General Blog

Episode 02. Thinking about Thinking… for Creativity (Part 2).

How I prepared for this “slow thinking” creative task. A caution on slow thinking & authority. Revisiting the “muddy water” metaphor. How to harness focused & diffuse attention by cycling. And the possible gift of Eureka moments.

Episode 02. Thinking about Thinking… for Creativity (Part 2).
Murky algae-covered pond, Wright Park in Tacoma. Indigenous land of Coast Salish tribes. Playing with low film speed (and connecting with grief) in autumn 2024.

Estimated read time: 6 minutes.

Hi! Guess what happened after I recorded my first podcast episode a couple weeks ago?

A few fun things…

One, I was chatting about the podcast with a “fellow podcaster” I know, and then they invited me to be a test case for their podcast production! A fine invitation.

Two, my mind kept surfacing post-edits from Episode 01. “I misrepresented this idea… there’s more to say on this. I forgot about…” Predictable!

Three, I’ve been sharing one-handed, 30-second piano improvisations in the Creative Compass group forum, and I played one back for my spouse. He suggested I use them for the “outro” of these episodes. A fine idea.

Four, a Creative Compass member told me a story of an “aha” moment that clarified the direction of their project. A gift.

These are a few ingredients that alchemized into the recording session you’ll hear in Episode 02. It’s not just “me and my phone” this time. It’s more polished, and hopefully even more clear than the first. Still loaded with richness.

And so, I present: "(Part 2) Thinking about thinking… for creativity."

NOTE: On a phone? Click “Listen in Browser” if you don’t have a SoundCloud account.

Continuing from Episode 01. Recorded generously with someone who’s getting into podcast production. My tune at the end. Leveling up! Wow.

Here’s an (imperfect) time-stamped written transcript too (in PDF form).

Like Episode 01, I'm stoked about this one! Again, it's a mix of memoir, psychological science, and strategy. And like the first, I draw on years of experiences and recent conversations.

If any of the topics below interest you, feel free to jump in wherever you like:

  • introduction + how I rallied to record the episode. til 10:38
      • Walk with me as I narrate my own Executive Functioning for this “slow thinking” task. I love the metaphor of fermentation​ to describe creative process.
  • a caution on slow thinking & authority. from 10:38-14:33
      • How knowledge- and practice-based authority sometimes requires an ongoing commitment to “slow thinking” with stronger data sets and quality learning experiences.
  • revisit the muddy water metaphor + a strategy. from 14:33-22:36
      • The story of how I learned about Diffuse vs. Focused attention/awareness/thinking. How waiting (to let our mental-emotional “mud" settle) can be a very active process, and an “important-and-urgent” one too. Strong emotions change what parts of ourselves we can access. 
  • harness focused & diffuse attention by cycling between them. from 22:36-34:43
      • How idea generation requires different conditions than implementation, and how waking up to the questions posed by our frustrations, can kick off subconscious idea-generation. 
  • the “Eureka effect” / Eureka moment. from 34:43 to the end
      • How it’s real, its possible dark side, and a beautiful “Eureka” story from the Creative Compass group. 

I recorded it a few weeks ago, and it took some time for things to come together. All good.

THANK YOU to those who contributed in any way, and THANK YOU for those who will check it out.

Here are a couple excerpts I think you’ll enjoy:

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“Metaphorically, one image that has been with me lately and has to do with creativity and slow thinking is the metaphor of fermentation…[of] creativity as a sort of process of fermentation where there's these conditions, and a ripening and an evolving where things could either become rotten and decay and die and get gross and sloppy, or they could be directed in a certain way to become something else that’s very life-giving and healthful. The creative process, like a fermentation process, is slow and it's not without its own sort of forms of death, or letting go, or change. And for me to get to this place right now, there's a lot of stuff in my mind [and] in my heart, in my body, even where I'm like, 'I wanna talk about this stuff. I wanna talk about this stuff. Here's this idea that's bouncing around.' And it's, it's a real process to take all of that stuff, and take step one, and then step two, and explore media, and look up research to help direct my thinking, and then get myself into an emotional and mental state where I can do this. And it’s...a process that's not painless. But what is the cost of not doing it? All that stuff stays in me. It stays in my mind. It, it doesn't get out into the world. So I kind of just wanna speak to that discomfort. How it is normal. It is natural. It is part of the process.” 

