Your creative brain is being colonized. Here's how to save it.

CreativeRx: What happens to our originality and creative freedom when the shower is the last place we have left to think

CreativeRx is your dose of creative thinking in an exhausting world. Every week, I share observations on how creativity, play, and wonder interact with the world - think of it as a peek into my brain as a Creative Health Scientist.

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REACTIONS, NOT DISTRACTIONS, ARE DESTROYING OUR ORIGINALITY 🤖

We’ve been talking about how to become “distraction-free” since at least 2010.

For over 15 years, we’ve been getting advice from every productivity-minded person on the planet (😵‍💫) about how to live, work and create with less noise. We’ve been told that consuming information is bad - so, turn your phone on airplane mode. Or better yet, buy a device to lock it.

Or even better yet - go on a detox and completely shut out the world for a week.

Honestly, I’ve been guilty of both giving some version of this “advice” and holding onto it like a magic bullet, hoping it would clear my brain enough to make it an enjoyable place to exist.

But, I can imagine the same is true for you as it is for me: We are all - still - feeling more distracted, scattered and inundated than ever.

None of the advice has seemed to work.

And, even as I sat to write this essay I still believed it on some level. I originally started to write about how we are all just surrounded by way too many opinions. How the world has become too loud for our Creative Health to flourish - and we need to escape to make it quieter.

But, as I really worked through the nuance, I realized: We’ve been trying to solve the wrong problem. We’ve been treating all “distractions” like the enemy.

The thing is: Not all opinions, ideas and inputs are bad - they’re often fertile raw data that feed our creative brain. And, closing ourselves out from the world is a privilege many of us can’t afford to take.

Instead, it’s our speed of reacting - to everything that comes our way - that’s destroying our originality, autonomy, cognition and creative freedom.

Let’s reframe “distractions” for a second. Some of them, namely opinions, inputs and perspectives from other people are inherently valuable.

As social creatures, we deeply value other people’s perspectives - you can think of them as a form of currency in the human brain. Information isn’t just an “age” we’re living through. Having it is how we’ve always survived.

But, when we shifted from co-existing alongside information to thinking we have to opine on every single data point - that’s when our creative thinking disappeared.

We live in a hyper-reactionary culture - and this is actually exactly what I mean when I say our creative brain is “colonized.” It’s not that outside ideas can’t exist in our head. That’s actually how creativity begins.

It’s that they've all taken up permanent residence without our permission, crowding out the space where our own original, creative thinking was supposed to live.

This nuance came to me when I was pondering about “The Shower Effect” - a (real!) scientific concept I wrote about in our last Field Guide on Creative Breakthroughs.

TLDR; Scientists have found the shower is genuinely one of the most creatively productive environments we have. There are multiple reasons for this, but from my view - it’s not that we’re not “distracted.”

It’s because it’s one of the last places where you physically cannot react to anything else (wet hands do not make it easy to record or write - trust me, I’ve tried!).

With that extra space, our brain can finally comb over those valuable, random inputs we’ve collected all day - the video we watched, the Atlantic article we read, the conversation we overheard - and surface something in a way that’s unique to you.

That is what we’re missing in our world today: Not siloing ourselves completely from the world - but instead, approaching originality, creativity and true, personal meaning-making from a bottom’s up perspective.

Because fundamentally, we have no idea which data points will be a “distraction” versus a deeply powerful insight. The beauty - and struggle - is that we cannot fully predict what will bubble up to the surface when our DMN does it’s thing.

Our real opinions actually formulate slowly, and often uncomfortably; not in a 5-second reaction video.

During a time where it feels like the only thing we have left are our own personal unique opinions, our taste and our unique creative perspectives - it feels incredibly important to learn how to harness them.

I’ve honestly been so fascinated with this new approach to how originality is built that our next Field Guide will be spent unpacking it:

• How we really form original, creative opinions of our own in this oversaturated world

• Why right now, we have the process all backwards

• And how it’s impacting our lives, our cognition, and our well-being writ large

At the end of the day, to me, originality isn’t about having “good ideas.” It’s about being able to have the autonomy, freedom and agency to live a life that is truly our own.

So for now, ponder on: Where is your creative brain being colonized?

We can’t escape the world - and we shouldn’t want to. It gives the beauty and curiosity we need to be fully alive. So, look out next week for ways we can begin to pluck the weeds, plant the seeds and care for the everchanging garden of our creative brain, together.

From my brain to yours,

Katina, Creative Health Scientist & Daydreamers’ Co-founder + Chief Science Officer

Tell me what you think: Did this resonate? Comment below or hit reply - I read every response 🫶🏽

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1. A book the power of cultivating a rich inner life: I recently recommended one of my favorite books, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, to a Daydreamers member exploring their own creative authenticity. I was reminded of how it teaches the reader to protect that inner space, no matter where you are, and let those raw creative inputs bubble to the surface. It’s a long, meandering read - but I highly recommend it. Here’s one of my favorite quotes: “The place to improve the world is first in one’s own heart and head and hands, and then work outward from there”

2. Pete Wells’ detox from reaction culture restored his Creative Health IMO: When I heard this conversation with NYT former Food Critic, Pete Wells, this week I couldn’t help but think it represents everything we talk about at Creative Health. His personal transformation and restoration of his creativity - right in his own kitchen - is a beautiful story about how we all have a lot more agency than we think.

3. Not into taking 3 showers a day to clear your thoughts? 😅 Try soft fascination: I’ve probably talked about the psychological intervention, Soft Fascination, 100+ times - but it has been one of the most fundamental shifts in my creative health. Gentle movements, like cloud-watching, restore our attention and expand our creativity - a similar process to The Shower Effect. Read more in our Field Guide about the science or watch this video for my POV.

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UPCOMING FIELD GUIDE: HOW TO ACTUALLY FORMULATE YOUR OWN OPINIONS BASED ON SCIENCE, NOT JUST VIBES 🌾

The big questions I’ve been pondering: How do we actually form opinions that are actually our own - not assembled directly from other people’s thinking? What does the science say about where original thought actually comes from? And, what does unlocking originality do for our psychological health, success and creativity writ large?

What I’m excited about: The research here genuinely surprised me. In my experience, I thought original thinking is about having better takes, finding better sources, reading smarter people, curating a better information diet. But the neuroscience points somewhere completely different - and much more counterintuitive. I can’t wait to walk you through it 🤓

Why this matters right now: Creative, cognitive sovereignty is frankly the only thing we have left. With technological changes, AI, and even an influx of “expertise” from every angle - we can barely hear our own thoughts, let alone create them. I’ve been feeling the strain and I’m sure you are, too. It’s about time we start taking our power back 🤎

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BTW: Our next Discourse Club is 4/2 - we’ll be thinking, exploring and pondering all things original thinking and cognitive sovereignty together. If you’re not in yet, now is the time! 🧠