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Cog­ni­tive load hinders

Now, it seems that I have been vin­di­cat­ed. A study by the Uni­ver­si­ty of Ohio researcher Cort­ney S. Rodet looked into cog­ni­tive load (in oth­er words, hav­ing ​“a lot on your mind”) and its effect on creativity.

Rodet had the par­tic­i­pants in the study do an exer­cise where they were asked to come up with as many alter­na­tive uses as pos­si­ble for three very mun­dane objects. Dur­ing the exer­cise, some par­tic­i­pants were also asked to remem­ber both a sin­gle num­ber and a sev­en-dig­it num­ber sequence. The oth­er par­tic­i­pants did­n’t have to remem­ber anything.

It turned out that the par­tic­i­pants who did­n’t have to remem­ber any num­bers came up with sig­nif­i­cant­ly more alter­na­tive uses than the oth­ers. They were thus more cre­ative — in this par­tic­u­lar regard, at least. Addi­tion­al­ly, their ideas were more var­ied, while the ideas of those who had to think of num­bers at the same time were more alike.

A way to more creativity

This is inter­est­ing and rel­e­vant, as all of us who have to find solu­tions to prob­lems in our work need to be cre­ative — even if our title is not ​“cre­ator”. One thing struc­ture helps us with is low­er­ing the cog­ni­tive load, in that we don’t have to remem­ber as much if we have a good structure.

Do this

Find out what you can do with your struc­ture to facil­i­tate your cre­ativ­i­ty and avoid being unnec­es­sar­i­ly hindered.

The next time you need to do some­thing where you need to come up with some­thing new, find a new solu­tion or get a new idea and you are hav­ing dif­fi­cul­ty focus­ing, pay atten­tion to what is going on in your head and com­pet­ing for your atten­tion. That can be a clue as to how you can refine your structure.

Is it some­thing you can’t miss doing — ques­tion your­self and con­sid­er if you have writ­ten down every­thing you have to do so you can let go of the thoughts.

Is it a more gen­er­al feel­ing of ​“there is so much now” — emp­ty every­thing you have on your mind onto a sheet of paper and make a map­ping of what it is that is so much. If this clar­i­fi­ca­tion and relief feel good, con­sid­er emp­ty­ing your head in the same way more often than before. Is such a map­ping some­thing you should do every week?

More space for creativity

If the struc­ture keeps track of every­thing, you can let go of the thoughts when you need your cog­ni­tive capac­i­ty for cre­ativ­i­ty. You have less to think about and can enjoy the free­dom of look­ing for bold solu­tions to the yet unsolved prob­lems you have at hand.

How do you do it?

What in your struc­ture helps you be cre­ative the most? Please write to me and let me know. I’m also inter­est­ed in these aspects of how we work as smooth­ly as pos­si­ble, so I look for­ward to hear­ing from you.

(Did you know you can plan your breaks to increase your cre­ativ­i­ty?)