Wired to Create: Unraveling the Mysteries of the Creative Mind (Scott Kaufman and Carolyn Gregoire)

This 2015 book brings together the best current science on the psychological behaviors and neuroscience findings that underly and support creativity.

Kaufman and Gregoire untangle a series of paradoxes — like mindfulness and daydreaming, seriousness and play, openness and sensitivity, and solitude and collaboration – to show that it is by embracing our own contradictions that we are able to tap into our deepest creativity.

Each chapter explores one of the ten attributes and habits of highly creative people:

1. Imaginative Play
2. Passion
3. Daydreaming
4. Solitude
5. Intuition
6. Openness to Experience
7. Mindfulness
8. Sensitivity
9. Turning Adversity into Advantage
10. Thinking Differently

The authors provide many examples from the lives of famous creatives: Pablo Picasso, Frida Kahlo, Marcel Proust, David Foster Wallace, Thomas Edison, Josephine Baker, John Lennon, Michael Jackson, musician Thom Yorke, chess champion Josh Waitzkin, video-game designer Shigeru Miyamoto, and many others.