Creativity = Chaos, Order, and the Salience Network
Creativity is all about triangulation. Connecting the dots. Three layers. A new perspective. Even Einstein was all about how combinatorial play — vacillating between the laws of physics and playing violin — was the key to his creative thinking.
And creativity researchers are finding that this is true inside our brains, as well. We bounce between these networks like we’re playing creativity Pong. I hope these descriptions are neuroscience-y close enough to get my point across:
Central Executive Network (CEN) This lights up when you’re trying to decide whether your stovetop is on fire, or that’s just some steam from the asparagus. It’s where you make decisions, parent, work, and where you spend most of your day.
Default Mode Network (DMN) This is your brain when it seemingly drives itself home from work without your conscious knowledge. It’s the same network that’s activated when you daydream or your mind wanders.
Salience Network A layer deeper: This is where your brain decides how to perceive your sensory input, and how it affects you. It’s in the present moment, connected to insight, and controls the switch between the DMN and the CEN.
“The DMN loves saying things like, ‘Wouldn’t it be fun if we …’ or ‘One day, I would love to …’ but it’s the CEN that gets shit done. ”
Creativity and the Salience Network
Creativity, so the current thinking goes, happens when the DMN passes its daydreamy, hippie ideas through the organized, get-shit-done CEN, and the Salience Network — where your intuition, insight, wisdom, and gut feelings live — decide which ones can stay and which ones need to go.
The Salience Network gets activated in meditation, while viewing art, and — here’s my suspicion from teaching this to 2000 people — when thinking about your preferences, passions, and interests. It comes from the word ‘salient,’ as in noticing or noticeable. “That’s a salient point!” is the same thing as “That is a point that my intuition, insight, wisdom or gut feeling tells me I should notice.”
The three layers of the brain and creativity
Curiosity, Messiness, Safety: Creativity is born in the mind-wander-y, dreamy, procrastinating/marinating state of the DMN.
Action, Productivity, Organization: It gets solidified into potential action in the CEN.
Insight or Intuition, Wisdom, Aha!: And the SN decides whether to move forward based on knowledge and past experience.
Creativity needs all three, and it needs to be able to know it can bounce between them at will.
The bounce between the DMN and the CEN
And that’s where this information becomes useful. Next time you get ‘caught’ (or catch yourself) daydreaming at work, tell yourself (or your boss) that you’re in the Default Mode Network. But, if you (or your employee) wants to stay a liiiittle too long there, let them (or your brain) know it’s, ahem, time to switch over to the Central Executive Network. The DMN loves saying things like, “Wouldn’t it be fun if we …” or “One day, I would love to …” but it’s the CEN that gets shit done.
This is why I have all my students, clients and workshop participants write everything down, whether they think it’s valuable or not. Creativity might require triangulation, or even quadrangulation. (Septangulation?) Your brain is great at holding up to seven pieces of information at a time. Many creative decisions require dozens, or even hundreds of data points. And when you have to write a thing down, your CEN automatically kicks in.
Marination, Procrastination, and Introverted Creativity
The Central Executive Network is great at getting things done. The Default Mode Network is great at trying to convince you to go hug a tree, read comic books, or stare at a wall.
Here’s where the secret sauce lies: the Salience Network is the magic. Yes, the Salience Network takes time, space, freedom, prompts, inspiration, and the allowance of messiness (what I call ‘Introverted Creativity’). But trust that what it takes, it gives you back 10x. Better yet, you can build your Salience Network muscle — with its primordial soup of intuition, wisdom and insights — before you even need it. (That’s kinda what my workshops are — Salience Network gym workouts.)
As you know, the Salience Network loves to come out on a hiking trail, first thing in the morning, in the shower, on a smoke break, while washing the dishes — anywhere but wherever the Central Executive Network is watching with its scary hyper-focus on productivity and competence.
If you need to call it procrastination, call it procrastination, but I’m a bigger fan of ‘marination.’ Let the thoughts bounce around between the three networks. The connect-the-dots bounce might just need a few minutes — or even just a few seconds — of Salience Network/Introverted Creativity. I promise it’s worth it.