Creativity Psychology

In The Trip to Echo Spring, Olivia Laing examines the link between creativity and alcohol through the work and lives of six of America's finest writers: F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, Tennessee Williams, John Berryman, John Cheever, and Raymond Carver. All six of these men were alcoholics, and the subject of drinking surfaces in some of their finest work, from Cat on a Hot Tin Roof to A Moveable Feast.

In the United States, teenagers can focus on one task for only sixty-five seconds at a time, and office workers average only three minutes. Like so many of us, Johann Hari was finding that constantly switching from device to device and tab to tab was a diminishing and depressing way to live. He tried all sorts of self-help solutions—even abandoning his phone for three months—but nothing seemed to work. So Hari went on an epic journey across the world to interview the leading experts on human attention—and he discovered that everything we think we know about this crisis is wrong.

FIND YOUR CREATIVE COURAGE: Transform Your Life Using Everyday Creativity is a six-part course in everyday creativity for everyone. It is designed to revolutionise our thoughts around creativity, and who gets to use it. The common story that ‘Creativity is only for special people with special talents’ is both debilitating, and untrue. In this series, Clare proposes a different theory: each of us holds within us the ability to be uniquely creative.

From the creator of Dilbert and author of Reframe Your Brain , the bestselling guidebook to spotting and avoiding loserthink is back—with new content to introduce the second edition. loserthink (noun): sneaky mental habits trapping victims in their own bubbles of reality If you’ve been on social media lately, or turned on your TV, you may have noticed a lot of dumb ideas floating around. “We know when history will repeat and when it won’t.” “We can tell the difference between evidence and coincidences.” “The simplest explanation is usually true.” Wrong, wrong, and dangerous!

Bestselling author and peak performance expert Steven Kotler decodes the secrets of those elite performers—athletes, artists, scientists, CEOs and more—who have changed our definition of the possible, teaching us how we too can stretch far beyond our capabilities, making impossible dreams...

A groundbreaking book about personal growth that presents a uniquely effective set of five tools that bring about dynamic change. The Tools offers a solution to the biggest complaint patients have about therapy: the interminable wait for change to begin. The traditional therapeutic model sets its sights on the past, but Phil Stutz and Barry Michels employ an arsenal of techniques - "the tools" - that allow patients to use their problems as levers that access the power of the unconscious and propel them into action.

At least one-third of the people we know are introverts. They are the ones who prefer listening to speaking; who innovate and create but dislike self-promotion; who favor working on their own over working in teams. It is to introverts—Rosa Parks, Chopin, Dr. Seuss, Steve Wozniak—that we owe many of the great contributions to society.

In the years since it was first published, this influential book based on the highly innovative findings of social psychologist Dr. Ellen J. Langer and her team of researchers at Harvard made its mark for its unique concept of mindfulness, thoroughly adapted to contemporary life in the West. Langer’s theory has been applied to a wide number of fields, including health, business, aging, prejudice, and learning.

A paradigm-shifting study of neurodivergent women—those with ADHD, autism, synesthesia, high sensitivity, and sensory processing disorder—exploring why these traits are overlooked in women and how society benefits from allowing their unique strengths to flourish. As a successful Harvard and...

Could you be getting in your way of producing great work? Have you started a project but never finished? Would you like to do work that matters, but don't know where to start?The answer is Do the Work, a manifesto by best-selling author Steven Pressfield, that will show you that it’s not about better ideas, it’s about actually doing the work. Do the Work is a weapon against Resistance - a tool that will help you take action and successfully ship projects out the door.

The Fearless Organization offers practical guidance for teams and organizations who are serious about success in the modern economy. With so much riding on innovation, creativity, and spark, it is essential to attract and retain quality talent, but what good does this talent do if no one is able to speak their mind? The traditional culture of "fitting in" and "going along" spells doom in the knowledge economy. Success requires a continuous influx of new ideas, new challenges, and critical thought, and the interpersonal climate must not suppress, silence, ridicule, or intimidate.

D.W. Winnicott's distinctive contribution to our understanding of human development, based on extensive clinical work with babies and young children, is known and valued the world over. In Playing and Reality, he is concerned with the springs of imaginative living and of cultural experience in every sense, with whatever determines an individual's capacity to live creatively and to find life worth living. The ideas expressed here extend the theme first put forward in his paper Transitional Objects and Transitional Phenomena, published in 1953.

The author of Self-Compassion follows up her groundbreaking book with new ideas that expand our notion of self-kindness and its capacity to transform our lives, showing women how to balance tender self-acceptance with fierce action to claim their power and change the world. Kristin Neff...

Based on a far-reaching study of thousands of individuals, Finding Flow contends that we often walk through our days unaware of and out of touch with our emotional lives. Our inattention makes us constantly bounce between two extremes: During much of the day, we live filled with the anxiety and pressures of our work and obligations, and during our leisure moments, we tend to live in passive boredom.

Unlock your originality and unleash your unique talents with this simple guide from the acclaimed author of Think Like a Rocket Scientist. We say some people march to the beat of a different drummer. But implicit in this cliché is that the rest of us march to the same beat. We sleepwalk...

We've all seen the happiness on the face of a child while playing in the school yard. Or the blissful abandon of a golden retriever racing across a lawn. This is the joy of play. By definition, play is purposeless, all-consuming, and fun. But as Dr. Stuart Brown illustrates, play is anything but trivial. It is a biological drive as integral to our health as sleep or nutrition. We are designed by nature to flourish through play.

Oliver Sacks' compassionate, compelling tales of people struggling to adapt to different neurological conditions have fundamentally changed the way we think of our own brains, and of the human experience. In Musicophilia, he examines the powers of music through the individual experiences of patients, musicians, and everyday people. He explores how catchy tunes can subject us to hours of mental replay, and how a surprising number of people acquire nonstop musical hallucinations that assault them night and day. Yet far more frequently, music goes right....

You can learn to play music, no matter what you've been told about your musical talent or aptitude. With the right instruction and methods, learning to play music can be an endless source of joy and fulfillment. And learning to play music isn't just fun, it's also the ideal brain fitness activity. Dr. Turknett, a neurologist, self-taught multi-instrumentalist, and the founder of Brainjo and the Brainjo Method of instruction, distills the principles of learning to play music down into a set of universal "laws" that can be applied to any instrument.

The Creative Cure is a call for a revolution, fostering change where all change must begin: within. This internal change will allow you to express your own creative gifts, cultivate happiness, and experience the unique feeling of fulfillment that only a creative practice can offer. Packed with powerful, transformative exercises, this book is the medicine you need to find and reinvigorate your creative soul.

Can a well-programmed machine do anything a human can - only better? Complex algorithms are buying our groceries, picking our partners, and driving our investments. They can navigate more data than a doctor or lawyer and act with greater precision. For many years we've taken solace in the notion that they can't create. But now that algorithms can learn and adapt, does the future of creativity belong to machines too?