Wired to Create

Unraveling the Mysteries of the Creative Mind
by Scott Barry Kaufman and Carolyn Gregoire | TarcherPerigree © 2016 · 288 pages

This book started out as a blog post by Carolyn Gregoire based on Scott Barry Kaufman’s work that went viral: 18 Things Highly Creative People Do Differently. Scott is one of the world’s leading creativity researchers. Carolyn is a senior writer at the Huffington Post. Together, they wrote a great little book on the mysteries of the creative mind. Big Ideas we explore include: the fact that creativity is a messy business (embrace complexity!), the power of walking for daydreaming (all the cool philosophers do it!), creating a nice home for your genius to visit (she’s got the magic!), creating again and again (and again), unitask rather than multitask (unless you want to atrophy the best part of your brain), and STAMP your life with your own personality (but only if you want to be great … and happy!).


Do I contradict myself? Very well, then I contradict myself. I am large, I contain multitudes.
Walt Whitman

“As you’ll notice, this book presents many paradoxes—mindfulness and mind wandering, openness and sensitivity, solitude and collaboration, play and seriousness, and intuition and reason. These seeming contradictions capture some of the polarities that come together in the creative person and that are reconciled through the creative process as the creator makes meaning out of her inner and outer experiences. Creative people learn to harness these widely varying skills, behaviors, and ways of thinking as the situation demands and to bring them together in new and unusual ways to come up with novel ideas and products.

The aim of this book is to shed light on the fascinating perplexities of the creative mind and to encourage readers to embrace their own paradoxes and complexities, and in doing so, open themselves up to a deeper level of self-understanding and self-expression. As we’ll suggest, it is precisely this ability to hold the self in all of its dimensional beauty that is the very core of creative achievement and creative fulfillment.

And so it is here, with the deepest respect for the intimate and complex connections between creativity, personal identity, and meaning, we begin our exploration of the things highly creative people do differently.

~ Scott Barry Kaufman & Carolyn Gregoire from Wired to Create

This book started out as a blog post by Carolyn Gregoire based on Scott Barry Kaufman’s work that went viral: 18 Things Highly Creative People Do Differently.

Scott is one of the world’s leading creativity researchers. He is the scientific director of the Imagination Institute in the Positive Psychology Center at the University of Pennsylvania, where he investigates the measurement and development of intelligence, imagination and creativity.

Carolyn is a senior writer at the Huffington Post, where she reports on psychology, mental health, and neuroscience.

Together, they wrote a great little book on the mysteries of the creative mind. (Get a copy here.)

The book is packed with Big Ideas and I’m excited to share a few of my favorites so let’s jump straight in!

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About the authors

Authors

Scott Barry Kaufman

Author, researcher, speaker, and public science communicator.
Authors

Carolyn Gregoire

Writer and author specializing in psychology, spirituality and holistic health.