Today I host a conversation with Carolyn Gregoire and Scott Barry Kaufman, the co-authors of the 2015 bestseller, Wired to Create. Their working title was “Messy Minds” and one of the core ideas of the book is just that - deeply creative folks can manage messiness, plow through paradox and move calmly through contradiction.
These capacities are also powerful tools for managing a creative relationship.
I’m doing a series of interviews with co-founders on how they design their conversations (ie, their broader relationship) and manage themselves and each other while building and running a company.
A book is a mini-company, and so when I met Carolyn through a friend, I thought she and Scott would be amazing folks to unpack how a high tolerance for dissonance, complexity, ambiguity, and chaos can help us make amazing things, together.
Creativity, making something new, isn’t ever a clear linear progression towards the dream, the magical ideal goal. There’s always iteration, recursion, re-invention…and being patient with the process, your creative partner and yourself - that last one is a truly powerful key.
One of my favorite insights was the idea of the importance of sensitivity and awareness of your own inner state and the willingness to take downtime…both to manage yourself, refuel and to trust that stepping back will always help - since constant production isn’t possible!
One thing you’ll hear over and over again is the complementarity and flow in a positive creative relationship: being able to feed back and forth between each other and also give and take, grounded in respect and admiration for each other's skills and contributions. This respect for the other’s skills allows for a dramatic increase in output through parallel work, or relay-race style collaboration.
Make sure to check out Carolyn’s other writing and book doula work at carolyngregoire.com and Scott’s podcast, course, and his recent best-selling book, Transcend, at scottbarrykaufman.com.
Links, Quotes, Notes, and Resources
Wired to Create, by Scott Barry Kaufman and Carolyn Gregoire
Trust the Process, by Shaun McNiff
The Messy Middle, by Scott Belsky
Origami: From Angelfish to Zen
Minute 8
Carolyn Gregoire:
I always think of creativity in terms of birth metaphors, which is a little bit cheesy, but I think they're very apt. I do think you go into a project with these just big dreams and expectations and all of the hopes of what it can be. That's important because I think it gives you the fuel, but then you do confront the challenges and the reality, and I loved working on the book. And of course, though I had my moments where I was like, "Can I really do this? I've never written a book before. I'm going to fail," all of this self-doubt, the moments of stress.
But then, if you can keep the seed of the magical thinking alive, which is I think part of what we're tasked with doing as creative people, it does carry you through to the end. And then, yes, I did have like a postpartum dip afterwards. It's like, you put something out into the world that's been with you for what I think our process was nine months actually, and there's a little bit of a sense of emptiness and you want to fill it up. At least I experienced wanting to fill that immediately with something else, but it's good to sit in that open space after you put something out into the world and just give yourself some breathing room and then let the next thing come in and emerge as opposed to what I sometimes tend to do, which is just reach for something else. So I totally agree with both of those things.
Minute 11
Carolyn Gregoire:
But I think having a collaborator in whatever form really helps you to sustain the commitment and keep the energy flowing. It's not that it can't be done, but it's just not as fun and it's harder to sustain the motivation, I have found, in my own projects, and then helping other people with books, which is part of the work I do now. It's so key to have someone else there in some capacity.
Minute 20:
Carolyn Gregoire:
The creative process, I think, comes from that, the tension and the unknown. There's actually two great books that speak to the point that Scott just made. One is actually called Trust The Process. That's by an art therapist and it's incredible. He really talks about how those moments of attention that we see as an obstacle or something going wrong or getting in the way are actually what push us to be forced to break through it. That's kind of what the breakthrough always comes from, and I think that's absolutely true. And then there's another book called The Messy Middle, which really talks about the stage of the process where things really get convoluted and you just don't want to continue and it all kind of like... You're not feeling good about the project anymore and obstacles arise, et cetera.
Minute 24
Carolyn Gregoire:
That's a great question. I don't know if this is a map that may be a key that would unlock a part of the map, which is something that I've only learned more recently after going through so many creative processes and it helps me now that I understand it for myself, but that when you're stuck with something or something's not working, or there's real doubt or frustration, there's valuable information in that. It's not just like a personal... Usually, at least for me, it's not just my own self-doubt of I'm going to fail or whatever. It's like there's actually something missing here or there's something wrong and I'm feeling that, and if I push into it and if I really investigate, instead of turning away from it, I realize there's something that that's telling me.
Minute 34
Scott Barry Kaufman:
I get the sense that for a lot of creative people, the reward is inherent in the process and it's not so focused on the goal and focused on producing the work and making sure the product gets out there. You have a lot of creative people that enjoy the process so much that it's like, "Oh, now it's out there. Yeah. I forgot." I mean, I'm kind of that way. Once the book's out there, I want to move onto something else.
Minute 35
Scott Barry Kaufman:
to me, creativity mirrors the self-actualization process more generally. It's a never ending process. One goes their whole life continually growing and learning and finding meaning. And to me that's what's enjoyable. That's what's enjoyable about life. It's the continuous nature of the change in the learning and the creating. It's not the doing, at least for me, and I can say a lot of creative people.
Minute 38
Daniel Stillman:
What do you feel like is your brightest key to trusting the process?
