Wired To Create

Why do some of your best ideas arrive when you’re showering or wandering aimlessly, while others only emerge after hours of deep focus? In Wired to Create, psychologist Scott Barry Kaufman and journalist Carolyn Gregoire argue that the secret lies in embracing the messy, paradoxical nature of the creative mind. Creativity, they contend, is not a neat process or a rare gift—it’s a lifelong mindset available to everyone willing to explore its contradictions.

Kaufman and Gregoire dismantle the myth of the lone creative genius struck by sudden inspiration. Through neuroscience, psychology, and rich storytelling—from Picasso to Yo-Yo Ma, from Einstein to Frida Kahlo—they reveal that creative people are what Walt Whitman called “multitudes.” They’re simultaneously introverted and extroverted, disciplined and spontaneous, sensitive and strong. The book teaches that living creatively means learning to hold these opposites without trying to resolve them.

Creativity as Organized Messiness

The authors begin by tracing the scientific evolution of creativity research—from the tidy four-stage model (preparation, incubation, illumination, verification) proposed by Graham Wallas in 1926 to what Kaufman calls a far more messy mind. In this view, creativity is a fluid, nonlinear dance between opposing cognitive states. At one moment, the imagination soars; the next, it tightens into self-critique. It’s less like a clean recipe and more like jazz improvisation, where the player flows between freedom and form.

Kaufman and Gregoire point out that the human brain itself supports this messiness. Neuroscience shows that creativity draws not from one brain region but from the collaboration of entire networks. The “imagination network” (the brain’s default mode) daydreams, simulates, and makes meaning, while the “executive attention network” focuses, judges, and refines. The creative person’s gift is to move flexibly between them—allowing a wild idea to surface, then taming it into something usable.

Art Meets Science: The Case for Paradox

Beyond the brain, the authors root their argument in psychology and biography. Research by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi and Frank X. Barron found that highly creative people embody paradoxical traits—playful yet disciplined, realistic yet imaginative, both mentally healthy and prone to instability. Kaufman’s own studies show the same: creativity thrives when multiple, even contradictory, traits coexist. This explains why Picasso could be both egocentric and vulnerable, or why someone like musician Baba Brinkman could be electrifying onstage and contemplatively introverted off it.

Rather than treating such contradictions as flaws, the authors see them as features of an adaptive, flexible intelligence. In daily life, this means that your creative growth depends on how well you integrate opposing dimensions—structure and freedom, focus and distraction, logic and intuition.

Everyone Is Wired to Create

Kaufman and Gregoire’s central claim is liberating: you don’t need to be a poet or a painter to live a creative life. Each of us is born with the neural wiring for innovation—what they call being “wired to create.” Everyday acts of creativity, like journaling, daydreaming, or solving a problem in a new way, can make life more meaningful and resilient. These “micro-creativities” cultivate essential traits such as openness, curiosity, and courage—qualities more predictive of well-being than IQ or formal intelligence.

A Roadmap of Creative Habits

Drawing from their viral Huffington Post article, Kaufman and Gregoire structure the book around ten habits that define highly creative people: Imaginative Play, Passion, Daydreaming, Solitude, Intuition, Openness to Experience, Mindfulness, Sensitivity, Turning Adversity into Advantage, and Thinking Differently. Each chapter explores how to nurture these paradoxical states in your own life. Some seem contradictory—mindfulness and mind-wandering, passion and detachment—but the authors show how creativity flourishes precisely in their tension.

The message is revolutionary in its simplicity: to unlock creativity, you must stop chasing perfection and instead embrace your own beautiful mess. By understanding how imagination, intellect, and emotion intertwine, you can begin to see creative living not as a rare gift but as a human birthright—a way of making sense of who you are and what it means to be alive.

Kaufman and Gregoire open their exploration with a joyful truth—creativity begins in play. Watching a child turn a stick into a sword or a cardboard box into a rocket shows us how imagination comes naturally when rules slip away. The authors trace this instinct through the life of Shigeru Miyamoto, the Japanese video game designer who created Super Mario Bros. and The Legend of Zelda. As a child, Miyamoto wandered the forests near Kyoto, inventing stories and imaginary worlds. Those early explorations later shaped the sense of wonder, discovery, and “childlike play” that became the hallmark of his games.

