In addition to the reasons you already have for taking a vacation this summer, there’s another one you may not have considered: Travel is thought to increase creativity. One of the difficulties we all face is the “curse of knowledge,” also known as subject matter expertise.Expertise is obviously valuable and required for success, but it can also hamper creativity. It can blind us to radical new ideas, because our mindset is so strong. That’s why it’s …
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Tag Archives: Jonah Lehrer
Jonah Lehrer “Self-Plagiarism” Brouhaha is Crap
They’re doing it again. The bozos. They did it two years ago with Toyota with “sudden acceleration,” when there was nothing there. They’re doing it now with Jonah Lehrer. The “it” is hyping something that is not a real issue. It’s actually a good example of the first law of subtraction–what isn’t there can often trump what is. A couple weeks ago, The New Yorker announced Jonah Lehrer as a new staff writer. That’s a …
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The Neuroscience of Creativity: Why Daydreaming Matters
Most people know that 3M’s Arthur Fry was not trying to invent the thing he invented in 1974–the Post-it Note–he was daydreaming in church. As neuroscientists now know, and was conclusively shown in 2009, it’s when our minds wander that our brains do their best work–it’s when we’re not trying to think creatively that we’re often most creative. That’s when a still mysterious process in the right hemisphere of the brain behind the right ear …
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