You Should Go Home Early Today

I've been told we're in the middle of "the most important five day weekend of the year", but for the millions of us that are back at work this morning that won't ring very true. And for the millions more who, like me, don't have an office to be in but rather just the omnipresent crush of work to be done, that will sound decidedly unfair. Life is busy. Crazy busy. Tim Kreider, author of We Learn Nothing, had a great NYTimes Op-Ed on that subject earlier this week. "Busyness," he wrote, "serves as a kind of existential reassurance, a hedge against emptiness; obviously your life cannot possibly be silly or trivial or meaningless if you are so busy, completely booked, in demand every hour of the day." And these hectic schedules are often self-imposed. We aren't combat medics or case detectives; we're students and consultants and coders and volunteers and athletes and a million other things, all voluntarily and often simultaneously. As a result, we're busy. Crazy busy.

And the funny thing is, we don't necessarily even want to be, but we see people around us working themselves to the bone so we assume that we should be too. We're engaged in some sort of sisyphean arms race, keeping busy to stay busy. Who among us wasn't a little bit jealous when France mandated a 35-hour work week? I find myself enjoying the occasional headcold, just because it forces me to slow down for a day.

And that's admittedly pretty crazy. The effects of stress on the human body and mental health are well documented, running the gamut from headaches to heart problems to depression. At the same time, stress doesn't do much for our creative lives either. As I discusssed in an earlier post, creativity takes time, focus, and freedom. We aren't as creative under pressure, or in hectic, distracting environments. The space and quietness that idleness provide, as Kreider suggests, are a necessary condition for the "wild summer lightening stikes of inspiration."

As we get busier, we get more done, even though we know that doing so may not make us any happier. I wonder how being so busy affects our ability to create, to creatively explore, and to find beauty in the world. Maybe today would be a good day to take the afternoon off.

Happy Fourth, Everybody!

To celebrate we've got a super fun DIY project from Grathio Labs - Matchstick Rockets! Check out his great instructional on Vimeo, or head straight to the lab for the step-by-step and downloadable PDF. Remember, aim away from your face and never play with fire.

From the look of it, Grathio Labs is a great place for all sorts of fun. A Jeep-mounted potato cannon? Now THAT'S how we celebrate America!

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.