It’s a warm spring day in St. Paul, Minn., and I’m sprinting across the Macalester College campus -- not to improve my intermuscular coordination, but to dart to an empty seat in a packed auditorium for the local stop of Jonah Lehrer’s book tour. A contributing editor at Wired and the bestselling author of “How We Decide,” Lehrer is a prolific science writer with a knack for delving into the intricacies of brain science in a way that is both compelling and accessible. His latest offering, “Imagine: How Creativity Works,” masterfully weaves historical and contemporary examples of individual and collective ingenuity with the latest research from the field.




Lehrer’s work is unapologetically interdisciplinary, his insightful real-world examples ranging from Bob Dylan’s songwriting to the invention of the Swiffer, from Pixar’s making of Toy Story 2 to 3M’s forays into the world of tape. Unlike most books on the creative process, Imagine is not a neat, tidy package of cookie-cutter solutions. Rather, it offers a nuanced treatise that teases out distinct mental processes often glommed together under the heading of creativity. In one chapter, Lehrer delves into analysis on creative collaboration, looking at research on social relationships of cast members in musicals. In another, he dissects the benefits of urban friction. Lehrer gives equal time to discussing the effects of sadness (and Benzedrine) on the creative process as he does to extolling the virtues of long walks and warm showers in bringing on much-needed epiphanies.

Though polite and soft-spoken, Lehrer is not afraid to defy convention. He boldly points out that research on group brainstorming indicates that it simply doesn’t work, and that activities which seem to be a drain on corporate resources or a waste of time (such as allowing employees time each day to work on personal projects, or seeking assistance from outsider rather than industry experts) often have astounding, if counterintuitive, benefits. His open-minded approach and ability to draw insight from countless disciplines made me wonder how his concepts could be applied to athletic performance.

Creativity is evident in the gym. It’s in the carefully selected cues, drills and exercises a seasoned coach uses to get a lifter to what they need to do. It’s in the way a grappler channels his strengths and weaknesses, navigating the limitations created by his opponent and problem solving on the fly. It’s in scrappy new gym owners using innovation and insight to obtain phenomenal results for their athletes despite extremely limited equipment or poor conditions. It’s in the products created to address problems or deficits in unique ways that seem so simple -- if not obvious -- in hindsight. It’s in painstakingly improved proprioceptive integration and in gleefully startling moments of kinesthetic insight, both. It’s in the delightful moments of letting go and approaching a sport through the eyes of a child, and in the painful moments spent slogging through grueling and often boring drills again and again and again.



I was thrilled to speak with Lehrer by phone in April, and asked him some of the many questions that arose while reading his book.

Do you think, is solving a real world problem kind of qualitatively different than, say, a teacher giving a student a test problem with an answer, or even a researcher giving test problems to people in the lab?

That’s a really interesting and important question, and there’s definitely a debate in the field on it, on exactly to what extent these measures of creativity in the lab line up with real world creativity. And you can talk to five researchers and get five different answers. The data’s all over the place.

Some tests have been validated by looking at real world creativity, so in this sense, like, Bob Dylan would actually score better on these tests of creativity. And there’s some evidence that that is true, that divergent thinking does both. You can measure it in the lab and those results do correlate with real world performance. But this is an ongoing debate, and I think it’s a healthy debate. I think it’s led researchers to continue to try to come up with better tests in the lab. And it’s also led researchers, and I think this is incredibly important, to try to do a better job of really finding ways to measure creative success in the real world

So in the book, I obviously cite lots of lab studies, but I also talk about studies that look at creative performance in the real world. Like the study on ADHD, for instance, this actually was not done with creative tests in the lab, it was actually done by looking at people in the real world. So I think it’s important to take both into account, and to realize that there may be a contradication.

There was one sentence in the book where you wrote about finding the perfect choreography for a dance and solving an architectural problem.

There is some degree of expressiveness in some sports or physical activities, but in some cases it is just a game of numbers. Some sports are more based on weights and numbers I think, as opposed to, you had a great chapter in your book about surfer Clay Marzo, and I think surfing is a little different as far as creativity goes.