Scott Barry Kaufman:
Oh, well, it's also trusting yourself. It's trusting your own capacity to fail and get up again, and being able to be comfortable in the space of trial and error. A lot of people's being is not very comfortable with trial and error. The second they have an error, they're done. They're not trialing again. I mean, look, I got an interesting taste from this. I tried out stand-up comedy recently. It's been a long-term dream of mine, and it's interesting. Some jokes fall flat, and you're like, "Okay, we've got to bring that one to the laboratory and tweak some words and then try it again. See if it gets a laugh." That trial and error process to me is fun. It's something I trust myself that I can learn from my mistakes. I think that's a big key, is that you trust that you can learn from mistakes so you're not so scared of mistakes.
Daniel Stillman:
When I was a younger man, I was much older in the sense, in the Bob Dylan sense. I really wanted to not make mistakes. I thought the only way you learned was by doing things right, and it's a heavy burden to carry. Ironically, I mean, we all know this, that no experiment ever fails. Experiments are information, but there is a lot of fear that comes from looking bad, from falling flat, of our own expectations or expectations that we think others have of us.
More About Carolyn and Scott
About Carolyn
Hi! I’m Carolyn. I am a Brooklyn-based writer exploring the realms of psychology, spirituality and creativity. I’m the co-author of Wired to Create: Unravelling the Mysteries of the Creative Mind (Penguin) and creator of the Webby Award-winning CREATIVE TYPES personality test, which has been taken by over 7 million people worldwide.
My writing has appeared in publications like Scientific American, TIME, Harvard Business Review, The New Republic, Quartz, Yoga Journal, Tricycle: The Buddhist Review and The Huffington Post, where I worked for five years as a Senior Writer. I have written or contributed to nine books on creativity, health and human potential, including Arianna Huffington’s New York Times bestsellers, Thrive and The Sleep Revolution, and the foreword to a new translation of the classic philosophical work, Meditations by Marcus Aurelius.
About Scott
Scott Barry Kaufman is a cognitive scientist and humanistic psychologist exploring the mind, creativity, and the depths of human potential. He is a professor at Columbia University and founder and director of the Center for Human Potential. Dr. Kaufman has taught at Columbia University, Yale, NYU, the University of Pennsylvania, and elsewhere. Dr. Kaufman received a B.S. in psychology and human computer interaction from Carnegie Mellon, an M. Phil in experimental psychology from the University of Cambridge under a Gates Cambridge Scholarship, and a Ph.D. in cognitive psychology from Yale University. He is also an Honorary Principal Fellow at the University of Melbourne’s Centre for Wellbeing Science.
Dr. Kaufman hosts the #1 psychology podcast in the world— The Psychology Podcast— which has received over 20 million downloads and was included in Business Insider’s list of “9 podcasts that will change how you think about human behavior.” Dr. Kaufman is interested in using his research to help all kinds of minds live a creative, fulfilling, and self-actualized life. His early educational experiences made him realize the deep reservoir of untapped potential of students, including bright and creative children who have been diagnosed with a learning disability. In 2015, he was named one of “50 groundbreaking scientists who are changing the way we see the world” by Business Insider.
Full Transcript
Daniel Stillman:
You all are officially welcomed to The Conversation Factory. Scott, Carolyn, welcome aboard. Thanks for being here.
Carolyn Gregoire:
Thanks for having us. Good to be here. Good to talk to you again.
Daniel Stillman:
Yeah, thanks. So, I want to start... I mean, when's the beginning of any story? But I want to start with how you two found each other. The serendipity that maybe brought you together, and, yeah, let's just start there. How did you two find each other in this crazy mixed-up world?
Scott Barry Kaufman:
You bring us way back. I need to, in my head now, have to go back to when I was another person. I feel like we grew up since then, if that makes sense. That person back then feels like a kid in my head and now I feel like an adult to some degree. But, yeah, do you remember the exact origin story? Because I remember sitting down with you at Huffington Post and you're interviewing me for an article about creativity and I loved your work, of course, and I was excited to be interviewed by you. I remember us just having a conversation about creativity, but do you remember how that interview came about?
Carolyn Gregoire:
Yeah, it actually went back a little earlier than that. So I was writing about psychology and personality psychology for The Huffington Post. I was a reporter there for six years, and I have this just personal obsession and fascination with daydreaming. And just because I've always been spacey, but also always dreaming up new ideas and things in my head, it's been something that's been an obstacle in my life and that I've been criticized for, but secretly I felt it was actually really important to me and that good things were coming out of it. And so, anyway, I was thinking that I wanted to write a piece about daydreaming and I found that Scott had done some research and written a paper about the positive qualities of daydreaming and about this trait called positive constructive daydreaming as differentiated from rumination or distraction.
Carolyn Gregoire:
It was just so incredible finding that paper because I finally could see that there was research saying that actually daydreaming is so important for creativity, for empathy, for self-understanding, all of these different positive traits, and I was just beyond thrilled to find it. And so I reached out to Scott and I wrote a piece about his paper on daydreaming and then we collaborated again. I wanted to do a piece about the personalities of creative people, which is something that I was just also fascinated by, and immediately thought of Scott since he had done research on creativity.
Scott Barry Kaufman:
Yeah. I remember you asked me, "What do you think creative people are like?" And I said, "They have really messy minds." I really never know what's going to come out of my mouth, just in general in life, and that was one of those moments where then I heard myself say that and I was like, "Yeah, I like that. Messy minds." And then I just feel like that was just a great encapsulation of creative people that you really resonate with, Carolyn.
