Your description of the processes you employ to enhance creativity in your students might be better described as behavioral algorithms. I would describe a behavioral algorithm as a sequence of behaviors or stimuli that increases the likelihood that some behavior, thought, or sentiment occurs or changes in a directed manner. While I have not found many instances of this phrase being used in this way (a quick Google Scholar search doesn’t return much), I would argue that this definition is still valuable. A hypothetical example (little bearing on reality) of a behavioral algorithm of the form ([behavior/stimuli sequence] → [outcome]) could be [10 minutes meditation → 3 minutes mild-intensity exercise → 10 minutes meditation → 10 minutes of any music → green tea] → [reduction in temporally local depressive feelings].
I have done some observational experiments (informal) to gauge behavioral algorithms that enhance creativity and that reduce depressive feelings. I will briefly describe the latter, as it pertains to the topic of this post.
During my subway commutes several summers ago, I forced myself to generate 5 features of society or life that I thought could be better, and then I forced myself to come up with a solution to each of these. Before generating the problems, I would sit still for 15 minutes and try to avoid thinking about anything. I did this exercise (the still-mindedness and problem/solution generation) each day for one month. At the end of the exercise I found that it became much easier to generate problems and solutions, that my descriptions of the solutions became more detailed and practical, and that the solutions themselves seemed to be slightly more creative (this is subjective; I would say that the solutions became somewhat more clever). It could be the case that my creativity was not actually increasing, and rather that I was simply getting more efficient at generating ideas of the same degree of creativity (I don’t know how creativity is measured) as I had going into the informal experiment. Different approaches might be needed for improving the ‘cleverness’ or depth of a creative idea versus improving the rate of creative idea generation, where the level of creativity in this case is equal to the person’s baseline creativity.
I have not devoted the necessary time to generate robust experimental designs to test different behavioral algorithms for improving various dimensions of my health, creativity, or productivity, but I think it’d be interesting to scope out this topic more. It would be awesome if you could test out several variations of the current behavioral algorithms you use with your students, and then report how the outcomes differ between variations.
Your description of the processes you employ to enhance creativity in your students might be better described as behavioral algorithms. I would describe a behavioral algorithm as a sequence of behaviors or stimuli that increases the likelihood that some behavior, thought, or sentiment occurs or changes in a directed manner. While I have not found many instances of this phrase being used in this way (a quick Google Scholar search doesn’t return much), I would argue that this definition is still valuable. A hypothetical example (little bearing on reality) of a behavioral algorithm of the form ([behavior/stimuli sequence] → [outcome]) could be [10 minutes meditation → 3 minutes mild-intensity exercise → 10 minutes meditation → 10 minutes of any music → green tea] → [reduction in temporally local depressive feelings].
I have done some observational experiments (informal) to gauge behavioral algorithms that enhance creativity and that reduce depressive feelings. I will briefly describe the latter, as it pertains to the topic of this post.
During my subway commutes several summers ago, I forced myself to generate 5 features of society or life that I thought could be better, and then I forced myself to come up with a solution to each of these. Before generating the problems, I would sit still for 15 minutes and try to avoid thinking about anything. I did this exercise (the still-mindedness and problem/solution generation) each day for one month. At the end of the exercise I found that it became much easier to generate problems and solutions, that my descriptions of the solutions became more detailed and practical, and that the solutions themselves seemed to be slightly more creative (this is subjective; I would say that the solutions became somewhat more clever). It could be the case that my creativity was not actually increasing, and rather that I was simply getting more efficient at generating ideas of the same degree of creativity (I don’t know how creativity is measured) as I had going into the informal experiment. Different approaches might be needed for improving the ‘cleverness’ or depth of a creative idea versus improving the rate of creative idea generation, where the level of creativity in this case is equal to the person’s baseline creativity.
I have not devoted the necessary time to generate robust experimental designs to test different behavioral algorithms for improving various dimensions of my health, creativity, or productivity, but I think it’d be interesting to scope out this topic more. It would be awesome if you could test out several variations of the current behavioral algorithms you use with your students, and then report how the outcomes differ between variations.
Thank you for this post as well!