Sublime

Carlin Flora, “Everyday Creativity,” Psychology Today, November 1, 2009.

another emphatic micro-motive was exploring structure.

the psychology of the entrepreneur, finding that people who take on masochistic tasks like

As the psychologist Eleanor Rosch from the University of California at Berkeley likes to put it, “Science needs to be performed with the mind of wisdom.”

Soon, this exercise leads us to the idea articulated by Percy Bysshe Shelley: “Every man’s mind is … modified by all the objects of nature and art; by every word and every suggestion which he ever admitted to act upon his consciousness.”

As psychologist and prominent creativity researcher Dean Keith Simonton observed, “rather than obsessively focus[ing] on a narrow topic,” creative achievers tend to have broad interests.

There is a general consensus that optimal functioning of the whole system (whether humans, primates, or machines) requires both stability of goal pursuit in the face of distraction and disruption as well as the capacity for flexibility to adapt and explore the environment.31

It Starts with an Idea: Left Prefrontal Cortex and Visual Cortex Like Caroline’s

He remains constantly active and constantly vigilant, lest a stray prime worm its way into the walls of his pristine mind space. And while that constant attention may be exhausting, in situations that matter the effort may be well worth it—and with time, we may find that it is becoming less and less effortful.