Brainsteering: The Better Approach to Breakthrough Ideas by Coyne Kevin P. & Coyne Shawn T

Author:Coyne, Kevin P. & Coyne, Shawn T. [Coyne, Kevin P.]
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Publisher: HarperCollins e-books
Published: 2011-02-28T16:00:00+00:00

See? Just like we said. Almost.

NEUTRALIZING EMOTIONAL OVERHEAD

There is one other key finding from the latest scientific research that reinforces an important phenomenon we had observed in our own work on creativity over the years: you cannot get into the zone, creatively speaking, if you’re carrying too much “emotional overhead.”

Most people can shut out distractions that remain mostly intellectual in nature, but fewer people can shut out distractions that, for them, have too large an emotional component. If something is strongly affecting your emotions—either positively or negatively—your production of neurochemicals (such as serotonin and dopamine) seems to compel you to visualize the portion of the world surrounding that emotion, and to prevent you from consistently visualizing the portion of the world in which you’re trying to create an original idea. So if something is going on in your life that your mind just can’t put aside—whether it’s your family’s upcoming vacation to Walt Disney World (usually, but not always, considered a positive thing) or the very expensive dent you just put into your bumper in the parking lot (definitely a negative)—asking yourself to ignore it is going to have no more effect than asking the rain to stop.

The science confirms this. As the discussion in that paper about arousal continues, it says, “Extremely high levels of arousal reduce the capacity to perceive, process and evaluate information.”7 Interestingly, this finding parallels very recent research on a highly related cognitive process, the exercise of willpower. As a 2009 scientific paper put it, “self-regulatory strength is a finite, renewable resource that is drained when people attempt to regulate their emotions, thoughts or behaviors.”8

Unfortunately, science offers no prescriptions here to help you in the immediate term, at least with respect to creativity. (In the case of willpower, it dances around the issue, but effectively says, “Just go ahead and eat the cake—save your willpower for the more important stuff.” We’re not kidding; you can look it up for yourself.9 ) From our own experience, though, we can suggest one prescription to help you in the immediate term. Learn which kinds of emotional overhead you personally are capable of temporarily ignoring, and which ones you are not. Ask yourself which types of distractions prey on your emotions. Which are merely annoyances and which cause total shutdown? Knowing the difference will enable you to proceed when you might have thought you couldn’t, and to avoid the frustration of certain failure by not even attempting to be creative at a time when it simply wouldn’t work.

Thankfully, both science and our experience do provide more help in the medium term: you can build up your ability to neutralize emotional overhead over time. As the author of that paper on willpower put it, “You can actually increase your self-regulatory capacity. Willpower is like a muscle: it needs to be challenged to build itself.”10

In our experience, this is best done first by learning to compartmentalize your mind so that when you’re on the job creatively, fewer and fewer factors can overwhelm your emotions.

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