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Related to my postings on mindful studio practice, I often read renowned writer Maria Popova's work (my previous mentions here). Her piece on the Cognitive Science of the Perfect Daily Routine is interesting. It's about writing, but has many connections to painting and any art form. In the article, Popova is sharing her thoughts on and excerpts from the 1994 volume The Psychology of Writing by cognitive psychologist Ronald T. Kellogg, which "explores how work schedules, behavioral rituals, and writing environments affect the amount of time invested in trying to write and the degree to which that time is spent in a state of boredom, anxiety, or creative flow."
Here are two excerpts that caught my eye:
"What matters, Kellogg points out, are each writer’s highly subjective requirements for preserving the state of flow: 'The lack of interruption in trains of thought may be the critical ingredient in an environment that enables creative flow. As long as a writer can tune out background noise, the decibel level per se may be unimportant. For some writers, the dripping of a faucet may be more disruptive than the bustle of a cafe in the heart of a city.'"
And this could be useful to many artists or writers who haven't yet created a dedicated space for creating their work:
It "isn’t so much superstitious ritualization — an effort to summon the muse through the elaborate juju of putting everything in its right place — as cognitive cueing. Kellogg considers the usefulness of a special space used solely for writing, which cultivates an 'environment that cues the desired behavior':
'This phenomenon can be reinterpreted in terms of the cognitive concept of encoding specificity. The abstract ideas, images, plans, tentative sentences, feelings, and other personal symbols that represent the knowledge needed to construct a text are associated with the place and time of the writing environment. These associations are strongest when the writer engages in few if any extraneous activities in the selected environment. Entering the environment serves as a retrieval cue for the relevant knowledge to enter the writer’s awareness. Once the writer’s attention turns to the ideas that pop into consciousness, the composing process flows again. Particular features of the environment may serve as specific prompts for retrieving, creating, and thinking.'" [Keep reading]
If you enjoy this painting, you may also like to see a bunch of my paintings of handmade pottery.
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