Too Fast to Think

How to Reclaim Your Creativity in a Hyper-connected Work Culture

Chris Lewis

• Publisher: Kogan Page
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN:
  9780749478865
• Edition: 1
• eBook ISBN:
  9780749478872
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Workplace Culture
• Index: Business

Our lives are getting faster and faster. We are engulfed in constant distraction from email, social media and our 'always on' work culture. We are too busy, too overloaded with information and too focused on analytical left-brain thinking processes to be creative. Too Fast to Think exposes how our current work practices, media culture and education systems are detrimental to innovation. The speed and noise of modern life is undermining the clarity and quiet that is essential to power individual thought. Our best ideas are often generated when we are free to think diffusely, in an uninterrupted environment, which is why moments of inspiration so often occur in places completely separate to our offices.

To reclaim creativity, Too Fast to Think teaches you how to retrain your brain into allowing creative ideas to emerge, before they are shut down by interruption, distraction or the self-doubt of your over-rational brain. This is essential reading for anyone who wants to maximize their creative potential, as well as that of their team. Supported by cutting-edge research from the University of the Arts London and insightful interviews with business leaders, academics, artists, politicians and psychologists, Chris Lewis takes a holistic approach to explain the 8 crucial traits that are inherently linked to creation and innovation.

INDEX

Note: bold page numbers indicate figures; italic numbers indicate tables.

Access Youth Academy, San Diego 54

advertisements 13

aesthetic balance 159–60

aesthetic force 141

‘always on’ environment

balance, achieving 74

data overload 65

disinhibition 66–70

Fear of Missing Out (FOMO) 73

greeting people 78–79

Hurry Sickness 70–74, 72, 73

meetings 77–78

office layouts 79–80

Type A personality behaviour 74–77

work, changes in 63–65, 64

Anderson, Jeffrey 96, 97

anonymity on social media 66, 69

Arboine, Jheni 142–44

architecture

creativity in 5–6

Marina Bay Sands Hotel, Singapore 5–6

art

and faith 142–44

power of 141–42

in science 56–61

and truth and beauty 144–45

Asia, creativity in 5–6

audit of left/right processes 155–56

availability bias 27

bathroom phone usage 14–15

BBC 21

beauty and truth 144–45

beauty standards, unrealistic 32

Beecham, Sinclair 180–81

belief, religious 40, 142–44

Benshetrit, Dror 124–25

biology and art 56–61

bipolar disorder 107

Blacklock, George 39, 57–61

blue light exposure 120–22

body clock 122–23

Bourne, Carol 143

Brady, Vanessa 33–36, 43, 45, 149

brain physiology

audit of left/right processes 155–56

collaboration between two halves 86–87

corpus callosum 85, 86

creative/analytical processes 89

detachment, capability for 90

and digital habits 29

dominance of one side ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Praise for Too Fast to Think
• Title Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Foreword
• Preface
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• 01 The information overload and the way it’s changing us
• 02 How did we allow ourselves to become so overloaded?
• 03 The ‘always on’ environment and its effect
• 04 Your brain and how to use it
• 05 Sleep matters
• 06 Where great ideas come from
• 07 Generating better ideas
• 08 How leaders apply creativity
• Confession
• Index
• Copyright