Yeah, I’m not sure if you weightlift if you want to get too creative, because you might do some damage to your body. I’m not sure all sports place the same emphasis on creativity. Like track and field; I’m not sure when you’re running the 100 yard dash, how much room there is for creativity. That said, you know, you can look at the Fosbury flop and the way it transformed the high jump. That’s actually one of my favorite stories of creativity. Here’s this guy who struggles for years to be an athlete, and he really can’t find his niche; he wasn’t that coordinated. And then he invents the Fosbury flop, which is this radical way of doing high jump where you fall backwards, you jump backwards. What a crazy idea. Why would you ever jump backwards? We’re built to jump forwards. And yet the Fosbury flop becomes the dominant technique in the high jump. It allows him to win the ’68 Olympics and to break the American record. So that leaves room for creativity in athletic performance, but it’s also important to note that not every sport is going to require the same kind of creativity. Some sports are definitely more about execution.

I guess in Olympic weightlifting, what I’ve really picked up from working with the Performance Menu, where the creativity is… is that the way that people structure their training is very creative, all the different approaches to the same problem…and also people sharing strategies for solving problems that come up. One of the things that I found really fascinating in your book was when you talked about the benefits of sharing information instead of selfishly guarding it. Can you talk a little about that?

Sure. I think we often see creativity as singular. You know, we talk about one individual changing the world all by themselves… Oprah, Richard Branson, Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, But creativity’s actually a lot more social than this, so when to look at which factors predict, for instance, entrepreneurial success, what you find is that those with more diverse social networks are far more innovative.

So the equivalent in sports would be a football player who doesn’t just hang out with football players but also track stars and ballerinas and scientists, and … well, those with really diverse social networks, those entrepreneurs were three times more innovative. And you can measure innovation number of patents and trademarks, for example. So this strongly suggests that we do get our best ideas from other people. As Steve Jobs said, “Creativity is just connecting things,” but most of those connections are going to come from our acquaintance. So that’s why I think it’s important if you’re an athlete to not just hang out with people who are also in your sport. You’re going to get your best ideas talking to someone who’s in another sport.

That’s really interesting. I’ve trained in grappling in some gyms where coaches do not even want people to visit other gyms in that same sport, and that’s a connection I made to the examples you gave of companies who guard their intellectual property and trade secrets, as opposed to examples you gave (Silicon Valley, Shakespeare, etc.) where people thrived collectively from sharing that information.

Speaking of competitive sports, there’s kind of a saying that you learn more from a loss than you do from a win. You write a bit about sadness leading to improved focus and persistence with challenge. Do you think that would tie into that experience, with performing poorly or losing in a competition?

Definitely. Like I said in the book, negative moods come with benefits. When we’re downcast because we lost a big game, for instance, we’re more attentive, we’re better at focusing, we’re more persistent… So after a loss, maybe that’s a good time to review game plays, to think, “What did I get wrong here?,” to look at our mistakes and learn from our mistakes.

Niels Bohr has this great quote, “An expert is a man who has made all the mistakes which can be made, in a narrow field.” And I think that’s true of chess grandmasters and NFL quarterbacks; I think that’s true of every expert.

So maybe this isn’t an accident. Maybe that’s why this cognitive effect exists. After a loss, you’re bummed out, you’re sad. You probably lost because you made mistakes, right? Because someone screwed up. Well, that’s the time to review it. That’s the time to go over it. I think you have to fight the urge to forget about it and to just move on. Moving on’s important, but move on after you’ve looked at your mistakes and tried to learn from them.

I sometimes even wonder, for people in a sport where you have a choice over when and where you compete, whether you need to do harder competitions or compete more often to get that competitive edge; to kind of get that fire back when you lose and you’re like, “Wow, I suck.” I wonder if that’s what it takes sometimes…

The general lesson is the importance of challenging yourself, of putting yourself in situations when you’re not always going to win. And this is true in practice, too. If you’re practicing and you’re having fun, you’re almost certainly practicing the wrong way. You want to be pushing yourself at every possible moment to be on the verge of making mistakes, to be doing stuff that feels a little bit uncomfortable. This also I think helps explain why grit is such an important element of success, because grit allows you to practice the right way, which is not the fun way.

I’m not quite as familiar with the research on grit; I’ve mostly read second-hand reports about it. Is that something you develop or is that something you just have?

It’s a bit of both. It’s like most personality traits, which is actually in the ballpark of 50/50; 50% nature and 50% nurture. Which is actually pretty good news because it means that you can do a lot to build it up.

