What Children Teach Us About Attention, Presence, and Creativity
The mark of a person who is in control of his consciousness is the ability to focus attention at will.
- Michael Csikzentmohalyi
Recently, I spent a few months with my grandchild, who is less than a year old. During that time, I gained some fascinating insights into how the human mind begins to develop and how these early patterns may influence adult life.
I noticed two kinds of mental states emerging.
The first was focused striving: an intense concentration on an object, event, or goal. He would lock his attention onto something and explore it with remarkable determination.
The second was serene presence: a state in which he seemed simply to inhabit the moment. He was not trying to achieve anything in particular. He was just there; alert, receptive, and alive. Language played little role in this state.
What fascinated me most was not the existence of these two states, but how effortlessly he moved between them. While, the first state narrowed his attention, the second one expanded it. This continues well into adult life.
As adults, we spend much of our time constructing a sense of self. We organize our experience around categories, objects, goals, memories, identities, and stories about who we are. These become the raw material of our personal stories. But there is another mode of experience in which these categories lose their importance: in this we simply notice what is happening. We are present without constantly interpreting, judging, or narrating the experience. The first mode is often driven by goals and strong emotions. The second comes closer to an appreciation of the simple fact of being alive. And, a parallel is offered by neuroscience.
The Brain That Focuses and the Brain That Wanders
Researchers are increasingly studying two interacting brain systems: the Executive Control Network (ECN) and the Default Mode Network (DMN): The ECN helps us concentrate, solve problems, make decisions, evaluate information, and pursue goals, while the DMN becomes active when the mind turns inward or wanders. It supports imagination, reflection, memory, and the generation of spontaneous ideas.
The DMN is a prolific but undisciplined idea generator. It can produce dozens of possibilities:
What if my dog had wings?
What would I do if I became my boss's supervisor?
What if we approached this problem in the opposite way?
Most of these ideas will be useless, but that is not the DMN's job. Enter ECN which provides required discipline: evaluating possibilities, identifing promising ones, connecting them to reality, and turning them into workable plans. Creativity emerges from the interaction between the two!
Principles of Creativity Process
These two systems do not simply need to work well; they also need to engage at the right time. Creative thinking often requires an initial period in which the mind generates possibilities freely, followed by a period of evaluation and refinement. Brain-imaging studies of divergent thinking have provided evidence of this interaction between the default-mode and executive-control systems. The challenge is knowing when to let one lead and when to let the other take over. Here are four helpful principles:
1. Don't Judge Too Soon
The ECN is very good at identifying weak ideas and killing them. That is useful, but during the early stages of creativity, it can become counterproductive. If you evaluate every idea the moment it appears, you may kill an interesting thought before it has a chance to develop. Write down whatever comes to mind, even when it seems silly, incomplete, or obviously wrong. In effect, train yourself to follow this sequence: DMN first. ECN second. First generate. Then judge.
2. Stay Long Enough for Originality to Appear
Our first ideas are usually the most accessible ones. They are also often the most predictable. More original ideas tend to appear after we exhaust the obvious possibilities. That is why creative work often requires staying with a problem longer than our instincts suggest. The interesting idea may be the seventh one, not the first. Creativity therefore requires a certain tolerance for repetition and boredom. If you stop too early, you may never reach the interesting part.
3. Know When to Walk Away
Persistence has limits. Sometimes the harder we try to solve a problem, the more deeply we become trapped in an unproductive line of thinking. At that point, the best move may be to disengage. Take a break. Do something unrelated. Go for a walk. Sleep. Or simply stop thinking about the problem. Stepping away creates psychological and cognitive distance. It can help loosen the grip of unproductive associations and allow new connections to emerge. In creative work, not thinking about the problem can sometimes be part of solving it.
4. Give the Mind Some Constraints
An entirely open-ended question can paradoxically make creativity harder. If you ask, "What should I do?", the brain has an almost infinite search space. With no clear starting point, it may struggle to retrieve anything useful. Constraints provide a direction. Instead of asking, "How can I improve this?", ask:
How can I improve this without spending more money?
How can I solve this in ten minutes?
How could I make this simpler rather than more sophisticated?
A few boundary conditions give the brain something to work against. They narrow the search while still leaving room for unexpected associations.
Paradoxically, constraints can expand creativity by giving it a direction.
Overall, the most creative minds know when to focus, and when to let go.
