Who comes to mind when I say “creative genius?” Maybe Galileo, Ben Franklin, Frank Lloyd Wright? Well, it turns out those three – and several more renowned innovators – have one major thing in common.
But before I get to that, let’s consider something. Does your current creative capacity hold a candle to your creativity as a young child? For me, it’s not even a comparison. Lower-level education’s focus on standardized testing and regimented schedules metaphorically beat the innovation and creativity of toddler-Lyndsey right out of me. Great, I think, it can only get better (read: way worse) from here as I get old and senile. I am the sharpest I’ll ever be right now, so the future of my innovation seems to have peaked at around 4-years-old.
But then I read an article I found in Time magazine titled “The Art of Living.” Now’s the time to go back to that list of geniuses I mentioned. Guess what it was that they had in common? It was that they were all old when they finished their magnum opuses. Really old.
We’ve all heard that age guts fluid intelligence measures such as working memory, computing speed and the ability to hold on to multiple ideas at once. It’s true that the brain’s processing power does worsen, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing. In fact, as this function declines, our brains begin to compensate in other ways that actually enhance creativity.
Older people often have more cross-talk or cooperation between the right and left hemispheres of their brains, which help produce more of those “aha” moments. For most younger brains, this co-mingling happens during the night as we sleep, but for older, less rigidly structured brains, the back-and-forth happens all the time.
But simply getting old is not the only pre-requisite for a future of creative bursts and genius innovations. It’s important that, as we grow old, we keep our brains busy. An active brain stays lucid longer and helps resist cognitive problems such as dementia.
So find work that challenges you. You want something that will keep you on your mental toes, make you think and analyze and create. You want a job that’s going to present new problems every day instead of the same basic tasks you can put on autopilot.
Science is also beginning to suggest that the relationship between age and creativity works in both ways. Not only will getting older and wiser make you more creative, living a creative and productive life may also make you live longer.
As the writer suggests, work often expands to fill the amount of time you allot for said work. For example, if you give yourself five hours to write a paper, it will probably take you five hours. On a larger scale, time may expand to contain the work and goals we set for our lives.
Going back to that scenario comparing your current self to your toddler self may not seem so depressing after all. You’re in your 20s now, which means your cognitive abilities are nearing their peak, the door to opportunity is open and you’re starting to regain a sense of that reckless childhood creativity, which will only enhance with age. The best is yet to come.
