How to Train Your Imagination

Good morning. I'm Michael Kovnat, and this is the next Big Idea Daily, your quick dose of the best new nonfiction from some of the smartest authors around. Now, today, let's talk about imagination. That might seem like a soft topic, but I don't mean imagination in the sense of, wouldn't it be nice if unicorns were real? I mean imagination as a practical tool, one we can use to solve problems, rehearse hard conversations, picture possible futures. In this sense, imagination is one of the most powerful creative habits you can develop. Cassandra Vieten is a clinical psychologist, a professor at UC San Diego, and director of research at the Arthur C. Clark Center for Human Imagination. Her new book is called Imagine That, Transform How You Think, Feel, and Live with the Science of Imagination. She'll join us with some of her big ideas in just a moment. And later, game designer and futurist Jane McGonigal will help us stretch that muscle toward the future with ideas from her 2022 book, Imaginable, how to see the future coming and feel ready for anything, even things that seem impossible today. So fire up your imagination right after this quick break. Now, as some of you might know, I'm kind of a calendar guy. I like having my days and weeks. They're laid out in front of me on my laptop. I drag and drop my appointments and commitments around as needed. It's great. The problem is coordinating that calendar with the other people in my life. My wife, for example, she prefers to have a big wall calendar in the kitchen, which we can all easily see, but which, in my opinion, quickly gets messy with crossed off appointments, confusing notes. So I'm pretty excited about our new Skylight calendar. It's a large digital display we can mount in our kitchen or anywhere else. We can sync it with our Google Calendar. Or other digital calendars and immediately get a clean color coded display of who's doing what, when we can even assign each other chores and create shared shopping lists. It takes the confusion out of our lives and lets us spend more time together as a family. Families are better when they're working together. Right now, Skylight is offering our listeners $30 off their 15 inch calendars by going to myskylight.com/daily. Go to myskylight.com/daily. For $30 off your 15 inch calendar, that is M-Y-S-K-Y-L-I-G-H-T.com/daily. Today's episode is sponsored by Notion, Quince, and Shopify. Learn more about how Notion can support your business at notion.com/daily. That's all lowercase letters, notion.com/daily to try Notion today. Refresh your wardrobe with Quince. Go to quince.com/nbid for free shipping and 365 day returns. And with Shopify, nothing stands between your idea and a real business. So go make it one. Start your free trial at shopify.com/daily. Hi, I'm Cassandra Vieten. I'm a clinical psychologist and a professor in the Department of Family Medicine at the University of California, San Diego. I direct the science programs at the Arthur C. Clark Center for Human Imagination and also direct the UCSD Center for Mindfulness, in addition to serving as clinical psychology director at the Center for Psychedelic Research at UCSD. And so I'm really excited to tell you about my new book, and I'm going to share five of the insights from the book. So the book is called Notion. It's a book that's been published by the Center for Psychedelic Research at UCSD. The first is that imagination is a working tool of the brain. It's a foundational cognitive and human capacity. Some people, when they hear what I study, they'll say something like, imagination, isn't that a little soft for science? I mean, it shouldn't real science be curing diseases or solving the climate crisis. Here's the thing. I actually can't imagine anything more important than figuring out how we as humans come up with original ideas. And creative solutions. No diseases have been cured and no crisis has been solved without someone somewhere imagining, how could this be different? How could we do this better? So imagination isn't frivolous daydreaming. It's a working tool of the brain. It's integral to learning, planning, memory, empathy, problem solving. And some cognitive scientists now think it's a core component of intelligence. So early on in our research in my lab, the team ran into a wall trying to define imagination. We kept trying to find out how is imagination different from memory? How is it different from creativity? How does it differ from just regular thinking? We were trying to put it on a map, but it never quite fit in its own territory. So it's not memory, but it's kind of tangled up in memory. It's not creativity. It is a necessary condition for creativity. Finally, one of our students said, what if it's kind of like an octopus with tentacles reaching out into every other cognitive process? Or another way to say it might be like a utility infielder or a Swiss army knife. You know, it's something that can be plugged in anywhere it's needed. And the more I do research on this, the more I discover that that's actually how imagination seems to work. It's not one isolated skill sitting off. In a corner of your brain, it's