Rapt Chapter Nine:

"William James’s simple experiment on how to improve your ability to pay attention. First, he says, make a dot on a piece of paper or a wall, then try to stay focused on it. In short order, your mind will wander. Next, start asking yourself questions about the dot: its size, shape, color, and so on. Make associations with it: its existential pathos, perhaps, or the dot as yang to the paper’s yin. Once you’re engaged in such elaboration, you’ll find that you can focus on the negligible mark for quite a while. Observing that this ability to attend to and develop even the humblest subject is a cornerstone of creativity, James says, “This is what the genius does, in whose hands a given topic coruscates and grows.” "

"Ahas!, however, are invariably preceded by long periods of steady concentration on a subject, whether in art or science, business or politics, punctuated by spells of “incubation,” when the mind’s searchlight seemingly shifts elsewhere. After spending years thinking about the individual’s rights and studying the views of the English philosopher John Locke as well as his own august peers, Thomas Jefferson could “dash off ” the revolutionary Declaration of Independence in a matter of days."

"whenever you engage in a creative activity, you boost your level of positive emotion, which in turn literally widens your attentional range, giving you more material to work with. As James says, the generative mind is “full of copious and original associations,” so that attending to the germ of an idea soon leads to “all sorts of fascinating consequences.”"

"If she’s working well, however, Honsaker is aware of paying rapt attention that’s “really different” from her everyday experience: “When the art is coming, everything else just disappears. All of my other responsibilities fall away. There’s no pressure. I can forget about mealtimes and find that although it’s two a.m., I’m not tired. There’s a lot of freedom in that kind of concentration.” This association of focusing and freedom recalls an imaginative experiment that suggests that at such moments, the brain releases its brakes, allowing the mind to let loose. "

"When they improvised on their own—the keystone of all kinds of creativity—the musicians’ brains went into a “dissociated frontal activity state,” a.k.a. “being in the zone.”  Neurological activity associated with self-monitoring and inhibition decreased, which increased their ability to process new stimuli and ideas. "

"In attentional terms, the super-rich, thickety networks of Mozart’s brain enabled him to focus on and absorb information effortlessly and to process very complex things that most of us would have to work on sequentially as if they were a single unit. ... Because such a brain can simultaneously represent many more things than the average model, it has many more sources of inspiration to elaborate on and can create a bigger, deeper reality for us lesser mortals to wonder at."

"The term mindfulness wouldn’t be necessary, says Langer, if most people didn’t have such an impoverished, static understanding of what “paying attention” means. Over many years, she has asked children and instructors in very different kinds of schools a simple but telling question: “What does it mean when a teacher asks students to pay attention, focus, concentrate on something?” Invariably, the answer is something like “To hold that thing still.” In other words, most people think of attention as a kind of mental camera that you keep rigidly, narrowly focused on a particular subject or object. This realization led Langer to two important conclusions: “When students have trouble paying attention, they’re doing what their teachers say they should do. The problem is that it’s the wrong instruction.” In contrast to this fixed, tunnel-vision mode of focusing, the creative, mindful attention described in James’s dot exercise or deployed by Honsaker when she conjures up a wild animal on paper is an active, probing exploration of a target that becomes more interesting as you search for new facets to consider. “Stare at your finger,” says Langer. “The more things you notice about it—a hangnail, a little bit of dirt, whatever—the easier it is to stay attentive.” 

As the great architect Mies van der Rohe famously said, “God is in the details.” That principle keeps Honsaker both absorbed in her work, she says, and able to “bring an animal to life.” Because it’s the little things that make a creature seem individual and engaging, she says, “I try to get down everything I can. I want to be as familiar with that animal as I am with my dog. And when I pet his head, I recognize every bump."

" “Whatever we engage with becomes engaging. If you say to someone who knows nothing about birds, ‘Just listen to that brown thrush,’ your words may fall on deaf ears. But an ornithologist will notice many things when she attends to that sound and have a richer experience.”

