Instant Genius - How to boost your creativity, with Hilde Ostby

Episode Date: May 7, 2023

Ever had an ‘aha’ moment? The point where your thoughts somehow finally coalesce into a revelation? Or have you ever wondered where your creative impulses come from and how they’re formed? In this episode we speak to Hilde Ostby, author of the book The Key to Creativity, the Science Behind Ideas and How Day Dreaming Can Change the World. She tells us about nature of creativity, where it comes from and how we can nurture it in our own lives. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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You talking to me? Kayak, got that right. This podcast is sponsored by name, audio and focal. Streaming has made music more accessible than ever, but true listening is about more than ease. It's about quality. British audio experts name audio, alongside French acoustic specialist focal,

combine handcrafted tradition with cutting-edge innovation and high-end materials, delivering digital precision with analogue warmth, so you can experience exceptional sound at home. Music just as the artist intended. Visit name audio. to learn more. Hello and welcome to Instant Genius,

a bite-sized master class in podcast form. I'm Jason Goodyear, commissioning editor at BBC Science Focus magazine. Ever had an aha moment, the point where your thoughts somehow finally cover less into a revelation? Or have you ever wondered where your creative impulses come from

and how they're formed? In this episode, we speak to Hilda Ottsby, author of the book The Key to Creativity, The Science Behind Ideas and How Daydreaming Can Change the World. She tells us about the nature of creativity, where it comes from, and how we can nurture it in our own lives. So you're researching to the science behind creativity,

started after you had an accident, right? Yes, that's correct. I am fresh with my bike. I didn't wear a helmet, so I would use the opportunity to tell everyone to use a helmet while all riding in bike. And I crashed into the bottom part of a bridge. Under the bridge, I was crashing into the bottom part of the bridge head fast. and I had to rush to the emergency room. And after that, crash, the medical personnel told me I got a concussion.

No worries. I would be fine in three weeks. And that wasn't what happened. So I was sick for at least two years. I still live with long-term consequences. Although crash. And people have just recently started to, really go into the science of a confession.

So we have been talking about a compression like it's kind of a bruise or something, a bruise on the brain kind of thing. But it can really ruin your life. Anyway, right after the crash, I had a lot of idea. My head was just spinning. I wrote down 20 ideas that I wanted to write. I haven't written them all still. I was just out of control.

And it felt like I couldn't sit still almost. I was so energetic. And it was weird. Later on, much later, I read the story about another person who had a head injury and got a lot of ideas from that. And his name was Edward. You must have heard of him, but I'll tell the story without his last name. So Edward had an accident with a horse carriage. He was in America, but he was so rich, no British.

And after the accident, he got a lot of ideas. And he changed the whole career, which is also something quite normal when you have a head injury. And that is what happened to me. I became a writer because of this accident, actually. But he started learning the news to technology at the time in 1860 that was photography. And one day he met a guy who said, I have this question for you. I want to know if horses lift all of their legs off the ground while they're running. So Edward said, yeah, I will find out.

And he was full of ideas. So he put cameras along the side of the horse racing course. And it was a small space between all the cameras. And while the horse was riding past if the cameras were taking pictures, he took all the pictures and put them on the big wheel. And then he was taking the wheel very fast. he was running the wheel very past and that is

as you may know it was Edward Newbridge this is 1872 it was the first film ever made it's an example of how you can never know the full range of an idea

you can never know what an idea will be or be able to create and it's an example of a person who hit his head and was full of ideas And of course, I had to investigate this further. So what happened when I hit my head? Yes, one system in my brain called the executive function,

which is what we're in now when we're talking, when we're very concentrated, listening to each other, and taking in information from the outside world, that is the executive function. It's all over shorter memories. We're calculating consequences over actions. We're in kind of full frontal lobe activity here. But when the executive function is done,

we're opening up for a whole other system in the brain called default mode network, which was discovered by a brain researcher called Marcus Rachel. So, like you mentioned ahead, a really lot of things there. So when we're talking about creativity, in some ways we're talking about the creation of ideas, as you mentioned there.

And there's a whole field of research dedicated to studying this. So when people think about coming up with an idea, as you say in your book, one of the things that I think most people will think, if somebody says, what do you think when you have an idea or a good idea, let's say that. Not necessarily, actually.