woven throughout all of these cognitive processes through memory, planning, creativity, problem solving. Every time you recall the past, you are using your imagination to do that. When you plan for the future, you also use your imagination. Even when you empathize with a friend, you're kind of imagining what they're going through. So all day long, you're using it, often without realizing it. So that means when your imagination is being, intentionally practiced, it doesn't just make you more creative. It makes almost everything you do better. Like any other part of cognition, repeated practice can strengthen and rewire the neural connections behind it. What you imagine again and again actually shapes what you're capable of. So here's insight number two. We're living through what I call the great flattening. A lot of people I talk to across ages, professions, from almost every walk, of life, describe feeling stuck or burned out or disempowered. I call it the great flattening because we're living in so many screens now. Our technology was designed to make life easier, and it does in many ways. But many of us now feel like we have to plug in at daybreak and stay current until bedtime. We're constantly asked to receive, synthesize, and manage information, but not as often to create anything new. So search engines, and AI save us time, but they also can rob us of something valuable. The time we used to spend wondering, mind-wandering, speculating before landing on the answer. Sitting in not knowing can sometimes feel like a waste of time, but it's actually where new ideas come from. So a colleague of mine, Lisa Miller at Columbia, has talked about diseases of despair, the anxiety, depression, addiction, lonely, loneliness, these epidemics. And I kind of add to this diseases of disenchantment, a narrowing of imagination where people feel like there are only one or two possible outcomes for their lives. It might be worth remembering that the word despair literally comes from the Latin for without hope. I'd add to that that we're also suffering in a way from an atrophied imagination, one that has stopped stretching toward wonder, mystery, and possibility. And when we stop doing that, life can start to feel a little routine and flat, maybe a little bit gray. The good news is that this doesn't have to be permanent. Imagination is a muscle. Well, I guess that's a metaphor we can use for it. It's not not a physical muscle, but it's kind of like a cognitive muscle. And muscles can weaken from under use and they can be rebuilt. So I don't actually think the answer is completely throwing out our phones or computers or swearing. But it is being much more intentional about protecting a little space every day where we're not seeking, receiving, or managing information, but space where we're just free to wonder. So the third insight I wanted to share with you is that imagination is almost like a fingerprint. I'm really excited about what we're learning about this idea. It's what we call imagination neurodiversity. The idea that each of us imagines differently and that our particular pattern of imaginative strengths is something that we come into the world with, but it's also something we can identify and deliberately grow. I've thought about my own imagination profile quite a bit because I can trace part of where it came from. My parents had a nearly complete set of National Geographic magazines on our shelves. And as a kid, I'd get lost for hours in the pictures of bioluminescent creatures deep in the ocean or the aboriginal art of Australia. These were worlds at a time when we didn't have the internet that stretched what I believed was possible. Also, my dad was a biochemist and he used to bring me into his lab, boost me up on his. stool and let me look at pond microbes under a microscope. So I learned early that even the invisible world was full of mystery. And then my mom was a Jungian-inspired counselor who introduced me to dreams, myths, symbols, a different kind of invisible truth, not necessarily measurable by instruments, but very real all the same. So these influences shaped a very specific kind of imagination in me, probably in addition to my genetics. I lean towards visual, sensory imagining, toward using story to make sense of hard things. But it's possible that you have a very different type of imagination. Maybe it's not visual. Maybe it's more kinesthetic or sensory, motor, could be more spatial. I have terrible spatial abilities. And so all of us are different kinds of imaginers. And yet each of us has something to contribute to solving problems. And there are ways that we can develop our imagination. There's no single right way to be imaginative. And so once you understand your own profile, and there's a quiz in the book and also on our website, you might be able to not accept the idea that I'm just not very creative or I'm not just, I'm not very imaginative and start working with the imagination you actually have. Key point number five. Imagination isn't just in your head. In other words, sometimes I'll say imagination isn't imaginary. So this really amazes me that your brain doesn't distinguish nearly as much as