How the Seven Mental States of Creative Work guide your art through The Four Stages of Control

Making a creative insight happen isn’t as straightforward as picking up a bale of hay, or screwing in a steel bolt. The destination isn’t as clear, and the path to get there is even harder to see.

Creative insights are generated through Graham Wallas’s now-famous Four Stages of Control.

1. Preparation: Learning everything you can about the problem.
2. Incubation: Your unconscious mind works on the problem while you do something else, whether walking in the park, sleeping, or working on another project.
3. Illumination: The “aha!” moment. The moment of insight.
4. Verification: Evaluating the potential solution.

What’s so hard about getting through The Four Stages of Control?

If you’re solving a very simple problem—or, if you’re just extremely lucky—you might take an idea through all of these stages in one sitting. It usually won’t work that way. Here’s why you can’t simply guide your work through The Four Stages of Control:

• The rhythms of life don’t line up with The Four Stages. Many problems will take not just hours, but days, weeks, or years to reach a solution and bring it into the world. Meanwhile, you have to eat, sleep, and generally live your life while you guide your idea through these stages.
• Work doesn’t progress through The Four Stages linearly. You may learn about the problem, Illuminate a solution, and find out while Verifying the solution that you need to go back to the Preparation stage, or simply work on something else, so you can allow your idea to Incubate more.
• Art is hard. While being creative is inherently enjoyable, actually bringing your art into the world is inherently painful. Your monkey mind will play tricks on you to convince you you’re better off watching Netflix, or that you really need to scrub your coffee mug.

Why divide up creative work by mental states?

By dividing up your work and life by mental states, you can guide your work through The Four Stages of control, while accounting for the rhythms of life, the non-linear nature of creative work, and the inevitable difficulty of making your art real.

• Mental states work with your natural energy fluctuations. You probably have a “creative peak” during your day (often in the morning), and you have an “analytical peak” as well. Your energy also probably fluctuates throughout your week. By identifying mental states, you can work according to these energy fluctuations, instead of fighting against them.
• Mental states focus your energy. When you identify a mental state, and try to work according to that mental state, you “lock in” to that kind of work. Since you’re working with your natural energy fluctuations, you’ve also created a sense of urgency that helps you focus in the moment.
• Mental states prevent burnout. Identifying and working with mental states, and working with an awareness of The Four Stages of Control, keeps you from pushing too hard on a creative problem and burning yourself out. You also save mental energy by not switching from one mental state to another without being aware of it.
• Mental states protect you from distractions. By working with mental states, you can identify times and places to do the things that might otherwise distract you. This deepens your focus on the task at hand. Also, since you’re preventing burnout, you retain the valuable willpower to resist distractions.

What are the Seven Mental States of Creative Work, and what do they do?

The mental states of creative work serve various purposes for guiding work through The Four Stages of control. Mental states set the stage for creative thinking, they collect the raw materials for creative insights, and they help you actually make the art.

The Seven Mental States of Creative Work are: Prioritize, Generate, Explore, Research, Recharge, Polish, and Administrate. Here’s how they make creative work happen.

Setting the stage for creative thinking

To think creatively, you need fresh creative energy, and the mental space to not be distracted. These mental states set the stage for creative thinking:

• Prioritize: Establishing clear priorities to focus your creative energy.
• Recharge: Relaxing to refuel your creative energy.
• Administrate: Taking care of pesky details of keeping your life and business running so you can keep doing your art.

Collecting the raw materials for creative insights

Explosive insights are the result of seemingly disparate elements being combined in new ways. So, you need raw materials to connect to one another. These mental states collect the raw materials:

• Exploration: By following your curiosity, you collect new information that you can mix and match in various ways. These things happen to also be things you’re more motivated to pursue.
• Research: By Researching your problem, and Researching to answer questions you encounter while trying to solve your problem, you not only collect raw materials for insights, you also gain the knowledge you need to sharpen your work.

Making the art

Once you’ve set the stage for creative thinking, and you have the raw materials for creative insights, you have to actually do the work. These mental states create breakthrough ideas, and make them into something that will impact others:

• Generate: Actually sit in front of the keyboard, or get on the tightrope. Make a habit of creating some kind of deliverable, whether it’s a one-woman play, or a blog post. When you Generate, you “roll the dice”. You increase your chances of a creative breakthrough.
• Polish: Make your work ready for the world. Revisit your research, dot your i’s and cross your t’s.

How do the Seven Mental States of Creative Work guide your art through The Four Stages of Control?

Because the Seven Mental States of Creative Work account for the rhythms of your life and work, they don’t line up with The Four Stages of Control on a one-to-one basis. Think of them like gears in a perpetual motion machine, each one turning the other, while guiding your work into the world.

Preparation

Preparation is originally intended to be about understanding the problem. But naturally, setting the stage to solve the problem is also a part of Preparation.

• Exploration: The Four Stages of Control assume that there is a defined problem, but through Exploration, you allow your curiosity to lead you new problems, or solutions to problems you didn’t even know existed. You Prepare yourself with new knowledge of the problem, or new problems to solve.
• Research: When you have identified a problem, Researching helps you learn all you can about it. You Prepare yourself with real knowledge that can help you reach practical solutions.
• Prioritize: By having clear priorities, you keep distractions out of your head, and focus your energy by defining the work at hand. You Prepare your mind to attack the problem.
• Administrate: Ensure your clients have paid your invoices, and you have a fresh stock of lightbulbs. You’ll be more Prepared by prevent pesky details from interfering with your work.

Incubation

Incubation can happen at any time when you aren’t focused on the problem. It can happen in the shower, while you’re working on something else, or even when you drift off into a daydream while trying to work on the problem. But, there are a couple of mental states that are especially powerful for encouraging Incubation.

• Recharge: When you sleep, spend leisure time away from work, or focus on a hobby, you allow your unconscious mind to work on the problem, while your internal critic is away. The problem Incubates while your creative energy Recharges.
• Exploration: Following your curiosities takes your mind off of the problem. The problem Incubates while you think about something else.

Illumination

Illumination—the “aha!” moment—marks the end of an Incubation period. Like Incubation, Illumination can happen anytime, anywhere, but there are a few mental states that help create the conditions for it.

• Generation: There’s no better way to increase your odds of reaching a solution than by actually generating work. Each little piece of work you create is another roll of the dice toward Illumination, and reaching an explosive solution.
• Exploration: While you’re following your curiosities, you’re introducing new nodes of information that can collide with what you already know about the problem. This causes Illumination, and brings about new insights.
• Recharge: When you rest or engage in leisure, your unconscious mind sometimes solves the problem — or some random thing at hand collides with something in your mind to Illuminate, and bring you the solution.

Verification

To actually bring impactful work into the world, you need to be sure that it is a good solution to the problem, and will be received well. These mental states help you Verify your work.

• Research: Does your work match up with what is known about the problem? If it departs from current wisdom, is there a reasonable explanation of why?
• Polish: If you want people to take your work seriously, it will need Polish. Is it well-crafted? Is the point-of-view clear? Does it hit its target audience?

By identifying the Seven Mental States in your own creative workflow, and arranging them according to the rhythm of your creative energy, you can guide your creative work through The Four Stages of Control, and create more work, and better work, while killing procrastination, and preventing burnout.

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