Or a strong idea, let's say that. You have the aha moment, and that's something that you looked at a lot. So what do we know about the aha moment? What's going on in our brains when that actually occurs? Yeah, it's a lot of things, actually. The aha moment is very deceptive. So I'll explain that further,

but the aha moment feels like a kind of increase in perception. So it feels like something it's pulling into place. It's like, yeah, you can compare it to a Tetris moment, you know, when the Tetris pieces just fall down and

everything falls into place and it's a straight line there for a moment. That is kind of the aha moment. And it feels very comfortable. We love it so much. It's a dopamine rush in the brain It's also strongly linked to our hippocampus, which is the memory center in the brain, and to Talamis, which is the emotional center in the brain.

So it's very emotional, and from that it becomes very memorable. So many people will have a strong memory of where they were exactly when they had their aha moment. So it feels also the deceptive part of the aha moment is that it feels very true. And that is why we should always investigate further when we have an aha moment because purity theories have a tendency to have this aha moment in them and you will feel that they are very true. So you shouldn't trust that true feeling of that. aha moment, but it's very strong and it's also kind of paradoxical in a way that it feels good

even when you find out something that is very painful. Like, for example, you find out that your partner is cheating on you. And in that moment, it feels very good that you kind of suddenly understand all the lies and all the things that doesn't make sense before. You understand that. You understand that in a clear moment. Ah, it's because him or her is unfaithful to me. Ah, that explains it all. It feels good, even though it's a very painful realization. So that's the aha moment. Have there been any studies on the aha moments? Yes, it has. One other big studies have been done in Oslo actually at the University of Oslo by

Roel Threbe. He has collected over 800 aha moments to see what is similar and he's seen some tendencies even though all aha moments are very different

there are some similarities women can have more aha moments together with other people while men have more aha moments while alone. And also there's one thing that is very interesting to know is that if you're traveling, you will have more aha moment.

And that is interesting for two reasons. You know, the idea of the creative genius that was, it has been built, especially by British, artist actually. Like Lord Byron and you have to say sorry because it's so much untrue about this myth of the creative artist

but you know it's Barron and Shelley and Pete and all those guys they really they were good at making this myth alive and and they

the whole myth contains of a lot of elements it's melancholia and depression and it's madness, madness, and it's being outside all the norms and conventions, and it's being male. I can say just now that it's nothing saying that only male can be men, can be creative. There's no kind of structural differences between men's and women's brains, and we have a aha moments and ideas all the time.

We try to solve problems all the time. And we have strange and weird thoughts all the time, no matter gender. Also, they had this idea of travelling. So that's the one thing that I could debunk about this myth. It was the travelling part of the artistic genius. Because when we're traveling, we have a lot of ideas. And I found out that you don't have to travel far. It's just been a pandemic,

so I found out I could just travel in my neighborhood to have good ideas and to see the world slightly different. That is really what's happening when you're traveling. You see your life and the world from a different angle. And you can do that. You don't have to go to Greece. Coming off from that then, what role does curiosity play in the development of creativity? Yeah, that's kind of the most important thing, you know.

Curiosity is the thing that brings kind of, it's sort of an antidepressant, really. To be curious, you kind of, you draw the attention out from yourself, you're exploring the world, you're expanding the world. that is such an important thing to, I think in our culture, we are not good enough at protecting curiosity of our children. I am very worried about the school system here in Norway and I know it's in most of the Western countries. children are and they're dropping out of school at a certain age here

they're getting tired they lose their curiosity I'm really worried and at the same time it's an increase in depression, anxiety and loneliness among the younger people that we can see that this is

happening at the same time this loss of interest in the world and at the same time this increase in depression and anxiety disorders. So I'm really worried about that, that we're taking away children's curiosity too early. You said this place was steps from the water. We just haven't found the steps yet. How much did we save? Enough.

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This podcast is sponsored by Name, Audio and Focal. With over 100 years of combined expertise, Name and Focal have been bringing music to listeners just as the artist intended. Since day one, this mantra has shaped every innovation in high-fi design, technology and acoustic engineering, balancing craftsmanship and tradition with pioneering thinking. Name Audio pushes cutting-edge technology to ensure digital precision whilst sustaining Pratt, pace, rhythm and timing, the elusive quality that makes music feel alive and gives it emotional texture. Today, in partnership with French acoustic specialist focal,

name audio creates systems that deliver exceptional sound and unforgettable listening experiences at home. Try it for yourself at a focal powered by name boutique. Visit focal powered by name.com for more information. So another big force that you mentioned that's involved in creativity and in thinking and in living in general, really, is this concept known as the inner critic.