Play as Cognitive Training

For psychologists like Lev Vygotsky and Erik Erikson, play isn’t wasted time—it’s how the brain learns flexibility. In childhood, play exercises all the muscles of creativity: symbolic thinking (a spoon becomes a wand), empathy (you play both “doctor” and “patient”), and emotional regulation (“the monster isn’t real, so it’s safe to feel fear”). Sandra Russ, a leading researcher cited by the authors, calls pretend play “the birthplace of the creative imagination.” When children invent stories, they practice integrating thought and emotion, a skill that later becomes essential in adult creativity.

The War on Play—and Its Consequences

Yet modern society often devalues play. Since the 1950s, children’s unstructured playtime has steadily declined, replaced by screens, homework, and structured activities. Kaufman and Gregoire warn that this loss of play undermines imagination and resilience. Play teaches flexibility, problem solving, and collaboration—the very skills innovation requires. Some educational models, like Switzerland’s forest kindergartens, preserve this wisdom by letting children explore nature all day. Their goal isn’t rote learning but nurturing curiosity, confidence, and connection.

Rediscovering Play as an Adult

For adults, the invitation is to take play seriously again. This doesn’t mean childishness—it means approaching work and life with curiosity and an openness to surprise. Psychologist Jane McGonigal argues that gaming and playful thinking boost creativity, happiness, and resilience by reframing effort as fun. Whether it’s doodling, experimenting, improvising, or simply asking “what if?”, these moments reawaken flexibility and joy. As George Bernard Shaw quipped, “We don’t stop playing because we grow old; we grow old because we stop playing.”

Through playful exploration, you reconnect with your innate creativity. Just as children invent imaginary worlds, adults can create new perspectives, products, and possibilities. Whether you’re writing code, designing art, or solving a life problem, play opens the door to innovation—and reminds you that creativity, at its core, begins with wonder.

If play is creativity’s heartbeat, passion is its pulse. Kaufman and Gregoire describe passion as the feeling of “falling in love with something larger than yourself.” Passionate people, from cellist Yo-Yo Ma to chess prodigy Josh Waitzkin, don’t simply pursue a skill—they merge with it. Their enthusiasm fuels perseverance, transforming challenges into joy. But, as the authors caution, passion is a double-edged sword: it can energize or consume you depending on its type.

The Two Faces of Passion

Psychologist Robert Vallerand distinguishes between harmonious and obsessive passion. Harmonious passion arises when your work feels aligned with your identity—you create because you love it. Obsessive passion, however, stems from ego or external validation. It’s the artist who can’t rest, not because of play but pressure. Harmonious passion generates flow and fulfillment; obsessive passion breeds anxiety and burnout. The most creative people learn to channel passion without being enslaved by it.

Crystallizing Experiences

Many creative lives begin with what Howard Gardner calls a “crystallizing experience”—the moment when you discover a calling that feels like destiny. For young Jacqueline du Pré, hearing a cello on the radio ignited that spark. For Steve Jobs, tinkering with electronics awakened a future vision. Passion lights the path, but what sustains it is grit—the commitment to practice through monotony, rejection, and failure. Kaufman connects this to Angela Duckworth’s research on perseverance: lasting mastery demands not just inspiration but disciplined love for the process itself.

Dreaming and Doing

To sustain passion, you must balance big dreams with concrete action. Psychologist Gabriele Oettingen calls this method mental contrasting: envision the goal vividly, then imagine the potential obstacles. This blend of optimism and realism nurtures hope—the mindset that fuels creative persistence. As Torrance found in his lifelong studies of gifted children, those who “fell in love with a dream” early were far more likely to achieve creative success decades later. But the dream alone isn’t enough; loving the process of becoming that person is what keeps the flame alive.

In art, business, or life, passion gives you energy to start—but wisdom teaches you how to steer. When pursued with harmony, curiosity, and humility, passion doesn’t just make you productive; it makes you whole.

