Stress and creativity

I'm putting this link here partly as a reminder to myself: Stress and creativity. It's specifically aimed at fencers, and how they can win tournaments more easily by being less stressed, because in the stressed brain, creativity often shuts down. (One of my Twitter and Ravelry friends, who is a fencer, posted it)

Hm. Remember all the times I've nattered about how "I can't design anything, I'm no good at this, I can't come up with any new ideas"?

Yeah, this just confirms something I suspected: that when you're under stress, you have a harder time thinking in non-linear ways, or in finding "funny connections" between things. (I used to be very good at that - maybe not figuring-out-anagrams-in-my-head good, but certainly making-bad-puns good).

And one thing I noticed these past couple days, after exams have ended, and grades are in, I'm beginning to see those "funny connections" again - generally, for me, it takes the form of seeing things as amusing that maybe other people aren't amused by, because I either see a pun in my head or I see how the think links to another incongruous thing.

So, I don't know: perhaps stressing over "I'm not creative" or "I can't come up with any good ideas!" makes it worse. (And wouldn't depressing the fight-or-flight response - which is allegedly one of the things the beta blockers are supposed to do - make it less likely? I haven't noticed an upsurge in my creativity in the last year or so).

But maybe that also explains why a lot of my "good ideas" for making things come when I'm on break, and also a lot of my research ideas come then. Perhaps I do need to work more at getting my head out of the "one inch picture frame" of work and instead relax a bit more, and maybe just let my brain work unencumbered by things like deadlines or the sense that "I'll never come up with something good."

It makes sense to me, though, that when you're under some kind of stress (in that article, they describe an experiment in non-linear thinking called Duncker's candle problem and how people who are told they'll be paid for figuring out a solution do WORSE than people who are just asked to do it "for fun") your brain doesn't work as smoothly, or perhaps, it's less willing to take those leaps of fancy that are what creativity really is.

I probably need to take up something like meditation again. Or just sitting quietly for five or ten minutes a day and not focusing on what I "have" to do.