So what is that? And, you know, what can psychologists tell us about this and its development and its role? After writing the book, I understood more of the inner critic, actually, because I wrote a book about loneliness. And loneliness is a very strong force in us. It is a very high increase in stress, forcing us to go back into the ground.

group, to try as hard as we can to be accepted by a group. And this is a very primitive and early impulse that is implanted in us to keep us alive, really. So when we lived in a very dangerous nature, we had to be protected by our group. So to seek back into the group is a very strong force and this increased stress levels will heed low impact inflammation that again will give all of our major diseases like heart heart failure diabetes depression autoimmune diseases problem sleeping all eating disorders all yeah it's kind of driving a lot of diseases because this is such a strong force. So what I understood when I started reading about loneliness

is that this force is so strong in us and it will make us do anything to be normal to the group. So that is part of the inner group. The kind of free wish to be accepted by our group because our body is on a nerve system, this system hasn't registered internet, you know. Doesn't know that internet exists and that you can find new friends otherware. You just have to rely on that one group. So if you're in a work environment where people are very negative to you,

you will do everything to be as normal as possible and try to chip away all of your weirdness. That is one part of the inner critique that starts evolving from we're five to six years old. We start to really take in what the group is saying about us. Then it's not only the parents and what they say. It's normal. The other part is we're too efficient.

And if we try too hard to be efficient and to kind of, yeah, fulfill some kind of plan. You will be in the executive function in the brain, and that takes away from you being in that other system in the brain that I was mentioning earlier, the default mode system in the brain, which is a system for just aimless weird thinking. Right?

We just follow our own associations. And in this system, new research shows is a lot of researchers sitting around the globe just now trying to find out what happens when we're not thinking about anything, just humdrum doing and aimlessly thinking with thoughts. In this system, we're consolidating memories because memories have to be kind of massaged

into a long-term memory to become the same. long-term memories that we can, you know, pick up later on, right? Otherwise, they're just going through our brain and never speaking. So, and our memory system is there for a reason that it's there to create visions for the future. So we use our memories to create better visions for the future. That is also creative world, of course.

we need to have a vision. All these visions are, it is also kind of an antidepressant. So when we're depressed, we have problems making these visions that make sense. Your life now is a dark tunnel of non-possibilities. Whereas when you're happy, you have a rich set of memories with a lot of detail to them. research shows, and you can use all these details to make detailed vision for the future. Also in this system in the brain, we are thinking about our place in the hierarchy, our place in the group, our understanding of ourselves and other people also important for creativity.

And when we're not thinking about anything special, the most brilliant ideas fall into our head. So it's not only like that for me that when I'm when I'm biking for example I get a lot of ideas or when I'm swimming right when I'm not thinking about anything special I'm not stressed I'm not in the executive function I'm just you know in my own head thinking good thoughts not activated by the cell phone when I'm swimming I can't check my cell phone so I love that and and the most brilliant ideas fall into our heads research shows. This is a study from University of Santa Barbara. We have a lot of ideas all the time, but the most brilliant ideas comes when we're not trying too hard. Like Edward Newbridge, he didn't try too hard. It wasn't really his idea to transform our whole media culture,

that that was what they did when he solved this stupid problem of the horse's legs. Or I'll use another example in my book, which is Albert Einstein. He just gave himself a problem. No one asked him to solve the problem. He gave himself the problem of, can I see my own reflection in a mirror if I'm traveling at light speed? And no one asked him to do this. He was 15 years old. He was just, he was just, he was just, massaging this problem for 10 years until it suddenly, suddenly he got an aha moment out of that problem. And that sudden aha moment was the first theory of relativity. Right. So I think we should kind of cherish more the ability to have a problem and not solve it right away,

be able to stay in that problem and have the discomfort of not solving it because I'm thinking a lot of the most brilliant things can come from these long kind of thinking about something over a long period of time staying in the problem turning and twisting in our culture we are so efficient we try to solve everything all at once and we're we're not appreciating, taking a break, just not being targeted, right? Being a non-targeted person, it's almost like, yeah, you're telling them that they're a bad person. If they're not targeted and it's not efficient. So thinking about, like, you mentioned Einstein there and that, like, as we say, aha moments.

Do you think there's really such thing as a genuinely original idea? Yeah, well, I think genuinely original ideas are very rare. So, of course, Einstein had a relativity theory is extremely original, or the stream theory to Hawkinsor. It's a lot of brilliant moments in the history of science, but on the other hand, no scientist today can do anything without standing on the shoulders of giants. And that goes for all artists, really.

Me, myself, I'm living off of being a writer. So that's my job to be creative, but still I wouldn't dare saying that my ideas are original. I never have really original ideas. it's how I put them together, it's how I twist and turn the ideas, how I perform the idea, that is my imprint on my book. So my voice is original, but everything I write is kind of based on other people and their ideas twisted into something else. And I mean to write about, to write a book about creativity.

