Is it September already?  

August sent me down rather a lot of rabbit holes.  Which is a very weird way of saying I did a lot of research on many different topics for my spark effect newsletter. I started with creativity and ended with curious mice.  I know, it’s a gift. 

The collection of sparks is worth a look:

⚡ Spark 1: Creativity needs a place to land 

Creativity isn’t simply a question of talent or discipline. For which I’m truly grateful.

One of the things that stayed with me from the research this month was how much creativity seems to depend on the conditions surrounding it. 

Being interrupted matters. Even a short break in flow can pull the mind out of the associative thinking creativity depends on, so it has to warm up again rather than simply continue. Feeling watched or evaluated too soon can matter too. Even the common expectation that an idea needs to be useful can change the way we approach it.

And yet we have a habit of treating creativity as something we’ll get around to when everything else is done. A reward after the serious work. Something enjoyable, perhaps, but not quite important enough to claim its own space. We save the painting, writing, gardening, photography, tinkering or whatever else absorbs us for that mythical stretch of spare time when nothing more important needs doing.

I think the opposite needs to happen.

We need to make creativity more prominent in our lives. To give ourselves permission to play with an idea before deciding what it’s for. It doesn’t always need a point at the start. Who knows where that creative freedom might lead?

Worth pondering: Instead of asking whether you have time to be creative, ask what would make creativity easier to begin.

⚡ Spark 2: Give familiar ideas stranger neighbours

One of my favourite ideas from this month’s research was that creativity often has less to do with producing something completely new and more to do with making unexpected connections between things we already know.

Sometimes the things being connected have no obvious business being together. A frog and a prince, for example. Not the most obvious pairing, yet someone put them together and we’ve been telling variations of that story ever since.

Our knowledge and memories don’t sit neatly filed away in separate mental folders. They form networks of associations. Some ideas are already close neighbours. Others live much further apart. Creative thinking can happen when we find a way of bringing those more distant ideas together.

Which gives me a rather useful defence of my research rabbit holes.

Going off track exposes us to things we weren’t looking for. An unrelated article. A subject we know very little about. A conversation that heads somewhere unexpected. A book picked up for no particular reason. Any of them can give a familiar idea a new neighbour.

And sometimes we don’t discover why that neighbour matters until much later.

It does make me wonder whether we’re becoming a little too efficient at finding answers. We have almost everything we think we need at our fingertips. Search engines and AI are extraordinarily good at taking us directly towards what we ask for. 

But what about the things we didn’t know to ask for?

There may still be something to be said for taking the scenic route occasionally, particularly when we don’t yet know exactly what we’re looking for.

Perhaps originality sometimes needs a little accidental company.

Worth pondering: When you’re stuck, don’t always look harder in the same place. What could you put beside the idea that doesn’t obviously belong there?

⚡ Spark 3: More input isn’t always more help

Two quite different pieces of research left me thinking about the same thing this month: our (my) tendency to assume that if some information is useful, then more must be even better.

When I’m researching I like to hoard information.  I always have.  AI adds an interesting new dimension to this trait because I now have access to almost unlimited input. I can ask for ten ideas, then ten more. Five alternative snippets. Another way of approaching the topic…  And if none of those quite work, there are always another twenty or more waiting.

But some of the research I explored this month made me think the more interesting part may be what happens after the suggestions arrive. If we are going to master AI we need to ask ourselves,

Do we keep generating, or do we stop long enough to:

question,

reject, 

combine,

and develop what we already have?

There’s a point where another idea stops expanding the possibilities and simply gives us one more thing to sort through.

I’m trying to get better at recognising that point.

Also, it turns out that feedback can have a tipping point. Another opinion, another suggestion or piece of advice might help us see something we’ve missed. But if we keep adding more, eventually useful information can become noise. Instead of making the next step clearer, all those competing voices can make it harder to decide what we think ourselves.

Worth pondering: Before asking for another opinion, another suggestion or another ten AI-generated ideas, does what you already have need more input, or just more time?

⚡ Spark 4: What we notice isn’t entirely neutral

Another three particularly interesting pieces of research crossed my path in August. On their own, they didn’t seem connected at all. Together, they wouldn’t go away.

The first was about joy. A brief positive experience (nothing dramatic) made people quicker to spot subtle positive cues in other people’s faces. The faces hadn’t changed. The perception had.

The second was about food. Researchers had people think repeatedly about food, then tracked what surfaced in their minds afterwards. Surprise, surprise: food-related memories kept turning up, unprompted, uninvited almost. 

I feel like this brain training has enormous potential. I just need to choose the right preoccupation.

The third was about mind-wandering. People listened to audiobooks while researchers watched their brain activity. When attention drifted, some language processing dropped away, as you’d expect. But not all of it. Somewhere underneath the daydream, the brain was still listening. Fascinating.  

I noticed the pattern before I understood it: in each case, what people picked up on wasn’t just out there in the world. It was already half-shaped by whatever was going on inside them.

Which makes me wonder about those stretches when something suddenly seems to be everywhere — an idea, a word, a worry, a red car, or news you keep bumping into. We usually ask, Has the world changed? Maybe the better question is, Have I become primed to notice this particular part of it?

Worth pondering: sometimes the more useful question isn’t only “what’s happening around me?” but “what am I currently ready to notice?”

⚡ Spark 5: Not everything worthwhile needs a payoff

A recent study of 106 adults aged 40 to 85 looked at how curiosity and openness link to the lives people build, using personality scores alongside real markers like years in education, job complexity and mentally stimulating hobbies.

Greater curiosity was associated with more exploration, learning and richer experiences. But when researchers tested the same group on memory, attention and processing speed, curiosity showed no advantage there at all.

In other words, curiosity may not necessarily make us better at things.

It may simply make life more interesting.

I rather love that idea.

We’re so used to attaching a benefit to everything:

Read because it’s good for your brain.
Learn something to keep your mind sharp.
Take up a hobby for your wellbeing.
Be curious because it will make you more creative.

But what if you want to know something simply because you want to know it?

I spend a ridiculous amount of time researching things that have absolutely no practical value to me at all. I’ve always thought this was probably a habit I should try to change.

Perhaps not.

Worth pondering: Interesting can be enough. Not everything needs a purpose.

Every week, I do a sweep of all the latest research in the Spark space (psychology, learning, creativity, awe, self- development etc, etc, etc.) I’m a curious one, for sure.

I take the best bits (according to no one else but me) and create The Spark Effect newsletter.

Check out one of my latest editions here:

https://sparkschange.substack.com/p/the-courage-to-leave-something-unresolved?r=1epaj7

Julie 💎 ✨ 🦋