]
Sorry to piss on the parade but this left and right hemisphere talk is very unscientific, the idea of localization is heavily exaggerated, and you can’t talk so broadly and sweepingly about how the brain operates or generalize about how consciousness works or our ability to create. This is just pseudo-science and popular neuropsych. Meditation is nice, and I think there’s something akin to “flow” as described to some but your explanation is on the verge of the simplistic. I think “flow” is what you’re looking for and they’ve done some good research on that, with fMRI and PET scans for empirical support.
Well, Jakob, whaddya think? Should I scrap the whole thing? Trash my blog?
Gimme a break, buddy.
I like your blog! Keep working on it! I’m just allergic to clichés! Hemispherical localization has become such a modern myth it’s as useful as phrenology. I tried reading a book about meditation once but had to put it down when the author started lying about brainwaves and hemispherical localization.
Anyway, I didn’t mean to come on so hard, keep up the good work and look into the idea of flow, it’s extremely interesting and can be applied to design methods as well as UX design!
Ha, thanks. I know so little about the subject that I wasn’t even aware it was cliché to claim that there was hemispherical localization.
It looks to me like your knowledge in this area places you so far to one side of the spectrum that I’m sure it’s hard to see any value in mundane insights like mine.
Oh, and the “as useful as phrenology” crack is hilarious
It’s not mundane, and hemispherical localization isn’t all nonsense, but it’s not as clear cut as some people want us to believe. It seems the left side of the brain controls language, it’s where you find Broca’s and Wernicke’s areas, and the right music. But language is sound and music consists of sounds too so it’s far from obvious what does what. They’re also totally separate when it comes to vision, motor control and sensor/stumuli.
It’s an interesting topic, but all I’m saying is that one shouldn’t draw too far reaching conclusions based on theories that lack substantial empirical evidence.
[...] How to Find Your Creative Zen | Pearsonified [...]
[...] But, now, I have another reason. This post: How to Find Your Creative Zen. Well, that, and the fact that he manages to work Frogger into the discussion. Nuff said. [...]
[...] So how do we achieve this supreme state? Well, we stimulate the side that tends to be lazier: the right side. Chris at Pearsonified recommends doing stream-of-conscious writing. This is more or less a glorified Idea Dump: writing down whatever poops pops out of your head. Do that for 15 minutes and you should knock any cobwebs out of that lazy right side of the brain. Here’s how you’ll know if it’s working. Your right brain tends to see the entire picture at once, and as a result, it cannot extrapolate minor details in an orderly fashion. If your writing comes out looking pretty refined and cogent, then that’s a good indicator that your left brain is trying to stick its nose where it doesn’t belong. [...]
I find that just writing about any topic for your blog post, instead of trying to come up with something specific, helps. Mostly, such posts come up pretty complete, interesting and useful for the readers.
I have to try Zenning, I guess. Just entering the zone without doing much is kinda hard without practice, too.
Yuri,
Definitely. Hitting your Zen-like state is something that is far more likely to happen if you actually focus on getting there in the first place
Regardless of how it works, if it works, it works.
Mystics and sages have known how to tap into extrasensory realities for ages, long before brain research and quantum physics began to be able to explain why it works.
So hey, keep it up, Chris.
The Artist’s Way, by Julia Cameron, a tried-and-true method/system to unblock creatives, is founded on this principle. She calls it ‘morning pages’ - every morning you get up and write three pages of stream-of-consciousness, just move your hand across the page, write ‘this is stupid’, write ‘i have nothing to write,’ anything. After a while you will start to see results: ideas come to you, problems get solved by the left brain while the right brain is doing something else, you’ll get a hunch to try something and it’ll give you exactly what you’re looking for. You can tell me it’s bullshit all you want; when I do it religiously, I see the results. THat doesn’t mean I can’t write or won’t write (or photograph, or design) if I’m not doing pages, I’m just better for it.
It still doesn’t help you actually do the work, but it’s an integral part of my life now.
I think someone stole my Creative Zen. It’s a bummer, since I gave some of the CDs away after I’d uploaded them to the player.