you'd think between things that you imagine and things that you actually experience. Imagined experience registers in the body and the brain in ways that are very close to physical experience. It happens both in the brain and in the body. And so I think it's really important that we both in the moment. So if I imagine seeing something, my visual cortex lights up. If I imagine smelling something, tasting something, those parts of the brain light up. If I imagine moving, even the motor parts of the brain light up. So that can have a real effect cumulatively over the long term. So this can cut both ways. It means that the mental images that you rehearse, whether you mean to or not, let's say worst case scenarios or, you know, rolling over old grudges, imagining confrontations, these aren't neutral. Your nervous system is responding to them not quite as much as if they're happening, but, you know, pretty close. So it also means the reverse is true. And this is the encouraging part. Deliberately imagining a calmer version of a hard conversation, let's say, or vividly picturing yourself moving through a challenge can shift your physiology in real and measurable ways before you even take action. So this is why I think about it. I think about it in a lot of ways. I think about it as a genuine health practice, not just a creative one. What you rehearse in your mind, you're also rehearsing in your brain and in part in your body. So if you can picture in detail, for example, walking into what you know is going to be a hard conversation, but focusing on how you want to show up in that conversation. Do you want to be calm and clear? What is the way you're standing? What's your tone of voice? How do your shoulders feel? Do you want to be authentic? Do you want to be genuine? Vulnerable? So your nervous system starts to lay down some of that groundwork before you even walk through the door. This can give you a lot of leverage because unlike a lot of things that affect your health, this is something you can do on your own for free starting right now. I'm not saying that you can imagine your way out of illness. I'm saying that imagination is influential on our bodies. If I imagine stressful things, cortisol will be released in my body and have the same effect on my body. So I think about it in a lot of ways. The same effects as when I encounter stressful things. If I imagine moments of joy, meaning, purpose, hope, connection, then some of the same body processes will happen. Activation of the parasympathetic nervous system, the rest and digest. And so I can get recharged and replenished by something I've just imagined. Okay, final insight. Imagination can be practiced. And we can also create the conditions under which imagination feels more welcome in our lives, more conducive to imagination. I was so lucky to have Pete Docter, Pixar's chief creative officer, write the foreword to my book. And he tells a great story about how he became an animator. As a kid, he was dragged to long classical concerts and told to sit still. And out of sheer boredom, he started grabbing programs and drawing cartoons of what he imagined. Like what if the violinist string snapped mid-solo? Or what if somebody fell into the tuba? He says, honestly, I was bored. And that boredom, he says, is where his imagination and eventually Pixar's worlds and characters came from. So that's really my last message to you is that imagination isn't a gift some people have and others don't. It's also a practice. In the book, I walk through a set of tools that is represented by the acronym VISTA. Visualizing, ideating, transforming, and applying. And I offer several practices under each one of those as concrete ways that you can exercise your imagination on purpose the same way you'd train any other part of your brain. So you could picture something very vividly. You could generate a ton of options without judging them too fast as to whether they're feasible or realistic. Even if they're not, sometimes they hold truths that you can't get to in any other way. You can really tune into the sensory detail of your imagination. Let's say you're giving an important speech or having an important job interview. Really tuning into not just what you picture, but what do you feel? Where are you sitting? What's your state of being? You can also play with alternative versions of stories and then find what might be actually applicable to your real life in those stories. So just as important as active practice is protecting that unstructured time we talked about. Allowing time for boredom, for mind wandering. This open field that lets imagination arrive on its own. The same way it did for Pete when he was sitting through the concert with nothing but a program and a pencil. I believe the antidote to despair isn't just hope. It's the skill of generating hope, of generating visions for the future. And this is true for the individual as well as us. Collectively, it's the ability to re-enchant your own world on purpose using a capacity that you already have. And so I'm encouraging you to pick up the book, Elevate Imagination to a more central place in your awareness of a very important