Carolyn Gregoire:
Yeah. I think that phrase stayed at the center of our collaboration and all the work we did together. The article that I wrote about creative people went really viral, got five million views or something, much to my surprise, and became the basis of the book that we wrote together. And really at the heart of all of it was this idea of messy minds and paradox and contradiction. That's something we'll probably get into more later in this conversation. But I think that was the reason for the virality, was just people were like, "Yes, this is me," and it's something that there is some literature around, but that is not really talked about a lot. So that idea I think took hold in that moment and took us pretty far together in our collaboration.
Scott Barry Kaufman:
I miss your Huffington Post articles. I would look forward to them every week. You're my favorite science writer, and, yeah, that was just a nice period. That was a nice time period where stars aligned, where I was a really nerdy scientist, I thought you were an excellent science writer, and it was just so much fun to team up with you. Yeah.
Daniel Stillman:
I love the phrase of stars aligning and...
Scott Barry Kaufman:
It felt that way. Yeah.
Carolyn Gregoire:
Yeah. Very, very kismet. It just kind of happened.
Scott Barry Kaufman:
Yeah. Organically.
Daniel Stillman:
It's always interesting to zoom into the moment inside the moment and that feeling of pull, instead of push from the universe, because we all know that feeling of pushing to try and make something happen. And this sounds like pull from the universe where it was like this yes moment. Well, of course, we're going to do this thing.
Carolyn Gregoire:
Yeah. I [inaudible 00:05:06]-
Daniel Stillman:
Do you remember that feeling?
Carolyn Gregoire:
Yeah, this is something I think about and talk about a lot because I always say that the things that come to me are always so much better than the things that I chase after and reach out for and strive for myself. Every job I've had, it's happened its way into my lap, and this project, which is one of the most fun things that I've gotten to do, which has led to other wonderful things, sort of just came to me. I think that when you have that sweet spot of something drops in and then you really run with it and the passion is there, it's always the best. Those are the wonderful opportunities in life.
Scott Barry Kaufman:
Absolutely.
Daniel Stillman:
One of the things I was listening to, a talk you'd both had given at Google. This is a million years ago, and you do look like babies, by the way, Scott. It's amazing.
Scott Barry Kaufman:
I mean, I looked at that video and we... At least I look much younger. Yeah.
Daniel Stillman:
Yeah. I mean, this is going back. This is 2015 y'all wrote the book, so I think this was just maybe a year after that.
Scott Barry Kaufman:
I think Carolyn looks the same.
Carolyn Gregoire:
Yeah, maybe.
Daniel Stillman:
Whatever your moisturizing routine is, stick with it. Good job. So, here's the thing. I think you talked about... I'm going to mispronounce this. It's the positive aspects of... There's negative aspects of schizophrenia and there's these elements in a creative person. I think the term was magical thinking, like the positive aspects of magical thinking. I feel like at the beginning of any project there is some magical thinking. You're like, "This is going to be great. We don't think of the bad sides at all. This is just going to be amazing." And I feel also in every collaboration there's always a dip after that peak, and I'm curious if you experienced that dip and/or the magical thinking flow. I can see Scott's thinking to the side.
Scott Barry Kaufman:
I mean, I've had the blessing to have had two major collaborations with a coauthor. Just wrapped up a new book with a coauthor, Jordyn Feingold, and of course my collaboration with Carolyn, and they were both so magical on my end. I'll be curious to get Carolyn's perspective. I'm just going to start with my perspective. They both... I've been so blessed. They were so magical in that there was flow from start to end, and it almost seems like an incredible, crazy thing to say, but it somehow happened.
Scott Barry Kaufman:
I guess you've picked the right people with the right energy. It just flows from start to end. I felt that way with Carolyn. I felt that way very much as well, equally, with Jordyn with this new book I did. There is a certain kind of complimentary aspect with both of those two coauthors where they're really good at feeding off... Like a there's a give-and-take. I can do something and they can take that and just make magic out of that, and then I take that and refine it, and then we move onto the next thing. That's how it felt to me.
Carolyn Gregoire:
Yeah, I agree with that. And I agree that there was a lot of flow in this project, and I especially appreciate that having gone through other projects, smaller ones, where there's less flow, you really learn to appreciate it in those moments. But to the point about the magical thinking and the dip, I always think of creativity in terms of birth metaphors, which is a little bit cheesy, but I think they're very apt. I do think you go into a project with these just big dreams and expectations and all of the hopes of what it can be. That's important because I think it gives you the fuel, but then you do confront the challenges and the reality, and I loved working on the book. And of course, though I had my moments where I was like, "Can I really do this? I've never written a book before. I'm going to fail," all of this self-doubt, the moments of stress.
Carolyn Gregoire:
But then, if you can keep the seed of the magical thinking alive, which is I think part of what we're tasked with doing as creative people, it does carry you through to the end. And then, yes, I did have like a postpartum dip afterwards. It's like, you put something out into the world that's been with you for what I think our process was nine months actually, and there's a little bit of a sense of emptiness and you want to fill it up. At least I experienced wanting to fill that immediately with something else, but it's good to sit in that open space after you put something out into the world and just give yourself some breathing room and then let the next thing come in and emerge as opposed to what I sometimes tend to do, which is just reach for something else. So I totally agree with both of those things.
Daniel Stillman:
It's so interesting because the idea of magical thinking as a seed to be nourished is a really unexpected way to think of it, right? And I think that's really beautiful. Scott, I was listening to one of your TEDx talks around the four Cs of human intelligence, like capacity, competence, commitment and creativity.
Scott Barry Kaufman:
I'm glad someone watch that talk.