You know, it's thousands of books were written about creativity. So the only thing I can hope for is doing it in an original way, which I think I did. What do we know about how pursuing creative endeavors can benefit us? In Norwegian, it's a double-edged work, can we say that? of course human creativity has brought us where we are today.

Here I am sitting in Oslo talking to you in another country right? Through technology that me myself I could never try to make

this technology. This is technology built on other technology that was developed earlier that was developed on top of other technology

we talked in thousands of years of evolution for us to be able to sit here and talk like this. Right? And we can see each other even and that's crazy. Just that part is crazy. So that is of course progress. On the other hand, in my book I had to investigate the downside of the darkest side of creativity.

our creativity has led us into such a high level of civilization that we're also creating a lot of stress on the environment and that means we are now standing in front of a climate crisis we have to be able to solve this crisis together that the problem with humans is that we are so disorganized in a way. We believe in so many different things. We are not kind of marching altogether towards the same goal, which is the good part with human times, that we're so diverse, we're so different. And we have so many plans and ideas and ways of living.

We live everywhere, we eat everything, we make all these wonderful cities, and at the same time, we need to solve the problem of the climate crisis together, and that means we have to be maybe a little bit more organized, which is against our nature, I think. Maybe it's not one solution to the climate crisis, the same way it wasn't one thing, that led us into the climate crisis. So we have to, at least we have to nourish human creativity still, to be able to solve this biggest of all problems, I think. And that is why it varies with so much that the levels of depression and anxiety

increase among young people, because we need their brains to create a better future. So is there a sort of authoritative way of cultivating your own creativity through personal actions or perhaps education systems? Well, the education system is at fault, I think. More and more we try to squeeze out as good results as fast as possible. Whereas what I found, and I write about this in this book, is how being lost is such an important quality to being creative. Being lost, non-efficient to take breaks, to shield your own mental health. The research I looked into just recently shows how much depression and trauma is taking. away from your creative energy. So that is

taking, it's kind of sucking all of your energy away. All of your joy in life is taken away when you're depressed or traumatized or struggling with anxiety or other kind of mental health

issues. So it will decrease your creative energy. So we are always creative, always. But if you want to nourish your creativity, you have to take care of your mental health. And that means very boring stuff like sleeping. In Norway now, it's 85% of youth sleep too little. And sleeping too little is a driving force into depression and will take away from all of your

cognitive skills, really. And it's a global thing. We are so hooked to your screen that we are never able to sleep properly. So I hope you will, you probably made an episode about sleep earlier. So such a big problem for our mental health and also for our creativity, I think. So taking care of mental health means sleeping properly seven, eight hours every night. I do that. I'm really meticulous about my sleep. Eating relatively healthy and varied. That is good health and not being too strict about it. Going for walks or just going along the seaside I found

because the ocean or water is very linked to creativity. This is a big science project in Britain. It's called blue health. in the Blue Health project they asked people to report themselves when they were happy. This was a task given to 20,000 people in Britain. And the winning place with a landslide was the sea. When we're by the sea, we're very happy. And the researchers have a theory about this.

when we're by the sea, our brain goes into the default note network more easily. So you can achieve this by sitting in the bathtub or having a shower or just being by a lake or a stream. Charged Ludwitz dungeon was sitting on a boat riding up the Thames through Oxford with three children that were nagging him. because they were so bored. This was in 1862. They were so bored. They were on this river. And he told the story for the first time of Alice in Wonderland.

One of the biggest bestselling, one of the biggest bestsellers in the history of books. I would guess almost everyone on the planet knows this story. and it was something he didn't plan so he was non-efficient and he was by the sea by the water on the river and he was just free to tell this wonderful story

so by the sea is good or by the water and yeah or putting on music kind of introvert music has an effect on your default mode brain you go into this system in the brain where you can just test out to her own thoughts really,

so who actually with your own inner voice, have this wonderful, good idea, etc., etc. That was Hilda Ottsby, author of The Key to Creativity, the Science Behind Ideas, and How Daydreaming Can Change the World. Thank you for listening to this episode of Instant Genius, brought you from the team by BBC Science Focus magazine. The current issue of BBC ScienceFocus is out now.

Pick up a copy wherever you can buy your favourite magazines or download a digital copy from your preferred app store. You can, of course, also find us online at ScienceFocus.com. This podcast is sponsored by Name, Audio and Focal. The texture and emotional depth of music can be lost through digital sources or poor signal. Name Audio believes you can have digital precision with analogue war. Alongside French acoustic specialist vocal, Name creates high-end audio systems, combining innovation with craftsmanship, so you can listen to music, just as the artist intended. Discover more at namea audio.com.

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