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November 5th, 2009 | Posted in Creativity 7 Comments »
This week I’ve been on vacation in Florida, visiting my family and touring the theme parks — Seaworld, Disneyworld, and (soon) Busch Gardens. I used to live in Florida and would go to Busch Gardens all the time. But this week is more extreme. Our first day at Seaworld, I realized my theme park endurance was poor. The next day at Disney was much better, even with just 6 hours of sleep the night before. The second time around Seaworld (of course one day wasn’t enough) was like stopping off for a brief jaunt at the mall, except when we temporarily lost our daughter, which sent us on a roller coaster of emotions.
While walking around theme parks, I’ve been thinking about a talk Nicole Mazzarella, author of This Heavy Silence, gave last month at the BYU-I writing conference. Talking to a group of would-be writers, Nicole explained the need to “live in the moment.” She talked about the need to disconnect from whatever media is taking you away from the moment you’re in — Twitter, Facebook, email, IM — and to focus on the moment you’re in. This ability to be in the moment is as critical to writing as other time-worn advice, such as reading or reflecting.
I wasn’t quite sure what to do with that advice. But now I’m starting to understand.
Theme parks floor you with mesmerizing shows, constant music, visual stimuli, greasy food, stomach-losing rides, character-filled stories, and an overall constant stream of external input. The more external input that comes in, the less internal input you need to generate. When I’m flooded with external input, I seem to lose touch with my own thoughts and direction. In this way, theme parks are like TV, a continual escape where no internal input of my own is needed. I just follow the map, hold onto my kids, and move from show to ride to food kiosk to exhibit to show to ride until the day finishes, and then I drive home and collapse from exhaustion.
When I’m not at a theme park, when I’m living my regular life, immersed in the moments of silence so typical of writing and a quiet family life, I often feel a tendency to turn on sports, the radio, Google Talk for email or IM, Twitter, and start any other form of external input I can find.
But that external input takes me away from the moment. It disrupts my attention on what I should be doing or thinking about. Perhaps there’s more to the moment that I’m missing when I fail to focus. This isn’t a single task versus multi-task discussion, or an argument about how each disruption requires 20 minutes of downtime to refocus. I’m saying that when I put myself in situations of extreme external input, like a theme park, the amount of internally generated input is minimized. With minimal internal input, my creativity sinks, and my muse goes mute.
But this is a balancing act, because external input is often the stimuli that generates internal reflection and analysis. I’m still putting together my thoughts on internal and external input. For now, I’m starting to be acutely aware of the difference. Can you help clarify what I’m trying to say?
Tags: BYU-Idaho, Creativity, direction, input, muse
The external input is more limited than it seems at first blush. Two messages stand out for me: “Surprise! Surprise!” and “Ain’t it awful!.” On my own, my thoughts are much more complex and humbling, so i turn to outside input for simplification.
Thanks Dad. I hadn’t thought of the two main messages that external stimuli can be divided into, but yeah, I can see that pattern emerge.
This discussion is interesting — I get the feeling that we’re only scratching the surface here. I was trying to articulate something I was sensing inside, maybe one of those thoughts that are “much more complex and humbling” — but I couldn’t quite grasp it. You are definitely enriching the thought with your comments.
Tom:
I find that when I’m working on a project or problem and not making any progress, after I’ve looked at all the information I could find, and consciously tried to figure oot a structure that makes sense, when I quit looking at it, and work on something else, my unconcious mind is still playing with the pieces, trying to make them fit, and trying to figure out what is missing. If I’m constantly bambarded with external sensory input (tv, music, other people talking around me), I can’t even think about the problem I’ve been trying to resolve.
It’s only when I am somewhere quiet, and am not actively, consciously thinking about anything else (such as just before sleep at night), that the results of my subconscious work on the problem (your “internal input”) can rise into my conscious mind where I can integrate it with the problem information already available to my conscious mind, which results in the moment of insight that allows me to see the way to a solution.
Margaret, thanks so much for adding your insight to my post. What you say makes perfect sense. I hadn’t even thought about the subconscious processing that goes on, and how external stimuli can decrease that internal processing, but you’re totally right. Again, thanks for adding insight to the internal/external thought I was trying to formulate.
I cannot begin to describe how true this is in my own life: “the need to disconnect from whatever media is taking you away from the moment you’re in — Twitter, Facebook, email, IM — and to focus on the moment you’re in. This ability to be in the moment is as critical to writing as other time-worn advice, such as reading or reflecting.”
Social media can be as useful as it is utterly distracting. If I spend too much time browsing through blogs, tweets, or Facebook, my mind starts to blank out. I grow tired. The muse seems ever-distant. Not cool.
Obviously, self-control is needed when using the Web, but it’s so easy to get sucked into the void of distraction.
I’m putting together a tech writer blog, and I am seriously considering writing my posts (and other writings) away from the computer. I’m too easily tempted to click the Twitter link on my bookmarks toolbar.
Sounds silly, I know, but that’s where I’m at right now.
Just my two cents, for what it’s worth, etc.
-Dan
I find that I have an “taking in” mode and an output mode. I think of it like leaving my house to go shopping or to gather things. When I’m in taking in mode, I keep gathering and bringing things back to my mental house. I read, research, meet friends to hang out, or watch movies.
At some point, it’s time for me to rearrange all the mental furniture that I’ve gathered and generate some output. I have to curate what I’ve gathered. Otherwise I just keep piling it up compulsively at my doorstep.
Sometimes I get really sucked into the taking-in process. I want to keep clicking on links, checking my email, and otherwise avoiding the creation process. I think the external stimuli can be a big draw because I get the stimulus without the effort of generating it myself. But I think it may be the opposite for some people.
I had a comment to leave, but then got distracted by my Twitter feed.