Daniel Stillman:
I think that there's some numbers there. I don't think I'm the only person.
Scott Barry Kaufman:
Thank you.
Daniel Stillman:
But I think there's this idea of commitment, right? Seeing something through. But it sounds like it really kept its own energy, which is amazing.
Carolyn Gregoire:
Yeah. I think that's part of the collaboration, or the magic of the collaboration. Writing, it truly is such a lonely endeavor when you're writing a book on your own. I personally believe that, I think it can be lonelier actually than other forms of solo creative practice, because you're basically talking to yourself. Writing is about communicating and when you don't have someone that you're working with, you're just in your own head, literally, talking to yourself for months on end.
Carolyn Gregoire:
And eventually you're talking to somebody else when the book gets out into the world and you can have conversations about it. But I think having a collaborator in whatever form really helps you to sustain the commitment and keep the energy flowing. It's not that it can't be done, but it's just not as fun and it's harder to sustain the motivation, I have found, in my own projects, and then helping other people with books, which is part of the work I do now. It's so key to have someone else there in some capacity.
Daniel Stillman:
Yeah. So one of the things... Is there more you wanted to elaborate on with that, Scott?
Scott Barry Kaufman:
I said, for show.
Daniel Stillman:
That's all good. So I was looking at some of the aspects of what a creative person is in this messy minds concept, the high tolerance for dissonance, complexity, ambiguity and chaos seemed to me to be the perfect skills to work through what you were talking about, the complementary, the give-and-take, and the flow. I'm curious with what give-and-take looks like keeping ambiguity and complexity and chaos as values in a collaboration.
Scott Barry Kaufman:
Well, I think that this book didn't have a fully-formed... I got the sense they were going kind of chapter by chapter and things kept emerging. I don't think we had the whole thing planned out in our head. Like we would maybe chapter outlines, but we were very open to it going in all sorts of different directions and... Well, this is my recollection.
Carolyn Gregoire:
Yeah, absolutely. And I think what, again, emerged was the play of opposites that became such a central theme in the book. And then I think to your question how that plays out in the collaboration is I think having someone who's more of a writer and someone who is more of a researcher was really helpful to just get into that dance of the idea and then its expression, and to play around with that. Like Scott would bring in really the research and the evidence, and then we would be like, "Okay, how can we play with that, and where does that take us?" And there was always a give-and-take and a dance within that.
Scott Barry Kaufman:
Totally. And I also wasn't always quite sure how Carolyn was going to masterfully integrate a big dump of science. I would give her like a Dropbox dump of like a hundred articles and I never knew exactly how, in a draft of a chapter, she was going to integrate these things. And so she surprised me with like... I mean, new things emerged. I was like, "Huh, I hadn't really see... Connected those dots," and yet she'd connect those dots. So don't count yourself out as a good researcher too there, Carolyn.
Carolyn Gregoire:
[inaudible 00:14:55] I've definitely learned to research, but I think having... It was just a good balance having the science from Scott and then more of the editorial direction on my end.
Scott Barry Kaufman:
Yeah.
Daniel Stillman:
Scott, I'm curious in your recent collaborative projects, there are some people who say that having clear roles and responsibilities, a division of labor or respect and admiration for, as it seems like you two were talking about, the different skills in the collective. Have you found that to be the case? And I mean, I suppose this is a question for both of you and the other collaborations that you've had since then. It seems like the messiness can become stepping on somebody's toes, or it can be, as you say, a dance.
Scott Barry Kaufman:
Well, yeah, for sure. And I think that the benefit is in the Venn diagram. There really wasn't that much overlap of... It's not like Carolyn had this big aspiration to be an amazing research psychologist. I didn't feel there was much stepping on toes. I had and continue to have great admiration for her skill set, and I hope she still has appreciation for my skill set. But that just wasn't too prominent. I could see how it could have been different. I could think in my head about... Some people are coming in my head right now where I was like, "I don't think I'd want to write a book with them," because I feel maybe they would constantly want to kind of battle for minute credit of certain aspects of it, where it's like, we weren't too concerned with that because we did all the book tours together and stuff like that. We're proud of the whole product together.
Carolyn Gregoire:
Yeah. And I think also, maybe breaking it up into phases. I agree that separate roles is valuable and I've been reflecting on that recently. I think with the ideation of the book, which we didn't know at the beginning exactly where we were going, we spent a lot of time hashing it out together, brainstorming, really breaking things down and looking at them from different angles, and then divided the roles. And I think that was helpful. I feel that in most successful collaborations, I think there's a part that you are doing together and then there's a part that's very individual.
Carolyn Gregoire:
I think if we were kind of in drafts writing together, I don't... Maybe people work that way, I don't know, but that feels to me like a very bad idea. I can't really imagine writing a book with someone that way. So having like, "Okay, here's the part where it's Scott," and then he's turning it over to me, and then I'm handing it back to him, and there is a bit of a division of labor, I think it was valuable.
Scott Barry Kaufman:
It's a good point. Yeah.
Daniel Stillman:
One of the things you said, Carolyn, in the conversation that you and I had a while back now, and Scott, you were speaking to this just now, is the evolution and the definition and the clarity of the project happening in an emergent fashion. And I think you had said, Carolyn, that the title of the book and what the book was really about, in a sense, came towards the end or the middle of the end.
Scott Barry Kaufman:
That wasn't our working title.