[...] How to Find Your Creative Zen is an interesting post that speaks to the idea of balancing your left (organizational) brain with your right (creative) brain. Once this balance is obtained, you’re able to enter that creative Zen zone where you’re really flowing. [...]
I call it getting in the zone. Nice article!
Summon your creative moments!
I recently had this kind of moment after reading couple of articles about one’s “creative flow” at Steve Pavlina weblog and I thought: man this stuff is so dead on, I gotta share it with everybody! But here’s the kicker: I’…
Do you think this would work as well if you did the same thing except you talked outloud (to yourself, I guess) instead of writing? I’m strangely comfortable with that notion, however weird it might initially sound, and it would certainly be a lot faster than writing.
Andrew — I’d be interested to see you try out that technique with an experimental podcast.
Although now that I think about it, a lot of visitors might suspect you’re on LSD or something
[...] Zen “is a form of Mahayana Buddhism that places great importance on moment-by-moment awareness and ’seeing deeply into the nature of things’ by direct experience.” (Wikipedia) So what is a creative zen and how to find it? That is the content of a really nice article on personified.com. “How to find your creative zen“. Found via lifehacker. [...]
[...] How to Find Your Creative Zen [Pearsonified.com] [...]
Please be careful with stream-of-consciousness-writing.
As Robert Boice noted in “Professors as Writers” (pp.53), practising automatic writing excessively can cause mental instability:
“Practised in moderation, it works nicely to establish momentum and novelty in writing. Practised to excess, without some supervision or clear constraints, it can produce upsetting revelations. ”
Mark
Wow, this makes alot of sense. To a lesser extent (i usually try to keep it to some sort of topic) I use my myspace blog for this. just “chattin crap” as some might call it. It really helps get me in the mood to write, and also is a really great way to get things off my chest.
great post, I found it on another blog, but im definatly subscribing now!
Haha, I clicked on this because I thought it was about a clever way of finding a lost MP3 player and I was intrigued
[...] קישורים מהתכנית הפודקאסט של קווין סמית’ הפודקאסט של מרלין מאן כיצד למצוא את הזן היצירתי שלכם השיגים של אחרים כשהיו בגילכם (מדכא… או מעודד, תחליטו אתם) 52 דרכים להפחתת הלחץ [...]
Anyone who benefitted from this post should check out Flow by Mihaly Czikszentmihalyi… he outlines this entire “Creative Zen” state from a scientific standpoint and gives easy-to-follow guidelines for experiencing it at will.
Hi Chris,
I have been reading and enjoying your blog for over a month now. I was pleased to see that this article was featured at lifehacker (another site I enjoy).
Keep up the good work!
Chris
Great ideas!
Two typos - you wanna know? Characteristic and rhythm (which I often check myself because it is tricky).
Liked the idea of left brain as bully.
Is the left brain really in the left part of our brain? I can never remember this as the word left seems to go with the word intuition in my mind.
And the idea of ordering goes with the word right.
Any advice on remembering welcome.
Elisabeth
Elisabeth — Thanks for the heads-up; I just fixed ‘em both.
I have to assume that the left brain is, in fact, on the left side of your brain
As for the left vs. right, the right is supposedly the more creative, less restrained side. As a mnemonic device, perhaps you could go with something simple like this: left and logic both begin with “L.”
Great post.
I sit around making Myspace layouts all day - I have found to get into this state of flowing ideas I actually have to start designing something specific, then other ideas open up.
Its not like writing, with anything that pops into mind, I have to have to sit down with a planned design in mind - then stacks of new ideas seem to spin off from there…
[...] I recently wrote about creative block, and how it is something I frequently deal with. I am in a profession that requires me to be creative on a daily basis, whether it is designing or writing. With that in mind, I came across an article titled “How to Find Your Creative Zen” which speaks directly to engaging your right side of your brain while putting your left side, well to the side. [...]
Hey Chris,
Great post, I spent about 10 minutes just writing out what I like to call the “STDOUT” from my brain. For those uninitiated with c programming I’m referring to the standard output (ie: typically the monitor).
