If you’re happy, things work better because you’re more creative — you get a little problem, you say, ‘Ah, I’ll figure it out.’ No big deal.
A relatively old TED talk by professor and author Don Norman (recorded in 2003 before TED became free-to-stream), so it’s a little dated, but still holds some gems.
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“When you’re anxious you squirt neural transmitters in the brain, which focuses you, makes you depth-first. And when you’re happy — what we call positive valence — you squirt dopamine into the prefrontal lobes, which makes you a breadth-first problem solver: you’re more susceptible to interruption; you do out-of-the-box thinking. That’s what brainstorming is about, right? With brainstorming we make you happy, we play games, and we say, ‘No criticism,’ and you get all these weird, neat ideas. But in fact, if that’s how you always were you’d never get any work done because you’d be working along and say, ‘Oh, I got a new way of doing it.’ So to get work done, you’ve got to set a deadline, right? You’ve got be anxious. The brain works differently. And if you’re happy, things work better because you’re more creative — you get a little problem, you say, ‘Ah, I’ll figure it out.’ No big deal.”
In other words, the happier you are during a project deadline, the easier it can be to come up with ideas. That might be doing something as simple as taking breaks to read or exercise or go for a walk, or even just making your workspace nicer to sit at.
“I really have the feeling that pleasant things work better.”
— Don Norman
After listening, I had a look at Don’s recommended reads. Interestingly, Per Mollerup (author of Marks of Excellence) released a new book in 2015 titled Simplicity: A Matter of Design (Amazon.com/Amazon.co.uk). Looks worth picking up. But not before I read Don’s popular book, The Design of Everyday Things, revised and expanded in 2013 (Amazon.com/Amazon.co.uk).