Wired to Create is an empowering manifesto for creative people."
—Susan Cain, New York Times bestselling author of Quiet

Is it possible to make sense of something as elusive as creativity?

Over the years, psychologists and neuroscientists have attempted to put creative people under a microscope, but the creative process has long defied attempts to be neatly categorized. Creative personality types are difficult to pin down largely because they exhibit a complex series of traits, behaviors, skills, environments, and emotions, and it is this easy adaptability that gives them the freedom to create novel ideas and products.

Inspired by their viral Huffington Post article “18 Things Highly Creative People Do Differently,” which garnered over 5 million views in one week, positive psychology expert Scott Barry Kaufman and Huffington Post psychology writer Carolyn Gregoire explore how we are WIRED TO CREATE: Unraveling the Mysteries of the Creative Mind.
Combining the latest scientific research with case studies of artists and innovators throughout history, the book shines a light on the practices and habits of mind that promote creative thinking. 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.

With insights from the work and lives of Pablo Picasso, Frida Kahlo, Marcel Proust, David Foster Wallace, Thomas Edison, Josephine Baker, John Lennon, Michael Jackson, musician Thom Yorke, chess champion Joshua Waitzkin, video-game designer Shigeru Miyamoto, and many other creative luminaries, WIRED TO CREATE helps us better understand creativity – and shows us how to enrich this essential aspect of our lives.