If you work in tech or a knowledge job in general, chances are you are pretty good at execution: solving problems, managing your stakeholders, driving quarterly goals, meeting OKRs, and checking off a long list of never-finished to-dos. But when met with a creative problem - whether at work (like proposing a new product) or in personal life (like, I don’t know, drawing something with your kids), you sit down with a blank piece of paper and your brain suddenly feels like an empty box.

It’s easy to throw your arms up in the air and think “well, I guess I’m just not that creative!”. But creativity is more malleable than we think, and all it takes is to temporarily turn off the part of you that’s so good at execution.

In the 1970s, MacKinnon - a researcher at UC Berkeley - ran a study comparing highly creative professionals (architects, scientists, writers) with their uncreative counterparts, and found that the only differentiator between them was the ability to get into a "state of play".

How do you switch your brain from work mode to creative mode?

To switch your brain from work mode to creative mode, you have to create a strict boundary - of space and time - that separates execution from exploration. Give yourself 90 uninterrupted minutes to remove the pressure to produce a useful result. This quiets your brain's executive network and helps you enter the "state of play" required for genuine creative insight.

Biologically, productivity is at odds with creativity, each operating in mutually exclusive networks of the brain. This dependency was most approachably described by John Cleese as the "Closed Mode" and the "Open Mode":

1. The Closed Mode (The Executive Control Network)

The Closed Mode is active, anxious, impatient, purposeful, and highly logical. It relies on the Executive Control Network, which is laser-focused on solving specific problems and checking off tasks, and obviously quite useful in doing work that results in getting paid. But it’s a terrible mode if your goal is to discover something new, because it’s impossible to solve a novel problem or make orthogonal discoveries in the closed mode.

If Alexander Fleming was operating in the closed mode when he realized that one of his petri dishes didn’t produce bacteria, we might not have penicillin. He would have simply chucked it in the garbage and gone back to the task at hand.

2. The Open Mode (The Default Mode Network)

The Open Mode is relaxed, expansive, not purposeful, and generally inclined to play. Biologically, this is the Default Mode Network, which lights up when we’re resting, daydreaming, or mind-wandering. This is the only state where our brains show curiosity, can connect disparate dots, and produce creative insights.

The High-Achiever's Trap

You can already see the catch: we’ve spent our adult lives rewarded for operating in the closed mode, and we got very good at it, the always-running task list in our brains expertly managed for decades. Neurologically, when the executive network is engaged, the default network is suppressed. Any time a “to-do" pops into your head, it elbows creativity out.

How to Toggle the Switch

There’s a simple - if not easy - formula:

Space + time + time + confidence + humor

  • Space + time = oasis: Start with a 90 minute chunk of dedicated time. No checking email, responding to texts, let those inevitable to-do thoughts pass and stare into the wall for 90 minutes if you have to. Eventually, you’ll start writing, or playing, or drawing, or whatever it is that pulls you. But setting aside a defined time and space allows your default mode network to come out.
  • The second “time”: MacKinnon’s study showed that simply sitting with a problem longer - over several days or weeks - produces better results. So do actively think about it, but if deadlines allow for it, give yourself time. Resist the urge to do away with the discomfort by accepting a suboptimal solution!
  • Confidence and humor: Creativity is, by nature, uncertain. You have to have the guts and humor to stick it out. Both allow the Open Mode to engage.

Lastly - embrace the useless. You have to drop the appetite for productivity. It likely will be - you will reap the benefits, but in a way that’s non-linear and impossible to predict. Play, by definition, has to be enjoyed for its own sake, not as a means to an end. Otherwise it’s not play, it’s not Open Mode, and you’re back at square one.

You have spent the last decade+ training your executive function. It’s time to get flexible and let your mind play.