A Lack of Focus Can Boost Your Creativity
How the right distraction can make you more creative.
No matter what our careers are, the number one thing we tend to work on is improving our focus and removing distractions. We’re obsessed with this area of productivity.
However, as a writer, my top priority is to be creative. Whether you dance, teach, or start businesses, coming up with new ideas and being innovative should be one of your top priorities too.
The issue is that, sometimes, the very thing we’re trying to improve (focus) ends up being the reason we get stuck on a problem. Through striving hard to pay attention to one thing, we end up constricting our creativity.
How being unfocused can make you more creative
In his book Imagine: How Creativity Works, Jonah Lehrer says that being unfocused and distracted — to a certain extent — can boost creativity levels.
To prove his point, he shares a study that two neurologists conducted at Harvard and the University of Toronto.
“The researchers began by giving a sensory test to eighty-six Harvard undergraduates,” Lehrer wrote. “The test was designed to measure their ability to ignore outside stimuli, such as the air conditioner humming in the background…
