by Annette
14. March 2007
I talk to business folks almost daily who intellectually know the personal value of creativity, but find it hard to actually do it. When they take time to get that creative rush, they feel it is time spent away from 'real' work. Expression lives in one compartment of their brain and work lives in another.
Meet a colleague of mine, Tim Spring, who gets the back and forth benefit of creativity and work. Tim is a savvy, street-smart, successful executive and also a singer/songwriter. Being a musician is for him the antithesis of work, but a complementary necessity. He's been playing music on the side for years and describes the experience as 'exercising the creative side of my brain' and it spills into 'almost indescribable ways' and augments the way he thinks at work.
Brain research is proving the plasticity of the brain. When we task neurons with a range of different influences, it changes and strengthens the chemical connections that fire. It's long been believed by neuroscientists that creative expression can improve our cognitive function. Creativity turns the brain 'on'. fMRI research is now proving it.
But Tim Spring knew it all along. Check out his latest song in collaboration with Bob Morrison and Josh Bloom.
