Curiosity is a gift. Simply, it is the drive to learn. And learning is simply the process of making connections to build upon knowledge.

In Western society, we associate learning with school, but don’t get me started on the failings of the education system in the U.S. Even given an excellent educational environment, much of the best learning happens outside of school anyway. Why is that? Perhaps it’s because learning is a type of creativity.

Creative Incubation

Apparently, it was a British dude named Graham Wallas who first developed a model of the stages of the creative process. Many artists are familiar with these stages: preparation, incubation, illumination, and verification. Let’s talk briefly about the incubation stage.

Creative incubation is the point in the process that comes after you have been actively researching or working on the problem. It involves departing from active contemplation and engaging in other unrelated activities in order to allow the unconscious mind to work on it in the background. Like a slow-cooker, it simmers together all the inputs from the preparation stage for an indeterminate amount of time, until some creative new solution arises – the illumination stage or “eureka” moment. In this way, creativity – and by proxy, learning – is both a conscious effort and an unconscious phenomenon.

Have you ever been going about your day, not necessarily thinking anything about anything, when suddenly a motif reappears to you? In the spiritual community, some might call it a sign or omen or synchronicity. In the scientific community, they might call it confirmation bias. For instance, reel comes up on TikTok of a day-in-the-life of a wolf living at a wild animal sanctuary. The next day, you are reading your fiction novel before bed and a wolf appears before the protagonist. Maybe a week later, you have a dream about wolves. Perhaps on the forested drive home after a long day at work, you spot a pair of eyes gleaming on the side of the road. Eventually, you start to notice the recurring theme and wonder what that’s all about.

Whether you are more spiritual or scientific in nature is irrelevant; there is always something to interpret in these kinds of repeat occurrences – that is, if you choose to be open and curious enough about it.

In a similar way, you might go through your days and weeks with a current struggle or problem in the back of your mind. Anything that may be relevant to resolving this issue will then jump out at you. There is something magical that happens when you receive pertinent information from unrelated sources and at the most unsuspecting times: you receive new insight.

So, in a culture that tends to overvalue productivity and action, how can you be more intentional in giving your creative projects enough incubation time?

Incubation Fuel: Books

How does all of this relate to books? Well, books are the most obvious and easily accessible way to gather new knowledge. Books are yet another access point to your brain for the universe to send you these signs and messages, to add inputs to the stuff fermenting in your unconscious. In this sense, what you read, and whatever else you fill your mind with, matters for its nutritional value. In other words, reading books contributes to the “preparation” stage of creativity.

I was reading Atomic Habits by James Clear when I felt inspired to write this blog. Somewhere in the first chapter, it says, “…each book you read not only teaches you something new but also opens up different ways of thinking about old ideas.” Thank you, James Clear, for this awesome quote.

Neuroplasticity, Learning & Creativity

This brief input recalled to my mind something seemingly entirely unrelated: neuroplasticity. I have been quite fascinated with the emergence of models of psychiatric treatment based on the scientific research around neuroplasticity.

For those to whom it is a new concept, neuroplasticity means the brain’s ability to alter its neural pathways. In the world of psychology, neuroplasticity has been shown to be transformational in treating mental illnesses like depression, anxiety, and PTSD. In summary, neuroplasticity is the brain’s innate ability to alter itself, to integrate new or conflicting information, and to arrive at new perspectives that are more adaptive to daily life. By this definition, neuroplasticity is just…learning. Which, as we said before, is just…creativity.

If books are the ultimate means of learning, then perhaps they can, to some degree, induce neuroplasticity. Of course, this is just a hypothesis, and I would love to hear about any scientific research on this topic that confirms or denies it. (I am, after all, not a medical professional.) But let’s be open and curious about this idea. What if it were true? What if books really could induce neuroplasticity?

So here is what I will leave for you to chew on: if you want to change your life, change your brain. If you want to change your brain, read books!