I think one of the neatest feelings is when you decide to just output the stuff in your head like you’ve said and when you’re done (at least for me) I just feel like I’m 10x larger than I was. I can’t explain it but it makes me feel like a giant sitting in front of everything else looking down.
I modified your method a little, I just opened up a wordpad document, closed my eyes and started typing. I tried typing with my eyes open the first time but I found I got too distracted forcing thoughts about the things cluttering up my desk. When I closed my eyes the synaptic path’s really seemed to clear to what I was really thinking.
Dunno if any of this makes sense, just wanted to say I appreciate your post and I think I’ll continue to use this technique.
Cheers.
[...] How to Find Your Creative Zen (tags: blog hack productivity tips writing creativity brain zen mind) [...]
[...] How to Find Your Creative Zen Ever been to creative stagnancy? To me its more of a habit of thinking creatively…. and Pearsonified.com has given quite a good way of maintaining this habit. (tags: des) [...]
Hi Chris,
Brilliant post and I totally agree with what you’ve said.
I agree with Dave Mosher in the fact that I find it easier to close my eyes and start typing. It’s easier if you’re a touch-typist, obviously, although I can see it working if you keep your eyes closed while closing the wordpad document!
My own personal stream-of-conciousness is on my DeviantART blog. It’s mostly about feelings which allows me at least to start with a central theme. And since emotions themselves are so erratic, I think it’s a good basis to start on.
Thank you.
Cool tip, I’ll be trying it this afternoon, I’ll let you know how I get on but, frankly, I’m really excited. Thanks. This is really cool and helpful.
Daithi
[...] How to Find Your Creative Zen [...]
[...] How to Find Your Creative Zen - Pearsonified.com [...]
[...] Also, yesterday I ran into How to Find your Creative Zen, also about flow. If you’ve found my last post about flow interesting, I recommend you give those two links a look. [...]
[...] How to Find Your Creative Zen [...]
This might be of interest wrt the left brain/right brain issue:
“Brain Facts is a 64-page primer on the brain and nervous system, published by the Society for Neuroscience. In addition to serving as a starting point for a lay audience interested in neuroscience, the book is used at the annual Brain Bee, which is held in conjunction with Brain Awareness Week. The 2006 revised edition of Brain Facts is available now in PDF format and in print.”
http://www.sfn.org/index.cfm?pagename=brainfacts
[...] How to Find Your Creative Zen [Pearsonified.com] [...]
Jacob Persson,
Who -F*%KING- cares if true functional/cognitive localization isn’t 100% Left/Right 100% of the time —If the f*%king metaphor WORKS (for the other 99% of the population besides you)!!!
Christ! -Go back to COBOL, command line, and telling little kids there’s no Santa fer chrissakes, you tweakish knob! Yeesh!
I am positive that in 50 years, scientists will be calling YOUR functional maps positively Franz Josef Gallian in stupidity.
(besides, go tell my post-stroke grandfather with a paralyzed right side that there’s no localization!)
[...] Seeking that mystical state where the work just seems to flow without effort? The Pearsonified blog has a method that just might work for you: The Zen-like state feels so harmonious because that’s exactly what it is — it’s a method of operation that results from a balance between left and right brain function. Your left brain is able to follow a process seamlessly, but the problem is that it cannot divine this process on its own. This, of course, is where the right brain comes into play. The right brain provides the creative direction, while the left brain takes orders and executes them. If you want to operate in the Zen zone, then you’re going to have to balance right and left brain activity in order to find that harmonious flow. What you need is a good, right brain workout, and I’m not about to leave you hanging! [...]
[...] How to Find Your Creative Zen (tags: inspiration creativity) [...]
[...] קישורים מהתכנית הפודקאסט של קווין סמית‘ הפודקאסט של מרלין מאן כיצד למצוא את הזן היצירתי שלכם השיגים של אחרים כשהיו בגילכם (מדכא… או מעודד, תחליטו אתם) 52 דרכים להפחתת הלחץ [...]
Hey pears ,
actually , i was thinking the same thing pal .