Carolyn Gregoire:
Yeah. It did come towards the end. I think our working title actually was Messy Minds, and then our publisher thought that it was too negative or that people would be put off by it. So it became Wired To Create, but, yeah, there was definitely an emergence of... Even though we were working with this theme from the beginning about creativity being messy and paradoxical, I don't think it really came through until the end, both how central that actually was, that that was really what all of that was about was these oppositions. And then also the idea that creativity is something completely innate and hardwired, and there are these different sort of ways that we can tap into it a bit more, but it's naturally there. So that was emergent. Absolutely. Yeah.
Scott Barry Kaufman:
Yeah. Agree.
Daniel Stillman:
It's funny. I put a quiz to a group recently, what's more important, the beginning of a story or the ending of a story? And it was really interesting to watch the results on the poll come out pretty much as a dead heat. And I think in a way, when we tell the story of creativity, I know Scott you've talked about our self narrative as a component of psychology, and in a way we're telling the story of creativity while we're doing it. There's something really beautiful about the idea that the story changes by the end, as we're telling it to ourselves.
Scott Barry Kaufman:
Yeah, [inaudible 00:19:59]-
Carolyn Gregoire:
Yeah, I think... Go ahead.
Scott Barry Kaufman:
I mean, there's so many processes that are part of... The whole creative process involves lots of different stages and some of those stages are stages we don't even tend to include as part of the creative process, like the revision stage, [inaudible 00:20:22], or the deliberative stage, like, "Oh, that's not creativity," and we include that as part of the whole process. And so some of these processes or stages can seem incompatible with each other and you have to trust the process is the point. You have to trust that at the end, that it was like... In the middle, but that the end, something great emerges and you got to trust that.
Daniel Stillman:
Carolyn what’s on your mind?
Carolyn Gregoire:
The creative process, I think, comes from that, the tension and the unknown. There's actually two great books that speak to the point that Scott just made. One is actually called Trust The Process. That's by an art therapist and it's incredible. He really talks about how those moments of attention that we see as an obstacle or something going wrong or getting in the way are actually what push us to be forced to break through it. That's kind of what the breakthrough always comes from, and I think that's absolutely true. And then there's another book called The Messy Middle, which really talks about the stage of the process where things really get convoluted and you just don't want to continue and it all kind of like... You're not feeling good about the project anymore and obstacles arise, et cetera.
Carolyn Gregoire:
But the point is, if you don't encounter those things, then you don't reach these new places and these new directions, and I think there's a big difference between production and creation. That's something that I reflect on a lot. I think production is when you know exactly where you're going from the beginning and you just execute and you follow through with that, and creation is something different. It's something that involves struggles that take you on detours, which ultimately contribute to the end product that you come out with, and that's always somewhere that you couldn't have exactly imagined from the beginning.
Scott Barry Kaufman:
Very much agreed with that.
Daniel Stillman:
So from the sense of-
Scott Barry Kaufman:
I didn't know about those two books.
Daniel Stillman:
Neither did I. I'm looking forward to The Messy Middle, and we all know it. It's a good name. When I think about trusting the process, in order to trust the process, we have to know the process, and I feel like many people don't have a strong mental model — no pun intended — of what the creative process is. And I just so happen to have two experts on the call with me. And so I'm wondering, from your perspective, Carolyn, you laid out two fundamental poles, I guess, of a paradox, producing and creation, and that production and creation are not the same and that those are things that we might even iterate through. If you were giving advice to someone at the outset of a creative endeavor, what map would you hand them?
Scott Barry Kaufman:
Wow.
Carolyn Gregoire:
That's a great question. I don't know if this is a map that may be a key that would unlock a part of the map, which is something that I've only learned more recently after going through so many creative processes and it helps me now that I understand it for myself, but that when you're stuck with something or something's not working, or there's real doubt or frustration, there's valuable information in that. It's not just like a personal... Usually, at least for me, it's not just my own self-doubt of I'm going to fail or whatever. It's like there's actually something missing here or there's something wrong and I'm feeling that, and if I push into it and if I really investigate, instead of turning away from it, I realize there's something that that's telling me.
Carolyn Gregoire:
It's like this little devil on my shoulder that's like, "Something is wrong here." By realizing what's wrong or what's missing, something completely opens up. I guess that's what problem-solving is, in a way. There's a problem and you have to go deep into it and not run away in fear, and the going into the problem really opens something up. So, yeah, if that makes sense, that's really been one of the big keys for me, is like, okay, if I'm stuck with something, let's really get into the tension instead of resisting it and running away from it, or feeling like something is wrong, because it doesn't mean that something is wrong at all.
Daniel Stillman:
I think that's beautiful. Scott, when I asked the map question, what sparked for you?
Scott Barry Kaufman:
Well, a big theme in the book... This is amazing. You're bringing us back. It's like we're doing interviews again about Wired To Create. It's bringing back memories.
Daniel Stillman:
It's evergreen.
Scott Barry Kaufman:
But you know... What'd you say?
Daniel Stillman:
It's evergreen.
Scott Barry Kaufman:
It is evergreen. Absolutely. But you have to understand, we haven't done this together in like... It's five years, six years. But anyway, a big theme in the book really is the importance of downtime, and I think in one's model of creativity, they really have to allow themselves time away from the problem and build that into their model because too many people get too stuck in, one, they keep rummaging in one part of their brain network and they can't get out. And then they think, "The more I rummage in it, it'll come to me," as opposed to doing other activities and tangential act projects, like projects that you can make connections and projects which you can really actively force your associate network to go down a different path, and then you return to the problem. So I think that it's a very iterative process of going back and forth between the external world and your internal world. External world, internal world.
