Caffeinate to Creativity

It only seems natural to follow up yesterday's post on grogginess with one on caffeine, picked up from Lifehacker by way of Guy Kawasaki. The buzz is all about an excerpt from Chris Chatham's book Caffeine: A User's Guide to Getting Optimally Wired (no word yet on when it gets to Amazon). Given that caffeine is the most widely used and abused stimulant in the world, people perked up a bit when a neuroscientist offered some thoughts on optimal consumption. The basic story is that consuming 20-200mg/hour delivers the best mental boost. Given that an average cuppa joe contains between 100-150mg of caffeine, one cup (or less) per hour is more than enough. He also notes that to use caffeine effectively, you should play to its (and your own) strengths: caffeine makes it easier to work harder and faster on tasks that you already had under control, but it doesn't make challenging problems or abstract puzzlers any easier. Building on yesterday's post, caffeine is going to help with the analytical tasks, but probably not the creative ones. One last interesting finding: mixing in a bit of sugar may actually be a great idea, as some studies have shown that caffeine-glucose cocktails provide cognitive benefits not seen with either one alone.

Of course, caffeine isn't just about the chemical brain boost. There's the placebo effect, and the fact that sometimes a morning isn't going to start itself without a cup of the delicious. Some studies have also suggested that long term ingestion is associated with a variety of health benefits such as a reduction in the risk of Type 2 Diabetes, Alzheimer's, and Parkinson's. As if we needed more motivation.

Scientists and true addicts should check out the Scienceblog excerpt to keep learning.

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.

TEDLuck: A Recipe for Geekin' Out

Last week my housemates and I hosted our second "TEDLuck" event, which is designed around the idea of bringing together a diverse group of people to share in good food and wine while geeking out over a handful of TED talks. Our theme for the night was "Stories", so we watched Billy Collins' illustrated poems in "Everyday Moments Caught in Time" and Sarah Kay's spoken word "If I Should Have a Daughter" while enjoying a hearty potluck dinner of pasta, salads, butternut squash, and wine. From the perspective of creativity theory, the event works well because it brings together a diverse set of viewpoints, adds just a small dose of structure, and then allows the discussion to flow as it will. The group is thus on a collaborative mission (see last post) to learn and explore interesting ideas. From the perspective of the people involved, the event works well just because the food is delicious and it's a fun way to hang out with people after a long day. Here's the recipe, if you want to organize one yourself:

1. Select a theme. So far we've done "technology" and "stories".
2. Get your group. We had 7 for the first and 10 for the second, but I think smaller groups would work well too.
3. Select three TED talks or other similar videos roughly related to your theme. You can browse all of the talks at TED.com, and there's no shortage of bloggers who have sorted and tagged their favorites as well.
4. Have everybody bring over a dish, give everyone a glass of wine, and sit down to enjoy some talks! We've tried discussing each talk individually as well as waiting until the end; the best approach seems to be to let the discussion flow organically.

Both TEDLucks that we've held held have been fantastic, fun, and enlightening evenings. If you host your own and have suggestions or improvements, let me know! We'll probably run another within the next couple of weeks on the topic of community or citizenship; themes that resonate with personal experience and don't presuppose a correct answer (e.g., "sustainability") seem to be the most exciting.

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