Illustrating the connections among attention, engagement, and affection, Langer says, “Imagine that you’ve had the same spouse for many years. If you look for a way in which he’s different today, you’ll find something. That makes him more interesting and, probably, more likable.”"

"taking on a creative challenge—learn to build a bookshelf, cook Sicilian cuisine, sail to the Caribbean—is a great way to catapult yourself into a new world of mindful attention. “God knows why I even tried to paint,” she says. “There was no reason to think I’d enjoy it, but I just began anyway. Now it’s something I do all the time.” "

"Inventive cooks, for whom a recipe is just a starting point ..."

"mindlessly following a cookbook’s highly specific instructions causes your mind to “snap shut like a clam on ice,” says Langer, freezing out inspiration and innovation."

"When she felt frustrated over not being able to paint a conventionally correct horse, Langer did some research in art history and found countless variations on the equine theme. As she says, in painting, gardening, or any other endeavor, “everything is the same until it’s not. Either you can do a thing or don’t yet know if you can. The question isn’t ‘Can I?’ but ‘How to?’ ” "

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grok:

"Chapter Nine of Rapt explores the link between focused attention, creativity, and mindfulness, arguing that true engagement transforms mundane subjects into sources of inspiration and innovation. Drawing on psychologist William James, the chapter opens with a simple experiment to enhance attention: staring at a dot on paper inevitably leads to mind-wandering, but by actively questioning and associating with it—its size, shape, existential qualities, or symbolic yin-yang dynamics—one can sustain focus indefinitely. James posits this elaboration as the essence of genius, where a humble topic "coruscates and grows" through rich associations, forming the bedrock of creative thought.

The chapter emphasizes that breakthroughs, or "Ahas!," rarely emerge spontaneously but follow prolonged concentration interspersed with incubation periods, when the mind appears to divert but subconsciously processes ideas. Historical examples like Thomas Jefferson, who synthesized years of reflection on individual rights and influences from John Locke to rapidly draft the Declaration of Independence, illustrate how sustained focus primes revolutionary output.

Creativity is portrayed as a self-reinforcing cycle: engaging in it elevates positive emotions, which broaden attentional scope and yield more raw material for ideas, as James describes the generative mind brimming with "copious and original associations." Artist Linda Honsaker exemplifies this in her wildlife drawings, where "rapt attention" erases distractions, responsibilities, and even fatigue, fostering a liberating freedom. This aligns with neurological insights from studies on jazz musicians improvising: in the "zone," frontal brain activity tied to self-inhibition diminishes, unleashing openness to new stimuli and fluid idea generation.

The discussion extends to exceptional minds like Mozart's, whose densely interconnected neural networks enable effortless absorption of complex information as unified wholes, expanding inspirational sources and crafting deeper realities for others. Psychologist Ellen Langer critiques conventional notions of attention as rigid fixation—"holding something still"—which she sees as misguided instruction that stifles students. Instead, she advocates "mindful attention" as dynamic exploration: staring at a finger reveals hangnails or dirt, sustaining interest through details, much like architect Mies van der Rohe's dictum that "God is in the details." For Honsaker, this means capturing every bump on an animal's head to imbue it with lifelike individuality.

Langer further connects attention to engagement and affection: directing focus to a bird's song enriches experience for an ornithologist but falls flat for the uninformed; similarly, noticing daily changes in a long-term spouse renews interest and likability. The chapter encourages embracing creative challenges—like painting, building, or sailing—to immerse in mindful worlds, warning against mindless adherence to rules, such as following a cookbook rigidly, which "snaps shut" the mind and blocks innovation. Inventive cooks treat recipes as springboards, and Langer shares her own pivot from frustration in painting horses by exploring art history's variations, reframing limitations with the mindset: "Everything is the same until it's not. The question isn't 'Can I?' but 'How to?'" "