Carolyn Gregoire:
Yeah. I actually want to echo that that's really so critical and also observing my own patterns over many projects is that what I naturally tend to do is start something and get the ideas down, and then often step away from it for a while and then really do the writing and bring it through. I've seen that with other people, too. I've learned to actually leave a certain amount of time for projects or to turn down rush projects, because even if you could do it in a shorter period of time, it's like, there's just this certain amount of incubation space that's needed.
Carolyn Gregoire:
So I never do rush projects anymore, even if I could, pretty much, because I like having multiple things at the same time so that I can take some space and shift from one thing to another, instead of like, "Let me just do this really quickly and then stop and then go to something else." It just doesn't work well for me, and I think it doesn't work well for a lot of people.
Daniel Stillman:
Yeah. This is like the old saying, "You can't give nine women one month to make a baby."
Scott Barry Kaufman:
Oh, and where it was going with this.
Carolyn Gregoire:
I never heard that.
Daniel Stillman:
Yeah. It's like, "Well, I know it takes one woman nine months. Can't we just multitask this?" It's just not how that works. It takes nine months. It takes what it takes. And I just want to make sure I understand, Scott, and Carolyn, you were speaking to this too, downtime seems like it comes in several flavors. Like, as you were saying, Carolyn, way before. Like daydreaming can just be like phasing out. And Scott, I know you were saying before we started, you take an afternoon nap. That's just pure downtime? And then there can be taking a shower, which is like just letting your mind wander. And then what you're talking about, Scott, it seems like using your brain but on something that is parallel or tangential that can spark something? I want to make sure I understand that. It seems like there's several flavors of downtime-
Scott Barry Kaufman:
No, that-
Daniel Stillman:
... that we're talking about.
Scott Barry Kaufman:
... [inaudible 00:28:18] nuance. No, I definitely like that nuance. I think that some of the best kind of... Or getting away from the project at hand is, then you work on another project. For instance, if I'm trying to write an article and I want to synthesize lots of ideas, I'll go down one rabbit hole of ideas of an article and those ideas. Then I'll put that aside and I'll go down a completely different one and then I'll go down a completely different one. And then I'll return to the first one.
Scott Barry Kaufman:
Usually you get a full night's sleep as well. You trust your mind at night to do some unconscious synthesizing, which it does, and then you return to it the next day, you find, "Wow, I have ideas now." So it's interesting. So much of what we're seeing really keeps coming back to the idea of trust the process. It just keeps coming back to that. It is a whole process.
Daniel Stillman:
Yeah. But also knowing the process-
Scott Barry Kaufman:
You can't cudgeon it. Or, what's the word?
Daniel Stillman:
Yeah. Bludgeon or-
Scott Barry Kaufman:
Bludgeon.
Daniel Stillman:
... bludgeon I think is the word. There's a quote from... Have either of you read Kahlil Gibran's book, The Prophet? It's a very beautiful... My mom thought there was too many words in it. That was a funny response to this book of poetry. I know my mom will listen to this episode. It's not an insult. I promise, mom. I love that about her.
Scott Barry Kaufman:
Okay.
Daniel Stillman:
There's a phrase where he says... He's talking about love. He says, "Let there be spaces in your togetherness." And I always loved that idea of togetherness, but spaces in the togetherness. And it seems like definitely with a creative partnership, there needs to be time apart, time to work on your own pieces, and where also spaces in your togetherness when you're talking about working on the project where it's pure downtime and also wandering and discovering and trying some other things. It sounds like really having that incubation time is super important to let it just settle in. I will have to find this. There's a book that's quoted one of my... I'm an origami nerd. You talked about being a nerd, Scott. I was an origami nerd in junior high school.
Scott Barry Kaufman:
Wow, that's incredible.
Daniel Stillman:
It did not make me very popular. It was not a-
Scott Barry Kaufman:
I think that's really cool.
Daniel Stillman:
There's a book called Origami: From Angelfish to Zen. The whole first part of the book was about the math and the science behind origami. And there was a story he told that's from this book called The Psychology of Invention in the Mathematical Field. He told the story of these two twin sisters who were banging their heads against a math problem. And during the night, one of them was talking in her sleep and the other one woke up and heard her sister dreaming the solution-
Scott Barry Kaufman:
Oh, wow.
Daniel Stillman:
... to the problem. And what's amazing is that the sister who woke up in the night knew the solution that the sister's subconscious had solved it on some level. It's always been an interesting reminder to me that, yeah, as you say, Scott, sleep is important.
Scott Barry Kaufman:
Oh, definitely.
Daniel Stillman:
Like really, really important.
Scott Barry Kaufman:
Oh, definitely. Definitely. And the sleep process, to a lesser degree, when you're just doing things like meditating or taking a shower, you're letting your prefrontal cortex kind of relax a little bit. Those are good moments, too.
Carolyn Gregoire:
Yeah. I was thinking about meditation actually with just this [inaudible 00:32:10] idea of creating space, because that's kind of a metaphor for this process. There's different types of meditation, and meditation, that's very much about single-pointed focus. It's actually not the best for creativity. Like a more Zen kind of Vipassana approach, whereas something called open monitoring meditation or mantra meditation, where you're having a really wide open focus and you're letting things flow through. The idea is to, instead of focusing on one place to just open and expand the awareness.