Order or discipline is what makes a job easy to do , but its away from creativity .
Randomity is what brings , creativeness and what we want is a balence between them .
its like , “Free ur Mind NEO” , but holding onto it .
[...] How to Find Your Creative Zen – Excellent and practical post on to get some creativity going. Very good looking blog too. [...]
Just another way to Find Your ZEN…
[...] I read this post over at Pearsonified, and must say i enjoyed the read a lot! [...]
[...] http://desktoppub.about.com/od/creativityexercises/a/saedi.htm http://www.afterchaos.com/articles/index.php?ID=creativeconcept http://www.jpb.com/creative/brainstorming.php http://www.whatagreatidea.com/curious.htm http://www.brainstorming.co.uk/tutorials/creativethinkingcontents.html http://www.changethis.com/pdf/6.05.HowToBeCreative.pdf http://www.pearsonified.com/2006/10/how_to_find_your_creative_zen.php http://blog.creativethink.com/2006/12/discover_your_o.html http://www.creativethinking.net/WP3_DocumentLibrary.htm [...]
Great article. Having read your post I have been experimenting with this technique in conjunction with mind mapping. I find it to be a happy marriage with the technique described here providing the creative input i.e. right brain activity. And the mind map giving the left brain plenty to do so it doesn’t feel left out.
Very well thought article! I began implementing it along side EFT (emotional freedom technique) and amygdala clicking.
I’m seeing gold!
So please… keep feeding us more of your pearls.
Hello,
Great post, I totally love it, and you site as well. As a matter of fact I loved it so well I wanted to share it with my readers, so I hope you don’t mind me making you a guest blogger on my site.
Thanks,
Jan
Wish I would have found this post a long time ago. I’ve been doing a morning “warmup” and, by golly…
Wow!
Hi Chris,
I work for a communications consultancy and we have created an international campaign targeted at Ad. executives. As part of this, we are producing a ‘mock newspaper’ to distribute to them. I found many of the ideas expressed in your article inspiring and was wondering if you would be happy for the piece to be included in the aforementioned newspaper.
Please let me know asap.
Many thanks
Joshua Ross
I was inspired by many of the points raised in your article on Zen and was wondering if you would be happy for me to include it in a ‘mock
Joshua — Please feel free to include this article in your newspaper… I’m always happy to see my work “get legs.”
Beautiful. I haven’t been this inspired about creativity since I read Ed Bono’s “Six Thinking Hats”
You’re now on my Snarfer
Dear sir/madam,
Having recently misplaced my newly acquired Creative Zen MP3 player, I came to this site in the eager hope of getting a soltion to my dilemma. To my horror, instead I discovered this had nothing to do with music or various ways of playing the above, but instead was buddhist. I hate buddhists. They have a shit taste in music and they have been no help in finding my Nirvana CD. I hope that you will quickly rectify this situation.
Yours angrily,
David Kearney
Хороший заработок в интернете. Нужно покоментировать страницы, которые вам откроют после регистрации, и за это платят денги и не малые. Я лично зарабатываю около 500$ в месяц.
Регистрируемся тут awsurveys.com
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UserName - имя пользователя
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Далее вводим цифорки-буковки, нажимаем кнопку Create A Free Account
Вы зарегистрировались!
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4.Здесь 2 ссылки и 2 поля, в них нужно написать отзыв о сайте на англ языке.
(пример: It is an excellent site, I shall advise its all, this is good job, it’s very usefull web-resource и т.п)
5.Щелкае по кнопке внизу “Click to submit …” Щелкаем по ссылке “Click Here to go Home and…”
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выводятся деньги в системе PayPal (легко переводятся в вебмани)
могу помочь тем кто не знаком с электронными платежными системами
He he Very funny article love it, nothing quit like tricking the mind into doing exactly what it needs to be doing. It’s not like we came with a manual on how to operate the human body!
I am not sure if you really said anything new. For instance, brainstorming, is when you let your right brain go freely and jot it all down. There is nothing new about that. Then you compare your brainstorm to the list of goals your left brain made and execute.
Hoot and/or Holler ↓