tool that you have and also kind of a territory of being that you can spend more time in. I hope you enjoy it. Thank you, Cassandra. Okay, we're going to take a quick break. When we come back, futurist and game designer Jane McGonigal will share ideas from Imaginable, how to see the future coming and feel ready for anything, even things that seem impossible today. So let's talk about Shopify. Now for years, I worked for other people. I had good solid jobs at big companies and it was fine. But you know, now as a co-founder of the Next Big Idea Club, I consider myself an entrepreneur. I'm a small business owner with a big business attitude. I still got more startup ideas in me and bringing them to life no longer has to be daunting. Shopify makes it easy to start selling a product or service from day one. Shopify checkout helps people start and finish their purchases so seamlessly, potential customers can become actual customers before you know it. That backend support leaves you more time to grow your business. And you know, that's the fun part. With Shopify, nothing's between your idea and a real business. So go make it one. Start your free trial at shopify.com slash daily. Guys, let's talk for a minute about quints. Now I just finished up a trip to Sweden and Iceland. Now I'm back in the high desert of New Mexico. Let's just say the temperatures have ranged from baking hot to downright chilly. And guess what? My quints clothes have been really reliable in just about all these environments. The traveler pants, as they call them, they've got just the right amount of stretch to be comfortable on those long international flights. The soft linen shirt held up through full days of sightseeing and still looked fresh enough to go out to a nice restaurant. But they're not just for vacation. Obviously with quints, you get remarkable bang for your buck. They've got ultra soft, organic cotton tees, premium Mongolian cashmere sweaters, pieces that are versatile enough for every day, but pretty darn elegant when you're ready for a special evening. All for 50 to 80% less than you pay with similar brands. So upgrade your every day, download the quints app for app exclusive offers, or go to quints.com slash NBID. Get free shipping on your order and 365 day returns now available in Canada and the UK too. That's Q-U-I-N-C-E.com slash NBID. So if you're feeling at all anxious about the future of AI and work, I get it. I really do. But listen, let me tell you a story that involves giving you a peek into inside the inner workings of the Next Big Idea Club. And man, am I glad we did that because what it means is now that Notion has these great AI tools built right into it, my team can collaborate with one another and with these AI agents seamlessly to not only organize all our information, but really pull out insights, plan things, just generally get our hands around this growing mountain of data that running a small business now involves. In the abstract, I know AI can be scary, but when you see how it works inside of Notion, working with your team and your information, you realize what a powerful collaboration tool it can actually be. Notion is the AI workspace where your team's knowledge, projects, and agents all come together in one place. Teams using Notion move faster, cut friction and costs by consolidating tools and stay aligned. Notion's now got over 100 million users, including teams at huge companies and small startups alike. Learn more about how Notion can support your business at Notion.com slash daily. That's all lowercase letters, Notion.com slash daily to try Notion today. And when you use our link, you're supporting our show. I'm Jane McGonigal. I'm the director of game research and development at the Institute for the Future in Palo Alto, California. And I'm the author of Imaginable, how to see the future coming and feel ready for anything, even things that seem impossible today. I'm excited to share with you five of the biggest ideas from Imaginable. Big idea number one. Take a 10-year trip to the future. You may be familiar with the saying, the future starts now. As catchy as this phrase may be, it is fundamentally not true. The future doesn't start now or tomorrow or next month. For professional futurists, it starts 10 years from today. Why 10 years? Well, 10 years is enough time for society and your own life to become dramatic. It's enough time for new technologies to scale up and achieve global impact. It's enough time for social movements to achieve historic victories. It's enough time for big new ideas to take root, gain traction, and change the world. So when you think about the future, focus your imagination 10 years out. Thinking on a 10-year time frame, it's enough time to take root, gain traction, and change the world. This timeline will lift the ceiling on your imagination and give you that magical feeling of time-spaciousness to achieve transformative change. It will help you open your mind, take in new information, reduce your blind spots, increase your empathy, set more optimistic goals, and see a much bigger picture. Whenever your mind feels stuck or rushed, give yourself a 10-year deadline. Make a 