Carolyn Gregoire:
That's actually been shown that that really improves people's scores on tests of creative thinking. So it's like being able to switch between a really clear single pointed focus and then to open up and expand is important. And I think in the collaboration, you could say that as well. It's like the time together is like that, focused kind of energy, but then you need to step outside and expand and open up. If you're always in the focused energy, you start to get kind of stuck.
Daniel Stillman:
What's coming up for you, Scott? I'm just watching your face processing.
Scott Barry Kaufman:
I couldn't have said it better than what Carolyn just said.
Daniel Stillman:
That's awesome.
Scott Barry Kaufman:
She nailed it.
Daniel Stillman:
She's a communicator. I'm coming back to these points. The high tolerance for dissonance, ambiguity, like the ability to step away from the work when it's not done seems to me to be what we're pointing to. It's like we're saying that we have to trust the process, which means we have to be focused, and then we need to walk away from it. We have to trust that the work will still be there when we get back, and also we will be different and we will see it differently. Which is not trivial.
Daniel Stillman:
I think for a lot of us, it becomes an itch we have to scratch. And there is this temptation, as you said, Carolyn, or I think Scott used the word, to bludgeon it, to just squeeze out more mind juice, if that was a thing we could do, right? Like, "Well, I'm just going to bang this one out, and I'm just going to produce." But I'm not hearing that that's what creates real sparks, emergence of something new as opposed to something that's conventional or expected.
Scott Barry Kaufman:
I get the sense that for a lot of creative people, the reward is inherent in the process and it's not so focused on the goal and focused on producing the work and making sure the product gets out there. You have a lot of creative people that enjoy the process so much that it's like, "Oh, now it's out there. Yeah. I forgot." I mean, I'm kind of that way. Once the book's out there, I want to move onto something else. I don't particularly love the promotion part of it. I have to be quite frank.
Daniel Stillman:
Yes. I apologize for calling you back so far.
Scott Barry Kaufman:
No, this was special. This was like a really special moment you made happen, so I must thank you for doing that. But I hope you see my point-
Daniel Stillman:
Yeah.
Scott Barry Kaufman:
... that to me, creativity mirrors the self-actualization process more generally. It's a never ending process. One goes their whole life continually growing and learning and finding meaning. And to me that's what's enjoyable. That's what's enjoyable about life. It's the continuous nature of the change in the learning and the creating. It's not the doing, at least for me, and I can say a lot of creative people.
Carolyn Gregoire:
Yeah. And I think learning to manage the tension because there is that joy in the process, but there's also the tension that can feel so overwhelming and unbearable at moments. And that even as creative people who have a higher tolerance for ambiguity and dissonance, it can still be uncomfortable. And so I think part of it is, yeah, how do we find our own ways to manage that tension and that dissonance? And this way it sound kind of weird and silly, but for me, I really like visualization and something I've learned to do. I found that I get overwhelmed in a project when I'm just holding all of this information in my head for a really long period of time and I don't know what I'm going to do with it. And that, it can be really not helpful for me.
Carolyn Gregoire:
That's the part that I don't like. And so I've learned to, like, I take it all at the end of the day and I put it into a cauldron. I visualize that and [inaudible 00:37:10] stir the cauldron and then I leave it to bubble and all mix together. And it actually kind of helps because I'm training myself to let things simmer and not keep it at the front of my mind all the time so I'm trying to figure out the problem. It's like, "Okay, just putting all of these ideas into this melting pot, letting... And I'm giving myself space to step away." But I think we all have to find our own ways to learn how to work with that, with the dissonance and the tension, and to remain in a state of not knowing and of creative percolation, which is while we have the joys of the process, we have the struggles in equal measure.
Daniel Stillman:
Yeah. So I'm glad you looped back to that, Carolyn, because when this question of what's... When I said a map for being able to trust the process, you gave us a key, which is great, and the ability to say that stuck is information. Instead of rejecting uncomfortable feelings, we can become aware of them. We can lean into them and just know that it's information is really important. And I don't know, maybe my notes aren't so good, but Scott, if there was a key you were going to put on our key chain to be able to trust the creative process, is there one more key or a key of, as my dad likes to say, a used key is always bright. What do you feel like is your brightest key to trusting the process?
Scott Barry Kaufman:
Oh, well, it's also trusting yourself. It's trusting your own capacity to fail and get up again, and being able to be comfortable in the space of trial and error. A lot of people's being is not very comfortable with trial and error. The second they have an error, they're done. They're not trialing again. I mean, look, I got an interesting taste from this. I tried out stand-up comedy recently. It's been a long-term dream of mine, and it's interesting. Some jokes fall flat, and you're like, "Okay, we've got to bring that one to the laboratory and tweak some words and then try it again. See if it gets a laugh." That trial and error process to me is fun. It's something I trust myself that I can learn from my mistakes. I think that's a big key, is that you trust that you can learn from mistakes so you're not so scared of mistakes.
Daniel Stillman:
When I was a younger man, I was much older in the sense, in the Bob Dylan sense. I really wanted to not make mistakes. I thought the only way you learned was by doing things right, and it's a heavy burden to carry. Ironically, I mean, we all know this, that no experiment ever fails. Experiments are information, but there is a lot of fear that comes from looking bad, from falling flat, of our own expectations or expectations that we think others have of us. So I think this-
Scott Barry Kaufman:
That's a really brilliant point.
