Creativity seems to come in cycles for me. I have days where I come home with rolls of film filled to the very end with interesting photographs. Conversely, I also have days or weeks when I can’t take even a single memorable photograph.

Over time, I’ve noticed a correlation between how I’m feeling physically and how creatively successful I am. Feeling well-rested and clear-headed contribute greatly to a good mood, which often translates into positive results. To that end, I’ve become very serious about eating well, not drinking too much, and going to bed early in preparation for a day of photography. I think this change in lifestyle has had a very positive effect on my work.

Another obstacle to my creative success is the trouble I sometimes have in focusing on one thing for any significant amount of time. I’m great at juggling half a dozen incoming streams of information at work, but switching gears and having the patience to concentrate on one thing for any longer period of time is more difficult. All too often during a day of photography I’ll find myself drifting off and thinking about my work or personal life, and the next thing I know I’ve walked a mile without engaging in anything but idle thought.

I recently came across a book called Zen In the Art of Archery, by Eugen Herrigel, which talks a lot about the nature of creativity. “Zen” is a concept that is often misused and misunderstood in western culture, and I won’t claim to be qualified to talk about it myself. What I am interested in, however, is understanding how people become excellent at the things that they do, and the book is very insightful in that regard.

One of the important ideas that comes up in Zen In the Art of Archery is the notion of mindfulness. Mindfulness is a shift in concentration toward immediate experience over the narrative experience that normally occupies our thoughts. Mindfulness is a different kind of self-awareness regarding the world around you, and a different way to interpret and respond to those external stimuli.

One can see a strong link between mindfulness and what is called “flow” in modern psychology. Flow is the creative mental space where one is “fully immersed in what he or she is doing by a feeling of energized focus, full involvement, and success in the process of the activity.” Flow is something we’ve all experienced, but it can be very elusive.

David Rock takes a more scientific look at mindfulness in an article called The Neuroscience of Mindfulness. Rock proposes that there is no reason to limit mindfulness to the practice of Buddhism; rather, it is a skill that can be learned and applied to any situation. Rock frames the article around business concepts (he’s a business coach), but again I could see this applying to any kind of creative work. He description of how people switch between two different kinds of neural networks for processing experience is fascinating:

“One network for experiencing your experience involves what is called the “default network”, which includes regions of the medial prefrontal cortex, along with memory regions such as the hippocampus. This network is called default because it becomes active when not much else is happening, and you think about yourself. If you are sitting on the edge of a jetty in summer, a nice breeze blowing in your hair and a cold beer in your hand, instead of taking in the beautiful day you might find yourself thinking about what to cook for dinner tonight, and whether you will make a mess of the meal to the amusement of your partner. This is your default network in action. It’s the network involved in planning, daydreaming and ruminating.

When the direct experience network is active, several different brain regions become more active. This includes the insula, a region that relates to perceiving bodily sensations. The anterior cingulate cortex is also activated, which is a region central to switching your attention. When this direct experience network is activated, you are not thinking intently about the past or future, other people, or yourself, or considering much at all. Rather, you are experiencing information coming into your senses in real time. Sitting on the jetty, your attention is on the warmth of the sun on your skin, the cool breeze in your hair, and the cold beer in your hand.

A series of other studies has found that these two circuits, narrative and direct experience, are inversely correlated. In other words, if you think about an upcoming meeting while you wash dishes, you are more likely to overlook a broken glass and cut your hand, because the brain map involved in visual perception is less active when the narrative map is activated. You don’t see as much (or hear as much, or feel as much, or sense anything as much) when you are lost in thought. Sadly, even a beer doesn’t taste as good in this state.

Fortunately, this scenario works both ways. When you focus your attention on incoming data, such as the feeling of the water on your hands while you wash up, it reduces activation of the narrative circuitry. This explains why, for example, if your narrative circuitry is going crazy worrying about an upcoming stressful event, it helps to take a deep breath and focus on the present moment. All your senses “come alive” at that moment.”

The “default network” Rock talks about sounds an awful lot like the struggle I mentioned before about staying focused on my work. Being actively receptive and engaged with external visual stimuli is one of the primary jobs of any photographer. Being stuck in the default network, I suspect, opens yourself to only the most obvious possibilities. It is in that state of active engaged that you are able to make the observational connections essential to great photography.

I suspect this switching is more natural for some people than others, but the good news is that it is a skill that can be practiced and learned. The more you practice, the easier it is to get into a mindful state and the easier it is to stay there. My theory is that once you are able to get out of the default network, it is easier to slip into a creative flow and stay there, and things happen more or less naturally from there.

Over the years, the experience of photography has become just as important to me as the end result. When I have a good day out, the film becomes almost irrelevant. It later stands as proof that I know what I am doing, but it is the doing that matters. This is the kind of practice that helps me engage more deeply and consistently in my work, and I can’t help but think that it will eventually end up on the film, too.