Most Creative When Groggy

I'm a bit behind the times on this one, but it's a cool story that deserves a post. Here's the punchline: according to a December 2011 paper in the journal "Thinking & Reasoning", you're at your most creative when you're groggy and out of it. In the study, Mareike Wieth (Albion College) and Rose Zacks (Michigan State) recruited 428 undergrads and used a questionaire to identify them as either night owls or morning larks. They then gave the students a set of problem-solving tasks, half of which required creative insight and the other half of which were narrow-focus analytical questions. Some of the students were given the test first thing in the morning, and the others were tested in the late afternoon.

Their big finding was that students were much more successful at solving the insight problems when tested at their least optimal time of functioning. When tested "off-peak" (night owls in the morning and vice versa) the students averaged success rates of 56%, 22%, and 49% for the three insight tasks, versus 51%, 16%, and 31% when tested at their preferred time of day. In contrast, the performance on analytical questions was unaffected by time of day.

The explanation is that insight-based problem solving (creativity!) requires a broad, unfocused approach, which is easier when your inhibitory brain processes are weaker and your thoughts are meandering.

Pretty cool. For a more thorough summary, check out this quick post in the BPS Research Digest, or if you're feeling brave dive into the full paper here.

Creativity Under the Gun

Few people would dispute that deadlines makes things get done faster, but do they make us more creative? Certainly we do have our moments of brilliance under pressure: during the Apollo 13 disaster in 1970, NASA ground crews had mere hours to engineer a makeshift carbon dioxide scrubber to replace the one aboard the damaged spacecraft. Their high stakes, "under the gun" creativity saved the three astronauts, but is it the way we usually work?

That's exactly the question that a group of Harvard researchers asked when they set out to study the creative processes of 177 employees on 22 project teams back in 2001. In doing so, they collected 9,000 diary entries that link workplace environment, time pressure, and creative output. The research project, summarized in a very accessible HBR article here and a longer working paper here, provides fascinating insight into when being "under the gun" makes us more creative, and when it doesn't.

A couple big takeaways. First, time pressure does NOT improve creativity. In fact, people were 45% less likely to think creatively on the days that they rated as the most hectic. Second, and somewhat amazingly, the impact of high pressure days persisted, depressing creative output for two full days afterward. We thus seem to be subject to "creative hangovers" brought on by exhaustion and cognitive paralysis.

Finally, the authors did find some cases where time pressure dramatically improved creative output - the "Apollo 13 moments." By delving into the qualitative diary entries, they were able to identify a common set of conditions across all of these instances. In particular, workers:

1. Were protected from distractions and were able to focus on one activity,
2. Believed that their work was important and challenging, and
3. Were tasked with both identifying problems and exploring solutions.

Together, these conditions convey a sense of "meaningful urgency" rather than Calvin's "last minute panic". The study thus suggests that while we'd do well to avoid high pressure deadlines whenever possible, there are still ways to be creative even if we find ourselves under the gun. Check out the HBR article here and the longer working paper here.