I reference the book Fermentation as Metaphor (2020) by Sandor Ellix Katz. (Gifted to me by a Creative Compass member.)

💡
"Slow thinking is reliable, but if you have enough experience doing it, you can become an expert or something like that [with this ability to look at something and make a, a pretty reliable, quick judgment] and I think a lot of us can think of examples of that. There is a caveat though, that is important, and I think it's really important right now when there's a real societal reckoning that we are having around science, for example, and authority, and what is trustworthy as far as how we come to know things and who came to know what and who to listen to. And that goes back to slow thinking. …There’s evidence that suggests that younger physicians, for example, are more likely to give you evidence-based care. You're more likely to live longer with younger physicians caring for you compared to people who have been doing it for decades. And that's because of their exposure to newer, better evidence. There is a difference…Depending on the area, it's not just about how much slow thinking [has someone] done on something originally, it’s, ‘How much are they willing to continue to engage in that and ask themselves those questions and be subjected to that kind of rigor?’ There's a very important distinction there.”
💡
“It is not passive to be actively waiting…Not a passive waiting, not a, ‘I’m helpless and whatever happens, happens, and I’ll just respond to it.’ But an active waiting. [It’s an] awareness that our minds work in this way, such that we get stirred up and we kind of become different people...Memories are state dependent…We can access only certain parts of ourselves when we’re in certain emotional states. Moods are extremely powerful, and we do get into these states where we’re not quite the same as we are in different states. We get stirred up and sometimes the most important-and-urgent thing to do is actively wait, actively let things settle until, before we do something we regret, maybe before we do something counterproductive to our own aims…You can’t force [the mud to settle]. It requires a stepping back.” 

REFERENCES IF YOU WANT TO DEEP-DIVE (in no particular order. And I’m terrible with formatting references. Sorry if that drives you nuts.)

BOOKS

  1. Fermentation as Metaphor (2020) by Sandor Ellix Katz
  2. Thinking, Fast and Slow (2011) by Daniel Kahneman
  3. Learning How to Learn: How to Succeed in School Without Spending All Your Time Studying - A Guide for Kids and Teens (2018) by Barbara Oakley
  4. Metaphors We Live By (1980) by George Lakoff and Mark Johnson
  5. The Eureka Factor: Aha Moments, creative Insights, and the Brain. (2015) by John Kounios and Mark Beeman
  6. The Tao Te Ching of Lao Tzu (several editions) by Stephen Mitchell

PODCAST EPISODES (I can't find the episode I'm looking for. They must have taken it down. This NPR piece references it though.)
7. The Psychology Behind When Emotions Turn Us Into Different People. Excerpt from 2019 Hidden Brain podcast by Shankar Vendantam. Accessed at npr.org

RESEARCH ARTICLES
8. Older and Wiser? The Need to Reexamine the Impact of Health Professionals Age and Experience on Competency-Based Practices (first published online in 2021) by Jing Xu, Kristen Hicks-Roof, Hanadi Hamadi, and Chloe Bailey
9. Physician Characteristics and the Reported Effect of Evidence-Based Practice Guidelines (first published online in 2007) by Christine Sammer, Kristine Lykens, and Karan P. Singh

Cheers, and stay tuned for more,

Caroline

P.S. I’d love if you shared this with someone today! These concepts apply to a variety of disciplines, including intentional learning or idea-generating in our personal lives. Educators, students, clinicians, parents, youth, those in healing or caring professions – really everybody in my view – deserves access to these insights from psychological science and philosophical writing. 

P.P.S. If you want to support Crystal Mind Coaching, consider upgrading to a paid subscription anywhere on the site. (I have $3 and $5 monthly pricing tiers now, with yearly discounts available. Wow!)

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