Embracing a Human-Centered Approach (8)

The creative struggle isn’t just an obstacle to overcome, but an integral part of the creative process itself. It’s in its midst that we often make unexpected connections and ultimately produce our most innovative work. We need to take care to give our innate processes time and space to unfold before we look to machine intelligence for a boost. Introducing AI too early can influence our perception of possibilities and solutions, potentially narrowing our views. Those with high AIQ know when to resist the temptation to immediately turn to AI. To fully flex their uniquely human cognitive strength, they embrace some amount of creative struggle.

Keep Your Subconscious Mind Flowing

Other times, insights seem to materialize out of thin air. This is our human gift of subconscious processing at work—a powerful ability that can surface connections and ideas in ways even neuroscientists don’t fully understand.

Scientists and scholars have been working to measure and explain the power of the unconscious mind for over a century. This is notoriously difficult—we can’t really “see” unconscious processing, so this topic can be controversial. Interestingly, the debate isn’t really about whether unconscious processing exists (most researchers agree that it does), but rather about how to prove it.4However, we have seen that brain activity related to decisions can be detected before a person becomes aware of their decision.5 Research from cognitive neuroscientist Mark Beeman suggests that sudden insights that he calls “aha moments” are preceded by a burst of gamma-band neural activity in the brain’s right hemisphere.6

You’ve likely experienced moments when an idea struck you with a bolt of insight—fully formed and profound—even when you weren’t aware you were thinking. This happens because our conscious mind often becomes aware of insights only after they’ve been processed in the depths of our subconscious. Neuroscientist David Eagleman beautifully describes this phenomenon: “the conscious mind is not at the center of the action in the brain; instead, it is far out on a distant edge, hearing but whispers of the activity.”7 It’s as if we have our own built-in robot working tirelessly in the background of our brains on our behalf, making connections and surfacing insights for us with minimal conscious effort on our part.

Many researchers believe that our subconscious mind also plays an important role in innovation: making connections, generating ideas, and making choices. For example, while both conscious and unconscious thought generate ideas, individuals who engage in unconscious thought are better at selecting their most creative ideas.8

Moreover, unconscious thought often produces more creative and unusual responses than conscious deliberation, a quality that’s crucial for innovative thinking. Research has also surfaced the concept of incubation, a period in which the unconscious mind continues to work on a problem without conscious awareness, a process that can lead to creative and innovative insights.9

These are all reasons why when we work on tough challenges, we need to make sure we are making time and space for unconscious thinking to unfold instead of turning immediately to AI for answers.