Can I ask you some really hard questions that are really only peripherally related?

Sure.

Just some things that came up to me while reading… When you look at something subjective like a logo, how do you define what is successful? Typically, a lot of graphic artists are happy when their client is happy, but you wrote about two different logos… In one of them, in the I Love NY logo, the artist didn’t like it. In a lot of instances, I think the designer would be satisfied with that, that the client liked it. The other logo, the Brooklyn Brewery logo, the artist liked it but the client didn’t like it at first. So how do you define success?

That’s a great question. I think if you’re Milton Glaser, if you’re an expert, if you’ve got the experience he does and you’re one of the most talented graphic designers in the world, I think you want to listen to him. I think creators have this remarkably accurate intuition when a problem has been successfully solved. So even though this may seem like, “Oh, it’s just a logo, how do you actually know?,” well, the designer might have that feeling, “I haven’t just found it yet. The client likes it because he doesn’t know any better but I’m going to keep on looking.” And that’s how you come up with “I Love New York.” Or in the case of the Brooklyn Brewery’s logo [the designer might think,] “I’ve found this logo. The logo hits it.” And the client may say, “Oh, we were looking for an Eagle, and the Brooklyn Bridge, not just a cursive B.” So if I were that client, I’d say, “Okay Milton, whatever you think, you know better.”

And that’s true in everything. That’s probably true in athletes, too. You know when you’ve done your best. You know when you’ve hit it. And it’s true for writers, too. You know when your sentence is good enough. Unfortunately, that’s rare for me. But you’ve got a sense of, “I did that one. That one I hit. That problem I solved.” To me that’s true in many domains. People have these intuitions, and I think we should use them more often, that not only are we able to say, “I can solve that problem, that’s within my reach, that’s within my grasp, I can make that move, I can shoot that shot, I can do this physical activity,” but the same thing applies to mental problems, and we know we’re getting closer to it, we know we’re making progress, and when it’s complete, we know that to. It’s kind of miraculous that we can do this.

I guess as an outsider looking at case studies, it’s hard for me to determine what their success would be. Is someone creating an invention that solves a problem, or do they just have a great marketing strategy? Is it positioning, or hype, or… There are so many variables. But you’re saying that someone can look at their own activity and know…

Yeah, I think you should begin by asking yourself, “Am I satisfied with this?” And then, of course, you need to negotiate the rest of the world. I’ve written things before and was satisfied with them, and then my editors took a read and of course they win; they can win any argument. But that’s the nature of creativity in the real world. It’s a very messy thing. But I think your first question should be, “How do I feel about this?” And, you know, take that intuition seriously.

Do you think there’s an inherent trade-off if you want to be creative or be successful, that there’s an inherent trade-off, like, that you’re going to be less satisfied? You’ve written about how many people’s creativity has a tendency to decline – unless they continually reinvent themselves – it declines as they become enculturated in the status quo… I’m guessing because it’s easier or more comfortable to not constantly be pushing the edge?

For sure. That’s kind of sad, right? I mean, it’s totally fucking depressing. But I think there’s a reason you see these peak ages of creativity. Because when we’re young and foolish, we don’t know any better, and then we go, “Oh, I figured out the game. I know how to get grants now. I know how to live a comfortable lifestyle.” It’s easier. It’s taking the path of least resistance. And that’s why people who stay creative their entire careers… they’re amazing. They’re legends. But I’m not sure I want to be them. I’m not sure I want to be Bob Dylan, who plays 200+ shows a year, or Paul ErdÅ‘s, who published a paper every 2 weeks and was hooked on amphetamines much of his life. This is kind of miserable, right? So there’s definitely a trade-off. I’m not sure between creativity and success, I wouldn’t call it success, but I’d say between creativity and comfort.

I just think about guys who maybe compete and always win in the local scene but do not stand out in the national or international level… It’s comfortable for them, and they have a certain level of success in that they can beat everyone locally, but they’re not pushing themselves as much as they could be. I mean, there are a lot of athletes I think that would trade off comfort for success and some that wouldn’t; I’m not sure if I would…

It definitely is something I think everyone struggles with, right? I mean we all know we could be better, but at what cost? And I think we’re always taking stock of ourselves on these curves. I can get there, but how many hours am I going to have to put in? How much blood, sweat and tears is involved? I think deep down we’re always making those calculations and they determine whether we curl down in front of the TV or go back to the gym, whether we go back to the office and chain ourselves to our desk or have a beer. I’m not advocating success at all costs by any means. I think it’s a calculation we all have to do.