When your thoughts drift in the middle of a meeting, you might scold yourself. But Kaufman and Gregoire insist: don’t. Daydreaming, they argue, is not distraction—it’s mental rehearsal for life. Psychologist Jerome L. Singer, called the “father of daydreaming,” found that healthy fantasizing fosters creativity, planning, and emotional insight. What he labeled positive-constructive daydreaming allows the mind to wander productively, connecting distant ideas like a jazz improvisation of thought.

Why We Need to Wander

Neuroscience backs this up. The brain’s default mode network—the “imagination network” described earlier—activates when we’re not focused on tasks, letting us simulate futures, revisit memories, and solve problems creatively. That’s why Aha! moments often strike in the shower or on a walk. As the authors note, even Immanuel Kant and Charles Darwin structured their days around long solitary walks for reflection. Far from mindlessness, this is the mind in incubation, quietly assembling puzzles while we fold laundry or stir soup.

Dreamers as Creators

Many artists—John Lennon, Andy Warhol, T. S. Eliot—celebrated daydreaming as essential to their art. Carl Jung viewed it as a gateway to the unconscious, a realm of archetypes and intuition. Similarly, research shows that daydreaming enhances autobiographical reflection and empathy by allowing you to imagine other perspectives. As Jung wrote, “Who looks outside, dreams; who looks inside, awakes.” In this light, daydreaming is both a creative act and a route to self-understanding.

Balancing Mind Wandering and Mindfulness

The challenge isn’t to stop mind wandering but to coexist with it. Mindfulness—the ability to focus on the present—anchors us. Daydreaming—the freedom to drift—liberates us. Kaufman and Gregoire propose that creativity requires a balance of both. When your inner world and outer awareness collaborate, your imagination becomes a living workshop. So the next time your thoughts meander, don’t tug them back too soon; you might be standing on the edge of your next great idea.

“The capacity to be alone,” the psychoanalyst D. W. Winnicott wrote, “is one of the most important signs of maturity.” Kaufman and Gregoire expand this idea into a bold claim: creativity often begins in solitude. From Emily Dickinson writing in her bedroom to Ingmar Bergman retreating to a Swedish island, solitude offers a sanctuary where ideas ripen without interruption. Yet in a culture obsessed with connection, aloneness is often misunderstood as loneliness.

The Neuroscience of Solitude

When you’re alone and your mind is quiet, the brain’s imagination network activates, linking memories, feelings, and insights. This constructive internal reflection, as neuroscientist Mary Helen Immordino-Yang calls it, strengthens emotional regulation and moral reasoning. Artists like Georgia O’Keeffe and Steve Wozniak intuitively knew this: solitude allows deep focus and innovation by minimizing external distractions. In solitude, the imagination and executive networks learn to cooperate, creating what Kaufman calls “the conditions for insight.”

The Art of Reflection

Philosophers from Aristotle to Thoreau also revered solitude as a path to wisdom. Aristotle described contemplation as “the highest good,” while Thoreau left civilization for Walden Pond to listen to “the music of the universe.” In silence, they both discovered that solitude does not separate you from the world—it deepens your dialogue with it. The authors echo this sentiment: to create meaningfully, you must first be willing to listen to yourself.

Rather than something to escape, solitude is a creative necessity. Learning to be alone—without distraction or the need for validation—builds the inner stillness from which originality emerges.

In one of the book’s most fascinating chapters, Kaufman and Gregoire explore where inspiration really comes from: the deep, hidden layers of the mind. They retell the story of chemist Albert Hofmann, who rediscovered a chemical compound—LSD—after a curious hunch years earlier. That intuition, born of subconscious perception, changed both science and culture. His experience captures the book’s argument: intuition is not magic; it’s your unconscious processing doing its best work.

The Two Minds

Psychologists like Daniel Kahneman describe the brain as running on two systems: System 1, fast and intuitive, and System 2, slow and analytical. Kaufman reframes this as a creative partnership: intuition generates ideas, reason refines them. Studies of mathematicians and artists reveal that breakthroughs often follow periods of unconscious incubation—the brain connecting dots beyond awareness until a sudden “Aha!” moment surfaces.