Daniel Stillman:
Well, I mean, I think you're giving us good advice and it's important. It's hard advice, but it's important advice.
Scott Barry Kaufman:
It's brilliant. I never quite thought of it that way. No experiment fails and you're so right. It doesn't make sense to do a psychology scientific study and for it to fail. You're just doing a study. It's, wow. I mean, look, Daniel, I thought that was brilliant.
Daniel Stillman:
Got the price of admission. There you go. We created value.
Scott Barry Kaufman:
I agree with you. I agree with you. Yeah.
Carolyn Gregoire:
Yeah. I agree with that point, too. So many people say that persistence is the most important key, and I think part of that is just that you get to know the terrain and you've realized that the failure which is in your mind, this big, scary thing when you haven't experienced it or haven't experienced it that often, the more you do it, you realize, first of all, it's not that bad and you'll be fine. And on a deeper level, it actually will often redirect you in a really interesting direction. I mean, I started working on a personal writing project right after Wired To Create that I totally abandoned and walked away from, but it actually led me in so many interesting directions and sparked some kind of synchronicities, actually, similar to what I experienced with the book with Scott, that never would've happened if I hadn't had that failed project.
Carolyn Gregoire:
And so while it felt kind of awful at the time, because it was my first major failure, I'm just so grateful for it. It really was a huge part of the path. Someone once told me, the mistakes are the path. I think sometimes we feel like we're messing it up or we're getting off of our path, whether it's your career path or your path of personal growth, but you can't mess up the path because you're the one creating it. So, it's all part of it.
Scott Barry Kaufman:
I love that, too. I love that. You can't mess the path because you created it. Wow. Yeah.
Daniel Stillman:
One of the things that's come up in my research so far is that... I mean, this is really like relationships. We have all had rebounds. You mentioned this way earlier in our conversation. You finish a big creative project and you just want to get cruising on the next one. And sometimes it can be the love of your life and other times it can be a rebound, but you will never know until you get into it.
Carolyn Gregoire:
Yeah. And the rebound serves its own kind of [inaudible 00:43:03] I guess.
Daniel Stillman:
The rebound serves its own... It's information.
Carolyn Gregoire:
It's inferior to the great love, but it still has a particular purpose in the moment.
Daniel Stillman:
So we are just about coming up against time, which means I have to ask you, what have I not asked you that I should have asked you? Scott, what is still unsaid when it comes to this very important topic of Wired To Create together?
Scott Barry Kaufman:
Ask Carolyn if she'll write another book with me someday. I'm joking. I'm joking. I won't put her on the spot, but-
Daniel Stillman:
The jumbotron is on us both.
Carolyn Gregoire:
We have an idea that's been-
Scott Barry Kaufman:
We have an identity.
Carolyn Gregoire:
... [inaudible 00:43:44] for a while. It's all about the timing. So we'll keep you posted on that.
Scott Barry Kaufman:
That's true. That's very true.
Daniel Stillman:
Wow.
Scott Barry Kaufman:
That's correct. That's what it's all about. So is there any questions you didn't ask us? I don't think so. It was nice to talk about the creative process again, after all these years with Carolyn.
Daniel Stillman:
Thanks, Scott. Carolyn, any unsaid...
Carolyn Gregoire:
Anything unsaid? Yeah, I guess it's maybe been said. I'm circling back to the theme of conversation, but it's really just through doing that we learn, I think. I guess I'm just really feeling from this conversation and how that we learn how to trust ourselves and learn how to trust the process and something that... The subtitle of the book was Unraveling The Mysteries of the Creative Mind, and something that we talked about a lot was just how mysterious the process is.
Carolyn Gregoire:
And I still say that all the time, is that creativity is this huge mystery and I know nothing about it because it's all just beyond us in a certain way. You can't boil it down into a formula, but at the same time, yeah, you keep doing it and you start to recognize a path and you start to recognize these trail markers. I think that's how we can start to feel a little bit less scared or overwhelmed or burdened by the challenges and start to enjoy it a little bit more. So, yeah, that's what I'm feeling right now.
Daniel Stillman:
And it goes back to... I've been just sitting with the thing that Scott you said earlier about this journey of self-actualization and growth as a human being, and just increasing our capacity for complexity and self-manifestation, I guess, you might say. I mean, this is what do we take from each experience and what do we bring forward from it?
Scott Barry Kaufman:
Bingo. Bingo.
Daniel Stillman:
Where should people, should they want to learn more about all things y'all, where should they go on the internets to find out more about the things that you all are and do, if you don't mind-
Scott Barry Kaufman:
Check out my podcast. It's called The Psychology podcast and scottbarrykaufman.com, and the Center of Human Potential, humanpotential.co. These sorts of things will get you in roads to the world of SBK, as my friends affectionately call me.
Carolyn Gregoire:
And you can find more of my work on my website, carolyngregoire.com. I have a lot of my personal writing there and I also work as what I call a book doula. That is a mix of being an editor and also a guide in exactly the process that we've been talking about, and something that I've come to really enjoy and love. So, you can learn more about that on the website.
Daniel Stillman:
That's awesome. Well, thank you two very much for taking this walk down memory lane and being so reflective. Being a reflective practitioner is really important, so I appreciate you making time to do this with me.
Scott Barry Kaufman:
Thank you for inviting us, Daniel.
Carolyn Gregoire:
Yes. Thanks for having us.
Scott Barry Kaufman:
A real pleasure.
Daniel Stillman:
Well then I'll call "scene."
