Creativity fundamentals

Short answer: Creativity is the ability to produce ideas that are both new and useful. Psychologists describe it as combining ideas that are not usually connected, sometimes in sudden "aha" moments of insight. Research suggests a relaxed, broadly attentive state, some movement, and a task you genuinely care about can all make creative thinking more likely, though no single condition guarantees it.

This lesson follows Incubation theory: why stepping away can help. After it, continue to Divergent thinking: generating many possibilities.

What do psychologists mean by creativity?

Most researchers use a two-part definition: a creative idea is original (new, at least to you or your context) and useful (it solves a problem, communicates something or works in practice). A random string of words is original but not useful. A tried-and-tested recipe is useful but not original. Creativity sits where the two overlap.

This matters for procrastination because creative tasks, such as writing, design, research questions or planning a new project, often have no clear first step. That uncertainty can feel uncomfortable, and as earlier lessons explained, uncomfortable feelings are a common trigger for delay.

How do new ideas form in the mind?

In an influential paper, Sarnoff Mednick proposed that creativity involves combining remote associations, ideas that are not usually linked, into useful new combinations (Mednick, 1962). Someone who only reaches for the most obvious association ("chair" leads to "table") may find it harder to be creative than someone whose thoughts can travel further ("chair" leads to "throne", "committee", "wheelchair ramp").

Mednick also created the Remote Associates Test, in which people find a word that links three others. For example, "cottage", "swiss" and "cake" all connect to "cheese". The test is still widely used in studies of incubation and insight.

Imagine a small-business owner in Jaipur trying to boost winter sales of her block-printed fabrics. Linking "fabric" with "gift wrapping", a remote association, might lead to reusable printed cloth wraps for wedding season. The idea comes from connecting two areas she already knows.

What is an "aha" moment?

An insight is a sudden realisation of a solution, often after a period of feeling stuck. Research reviewed by Kounios and Beeman (2014) suggests insight solutions are preceded by distinctive patterns of brain activity, and that a relaxed, positive and broadly attentive state appears to make insight more likely. A tense, narrowly focused state may suit careful step-by-step work better.

This connects directly to the previous lesson. Insights often arrive after incubation, when you have prepared and then loosened your focus. Professional writers and physicists, for example, reported that a meaningful share of their important ideas came while mind wandering or doing something unrelated (Gable, Hopper, & Schooler, 2019).

Which conditions seem to help creative thinking?

No recipe guarantees creativity, but several conditions are associated with it:

• Movement. In a series of experiments, walking, whether on a treadmill or outdoors, increased people's output on a task of generating uses for objects compared with sitting. It did not help a task with a single correct answer (Oppezzo & Schwartz, 2014).
• A relaxed, open mood. As noted above, insight seems more likely in a positive, broadly attentive state (Kounios & Beeman, 2014).
• Absorption. Csikszentmihalyi (1990) described "flow", deep absorption that tends to happen when a task's challenge matches your skills and there are clear goals and feedback. Many people do their most satisfying creative work in this state.
• Some, but not too much, delay. In field and lab studies, moderate procrastination was associated with higher creativity than very low or very high procrastination, particularly for people intrinsically motivated by the task (Shin & Grant, 2021). The authors stress this is about moderate delay, not chronic avoidance.

For example, a college lecturer in Nairobi designing a new course might sketch topics at her desk, walk to a meeting while turning the sequence over in her mind, and return to find that two modules fit better in reverse order.

Does this mean creative people should always wait for inspiration?

Not quite. Waiting passively for inspiration can slide into unproductive avoidance. The research points to a more active rhythm: engage with the problem, loosen your focus, then come back and test what emerged. You can explore this further on the creative thinking page and in our article on procrastination and creativity.

Key takeaways

• Creative ideas are both original and useful.
• Mednick proposed that creativity involves combining remote associations into new, useful combinations.
• Insight seems more likely in a relaxed, positive and broadly attentive state.
• Walking has been shown to boost idea generation, but not single-answer problem solving.
• Moderate delay may support creativity for motivated people; chronic avoidance does not.

Try it

The quiz below revisits associative thinking, insight and the conditions that support creativity. Each question includes an explanation, so you can learn from any answer you choose. When you are ready, continue to Divergent thinking: generating many possibilities.