Training Intuition

Contrary to myth, intuition isn’t infallible—it improves with expertise. As you gain experience, your unconscious collects thousands of patterns, enabling fast, accurate judgments. Experiments even show that stimulating the right hemisphere with mild current can enhance problem-solving insight, suggesting that the intuitive mind is a skill we can cultivate. Still, intuition works best in tandem with analysis; knowing when to trust a hunch versus think things through is the creative person’s lifelong balancing act.

Einstein once called intuition “a sacred gift.” By reconnecting to your intuitive processes—through quiet reflection, meditation, or just curiosity—you reconnect with that gift. Within the noise of logic, intuition whispers the truths reason hasn’t found words for yet.

Of all the personality traits studied by psychologists, openness to experience is the most powerful predictor of creativity. Kaufman and Gregoire define it as the drive to explore both outer and inner worlds: curiosity about ideas, sensitivity to beauty, emotional depth, and intellectual flexibility. The chapter opens with the Beat Generation—writers like Jack Kerouac and William S. Burroughs—who embodied openness through travel, experimentation, and rebellion against convention. Their curiosity wasn’t just cultural; it was cognitive.

The Dopamine Pathway to Discovery

Neuroscientist Colin DeYoung calls dopamine the “neuromodulator of exploration.” Dopamine surges not from pleasure itself but from anticipation—the thrill of discovering something new. People high in openness seek novelty for its own sake, a trait linking the arts and sciences alike. They daydream more vividly, notice more subtleties, and connect disparate ideas. Yet this “messy mind” can also mean increased distractibility or emotional intensity—the same neural openness that fuels art can, in excess, resemble mania or psychosis.

Seeing with Fresh Eyes

Openness also operates as a mindset. When you expose yourself to unfamiliar cultures, perspectives, or artistic forms, you stretch your cognitive categories. Dean Keith Simonton’s studies show that societies rich in diversity and immigration often experience creative booms because exposure to the unfamiliar forces innovation. Kaufman encourages readers to do the same on a personal scale: read outside your interests, travel off the beaten path, and regularly disrupt routine. Every act of curiosity teaches your brain to think differently.

To live creatively, you don’t need chaos; you need curiosity. Openness invites life’s ambiguity instead of fearing it—and through that openness, the world continuously expands.

While daydreaming lets thoughts wander, mindfulness anchors them. Kaufman and Gregoire redefine mindfulness as “the art of paying attention on purpose.” It’s not limited to meditation; it’s a creative stance toward life, akin to the way poet Mary Oliver described her craft: “Pay attention. Be astonished. Tell about it.” The authors illustrate this through Marina Keegan, a young writer whose notebook titled Interesting Stuff brimmed with observations—waiters’ gestures, strangers’ faces, turns of phrase. Her attentive curiosity transformed everyday moments into art.

The Science of Attention

In a world of constant notifications, mindfulness restores the brain’s ability to focus. Research by Jon Kabat-Zinn and others shows that even brief meditation enhances the prefrontal cortex’s ability to sustain attention and emotional balance. More profoundly, Kaufman frames mindfulness as a complement to imagination: while mind wandering generates ideas, mindfulness helps select and refine them. The most creative individuals switch fluidly between wandering and focusing—what the authors call finding the “middle way.”

Observation as a Creative Skill

Mindfulness heightens observation—the ability to notice subtle details others miss. Painters like Georgia O’Keeffe magnified flowers until viewers finally “saw what she saw.” Writers carry notebooks; scientists pause before conclusions. As Ellen Langer put it, mindfulness means “actively noticing new things.” Each observation broadens perception, transforming the mundane into potential inspiration. Practiced this way, mindfulness becomes a renewable source of wonder.

Combined with flexibility and curiosity, mindfulness doesn’t quiet creativity—it sharpens it. When you fully attend to life, the ordinary habitually becomes extraordinary.

Creative people often feel too much—the sadness of a song, the ache of injustice, the joy of beauty. Kaufman and Gregoire, building on psychologist Elaine Aron’s work, argue that this high sensitivity is not a weakness but a strength. Around 20% of people are “highly sensitive,” meaning their nervous systems register more subtleties—sounds, emotions, sensations—than most. For artists like Michael Jackson or Audrey Hepburn, such sensitivity made life intense but also gave their performances unmatched emotional depth.

