How intense focus kills creativity
The science and virtues 'fucking around' and the mathematician who accidentally birthed cubism
It was 2008, exactly half my lifetime ago. I sat down to my end of year exam of my most dreaded subject: maths. I had a plan before I entered exam room. I was months away from year 11 where I’d get to choose my own subjects. Math wouldn’t be one of them. So instead of labouring hunch-backed and dripping beads of sweat over a test paper that would go nowhere, I decided to draw pictures on the test. I weirdly remember the exact drawing. It was this little fairy from a book I had as a kid in the 90’s (picture below), anyone else??!
This core memory came back to me during my research for a piece I wrote for It’s Nice That recently. I stumbled on this wonderful talk with Harvard Psychiatrist Dr Srini Pillay who wrote the book Think Less, Learn More…or better named in the Italian The Power of Fucking Around.
Admonishing over-focus, he surprisingly praises the many virtues of “unfocus.” Over focus is what he believes lead Blockbuster to be blindsided by Netflix.
Pillay shares “People always associate unfocus with distraction, but don’t necessarily understand that there are disadvantages to focus as well.” For one, it drains the brain of energy.
This was outlined in a study of two groups of people who were shown a video. The focus group were instructed to watch the video with intense focus, and the other group to watch as usual.
Afterwards, the two groups were asked to offer their responses to a moral dilemma that involved rescuing someone. They found that the group who’d watched the video with intense focus showed a lot less care than the group who watched as normal.
Wildly, when they fed the focus group glucose, they began to care again, indicating that over-focus had sapped their brains of so much energy that they couldn’t give two shits about what was going on around them.
How intense-focus kills creativity
It prevents you from seeing what’s around you - and potential trends that might eclipse your efforts. Pillay uses the example of Blockbuster who were focused too much on the status quo to notice Netflix.
It prevents you from seeing what’s ahead of you - e.g. people over focused on their jobs, not seeing the potential ways AI might make their roles obsolete.
It prevents you from making important associations and connections - Focus is great for completing tasks, but Pillay says “it doesn’t allow you to make associations” and draw inspiration from those associations. He uses the example of Picasso who studied the French mathematician Henri Poincaré. After hearing his theories, he was inspired to think about the fourth dimension — which inspired his famous painting Les Demoiselles D'avignon, that launched the cubist movement. “Associations,” Pillay concludes “are a key component of what unfocused can bring you.”
Unlike unfocus, intense-focus doesn’t faciliate emotional regulation - Finally, he shares “the unfocused circuits in the brain overlap largely with the self awareness circuits and the self regulation circuits in the brain. So if you want to be reconnected to yourself or control your emotions, unfocus is one way you can prepare to focus the brain.” I’ll add here that self-regulation (which is a regulated nervous system) is the state required for creativity to surface.
So what are the virtues of unfocus?
“Possibility Thinking” - Pillay suggest thinking like the person who’s in your exact shoes, but made something work for them. For example, if you are a working single mother with a goal to start a business. You could channel another single working mother in the world who chose certain sacrifices to achieve your same goal. “Just by believing something is going to work increases dopamine in brain and opioids which decreases stress,” shares Pillay. Adding “Do a mindset shift. Say ok, I can shift my mindset to the possibility mindset to make this happen.”
Switch between focus and unfocus - Rather than focus-focus-focus-fatigue, Pillay suggests the focus-unfocus-focus-unfocus equation.
Positive constructive daydreaming - Negative rumination isn’t constructive, but finding time to daydream on your ‘unfocus’ breaks can carve out new neural pathways. He recommends using the times you’d be in a slump anyway and that it’s more effective if you daydream while doing something low-key like walking/knitting/gardening.
5-15 minutes of napping will give you 1-3 hours of clarity - speaks for itself really.
Doodling is also helpful - Pillay cites a study where the focus group who doodled while listening to someone speak had 29% better memory — even remembering the names of people and places.
Psychological ‘Halloweenism’ - Similar to possibility thinking, Pillay mentioned a study with two groups of people. One embodied the personality of rigid librarian and the other, an eccentric poet. The people who embodied personality of eccentric poet were statistically more likely to become creative. “It wasn’t the people that matter, but the personality you imagine yourself to be that mattered,” Pillay notes. “Choose a personality who you’d think would solve this problem and think like that person. That way you’re not restricting yourself by your habits of thinking.”
I don’t know about you, but as an avid napper and long-time doodler (especially when in meeting), all of this has validated these habits that I once thought were me just being a delinquent.
My practical takeaway from this are:
Everything in your day-to-day has a place, even the most mundane - yes, even the dishes or the laundry. Now I know these are opportunities for constructive daydreaming, I can appreciating the role of these things in my life. I suddenly feel like a more willing participant in these previously avoided activities, because they’re an excuse to daydream.
Take regular breaks - Since breaks are for the creative, not for the lazy, I’ll be taking more of them. Not scroll-breaks but as Pillay mentioned above — walk or crochet or drawing breaks. Anything that encourages ‘constructive daydreaming.’ From here on, I’m giving myself the guilt-free liberty of regular breaks, knowing full-well that creative solutions thrive in that environment.
I can now nap and draw on my meeting notes guilt free - and if anyone raises an eyebrow I’ll know what to say ;)
If this gave you any epiphany’s of your own, let me now in the comments.