Okay. I have so many more questions, but I want to be respectful of your time, so let me end with one on a lighter note. Since you’ve written about the cognitive consequences of color and architecture… what color should you paint your gym?

Your gym, I’d go for red. Not only would you get the benefits of focus, but you’d also get the benefits of vigilance. You probably don’t want people lifting in a sky blue gym. You don’t want them daydreaming too much while lifting heavy barbells. That seems a little dangerous to me. So red is associated, at least in the West, with blood, stop signs, danger. So people are more aware, they’re better at recall of words and proofreading. If I were a gym owner, I would want aware, vigilant users. I wouldn’t want people coming up with lots of big creative ideas while on the treadmill; I’d want them focused on the treadmill so they wouldn’t hurt themselves.

Interesting. I did also wonder, we’re big on evolutionary biology, and I wonder if there’s a case to be made for training outside.

So maybe what you want is a lot of natural light, people exposed to the light, an open airy space, with a few red walls. I’m not sure how the average trainer would react to a powder blue gym. They might be pushing it.

You’d have to do yoga.

Yeah, the yoga studio should definitely be powder blue.

SIDEBAR:

10 STRATEGIES FOR INCREASING CREATIVITY IN THE GYM

1. Are you burnt out and overwhelmed? Feeling totally and completely stumped, but in desperate need of an epiphany that just won’t come? If you've spent a ton of time trying and failing to come up with ideas, simply cannot deal with it anymore and are not getting any closer to the solution, just stop. Take a warm shower, go on a hike (without your Smartphone), watch a funny movie, go to a night of stand-up comedy or simply give up and do something else for a while. The answer may very well come to you.

2. Do you need to work on refining your technique? Feel like you're gradually making progress? Buckle down and tap into your internal fortitude. Spend more time trying to figure out what you need or whittling away at the problem. Use caffeine, if necessary, or the harsh words of your critics, or blast some sad tunes on your iPod; whatever it takes to get you to persist with the challenge.

3. Are you a dancer or gymnast struggling with a set that has become too formulaic? Relax. Let yourself go a bit. Welcome that first mistake. Pretend you are a kid again, approaching your activity like you would as a child.

4. Want to make sure you're constantly honing new ideas or coming up with new ones? Make sure to travel--abroad if you can. Instead of just enjoying your getaway, though, make sure you spend time during the trip thinking about those problems you just can't solve back at home.

5. If you’re an athlete or coach constantly surrounded by people in your same sport, try surrounding yourself with strangers. You may even want to put yourself in a somewhat uncomfortable situation where you can talk to people who are very different from you. Ask someone you've never met about their work or life. The more you force yourself into these random interactions, the more likely you'll get something unexpectedly useful out of it, even if it's an association you make on your own later in the day or week.

6. If possible, try to talk to people in other sports or activities about the technical nuances with which you’re struggling. If that's not possible, try to pretend you are an outsider and find a way to observe your own problems tediously, carefully, as if you were from a different planet.

7. Visit other gyms and see what they are doing, and share what you are doing. Be less concerned about your own secret methods or intellectual property. Competition may create rapid growth, but collaboration can lead to a more refined growth, which can help take your region to the next level.

8. Feeling stagnant? Compete in a very high level tournament, or get critiqued by a coach who is a staunch perfectionist. Work with people who are better at your sport than you could ever imagine. This can help you get some fire back. Just make sure the critique you get is constructive; not just a list of problems but some strategies to fix them.

9. Have you been working on projects with the same group of people over and over again? Try to add some people you don’t know to the mix. You don’t have to stop working with your trusted group of co-conspirators in favor of an entire group of strangers, but adding an outsider or two can shake things up a bit and ultimately strengthen your project.

10. Some A-level companies allow employees time off for innovation during their workday, as long as they share what they’re working on with others. We don’t all have that luxury, but we can certainly try to tinker with a side project in our off time – even if it doesn’t seem immediately relevant or appears only peripherally related.