The Science of Sensitivity

Highly sensitive people process stimuli more deeply, involving brain regions like the insula, which links self-awareness to empathy. This means they notice more—and react more—to everything from a friend’s tone of voice to a change in lighting. These individuals often need solitude to recharge; yet their capacity for empathy, intuition, and aesthetic appreciation makes them exceptional creators and healers. Sensitivity amplifies life’s volume, demanding both self-care and expression.

The Gift and the Responsibility

Kaufman connects sensitivity to Kazimierz Dąbrowski’s idea of overexcitabilities—intense responses across emotional, imaginative, or intellectual domains that drive personal growth. Sensitive people experience inner tension but also transformation; suffering becomes raw material for meaning. As Eleanor Roosevelt’s life shows, deep empathy can evolve into public compassion. Sensitivity fuels not just art but moral imagination—the ability to feel humanity vividly and act upon it.

In a world that rewards numbness, sensitivity is revolutionary. To feel deeply is to live creatively—translating emotion into understanding, and pain into beauty.

Suffering is universal—but growth from it isn’t. Kaufman and Gregoire show that for many creators, hardship becomes the seed of transformation. Frida Kahlo, bedridden after a bus accident, began painting self-portraits that turned agony into art. Psychologists call this phenomenon posttraumatic growth: the process of rebuilding meaning after crisis. Studies reveal that up to 70% of trauma survivors experience some form of positive transformation—new appreciation of life, deeper relationships, or a renewed creative drive.

The Alchemy of Suffering

The authors compare trauma to an earthquake that shatters old beliefs, forcing reconstruction of the self. Out of this rebuilding comes new perspective—what Nietzsche called “becoming stronger through the break.” Creative expression facilitates this recovery by giving chaos a shape. Writing, painting, or composing helps convert pain into coherence. As Viktor Frankl wrote in Man’s Search for Meaning, when we can no longer change a situation, we can still change ourselves.

The Healing Power of Creation

Art therapy, journaling, and other expressive practices activate this healing loop. By externalizing inner turmoil, you build narrative control and possibility. Musician Paul Klee, suffering from a fatal illness, painted through the pain, saying, “I create in order not to cry.” Creativity, for him as for many, is not escape but survival—a way to transmute suffering into meaning.

Ultimately, adversity can refine vision rather than crush it. The lotus, as Buddhist wisdom reminds us, blooms from mud. When you turn toward your wounds instead of away, you find they can light the path forward.

Creativity isn’t safe—it’s rebellion with purpose. The closing chapter of Wired to Create celebrates the iconoclasts who challenge convention, from Giordano Bruno and Galileo to Steve Jobs. Thinking differently means seeing the world not as it is but as it could be. Yet society, the authors note, often resists novelty. Research shows a “creativity bias”: people claim to value innovation but unconsciously prefer familiar ideas. Real originality, therefore, requires not just imagination but courage.

The Bias Against Creativity

Kaufman and Gregoire cite experiments where participants unknowingly rated novel ideas as less appealing than conventional ones. Risk aversion, fear of uncertainty, and social conformity all suppress innovation. But nonconformists—artists, scientists, entrepreneurs—learn to thrive outside approval’s comfort zone. When the crowd says no, they persist. As Asimov once observed, “The world in general disapproves of creativity.” Understanding that truth frees you to stop seeking permission.

Failure as Fertile Ground

Every genius fails—a lot. Thomas Edison filed over a thousand patents; most led nowhere. Shakespeare’s masterpieces emerged between what critics call “duds.” For psychologist Dean Keith Simonton, quantity breeds quality: more experiments mean more chances for brilliance. Creativity isn’t a single strike of genius; it’s trial, error, and persistence reframed as play. J. K. Rowling captured it perfectly: “It is impossible to live without failing at something.”

Thinking differently, then, is both mindset and practice—a willingness to risk discomfort in pursuit of new truth. When you combine openness, passion, and resilience, you become what the authors call a “whole creator”—one who sees in life’s contradictions not chaos but possibility. In doing so, you fulfill Robert Henri’s vision of the living artist: someone who “upsets, enlightens, and opens ways for better understanding.”