10-year plan. Make a 10-year resolution. Create an event on your calendar for 10 years from today. Or talk to others about how the world might be different 10 years from now. It will change how you think and feel today. Big idea number two. Be ridiculous at first. At the Institute for the Future, we like to say, Any useful statement about the future should at first seem ridiculous. It's easy to prepare for futures that are similar to today. Futures that make sense, that seem normal and reasonable. It's the possibilities that make us say, That's ridiculous. That could never happen. Or, I can't even imagine it. Those are the possibilities we have to spend time taking seriously. Because those are the futures that will be most shocking, disruptive, and challenging if they come to pass. Imagine if in late 2019, you had been asked to consider the following ideas. In the near future, virtually all nations will shut and lock down their borders. One billion children will stop going to school and do all of their learning at home. 400 million jobs will be deemed non-essential and disappear virtually overnight. It will be against the law to hug your grandmother. Where I live, I'm a mother. I live in California. That was true, thanks to social distancing rules for most of 2020. So in 2019, wouldn't these ideas have seemed ridiculous at first? But a few months later, they were our reality. We need to prepare our collective imagination for exactly these kinds of unimaginable possibilities. So if they do happen, we're not frozen with anxiety or stuck in old ways. Any future scenarios? A scenario that you instinctively dismiss as impossible or outrageous reveals a potential blind spot in your imagination. So if something feels unimaginable or unthinkable to you, that's exactly your tip-off that this is an essential future for you to start thinking about and imagining. Big idea number three. Look for clues. A sculptor works with a lot of people. A sculptor works with clay. A writer with words. A computer programmer with code. A composer with musical notes. A chef with ingredients. A fashion designer with fabric. Every form of creativity has its own raw material. For futurists, the raw material is clues. We collect, combine, and build future scenarios out of clues to how the future might be different. To find out more, visit www.futurist.com. To find future clues, you need to develop a new way of looking at the world around you. A way to spot weird stuff that others overlook. You have to be constantly honing in on things you haven't previously encountered. Things that make you say, huh, that's strange, and hmm, I wonder why that's happening. And wow, this is weird, and I want to understand it better. You can see signals of change. You can see change all around you in your own life or community. For example, the very first time I saw a no drone zone sign in my local park, I knew it was a signal that drone technology was becoming mainstream and widespread enough to deserve its own local park signage. I found myself inspired by this signal of change to get my own drone and learn how to use the technology. I made it my mission to find out more about how drones are being used, for journalism, for storytelling, for activism, for art, for scientific data collection, for helping others during a crisis. Finding signals of change can be as simple as doing a quick news or social media search. Just search future of plus whatever you're interested in. This week, I searched for future of learning, future of mental health, and future of pets. That was a particularly fun search I learned about. Dinosaur chickens, therapeutic robot cushions, and how dogs on Mars would live. You can also throw in terms like innovation, experiment, surprising, trend, leading edge, weird, strange, creative idea, new phenomenon, scientific study. Make it a habit to find at least one new signal of change every week or even every day if you're looking to really upgrade your future imagination. Let these signals spark your curiosity. What would the world be like if these signals of change became more common and widespread? Follow the trail of clues wherever it takes you. Big idea number four. Turn the world upside down. Here's my favorite way to come up with my own ridiculous at first ideas for the future. If your imagination feels stuck in the present, then rewrite the facts of today. Make a list of up to 100 things that are true today and then flip them upside down. Rewrite each and every fact so that the opposite is now true. For example, if you're thinking about the future of community, you could say that today libraries are mostly quiet spaces. Flip that fact upside down. Ten years from today, libraries are loud, raucous, wild spaces. Try to envision it as vividly as you can. What's happening in libraries to make it feel and sound so different? Or if you're thinking about the future of democracy, you could say that today it's a fact that there's a minimum voting age. You could flip that upside down. Rewrite it so that the opposite is now true. Ten years from now, there's no minimum voting age. Babies can vote. Picture it in your mind. Children voting. What does that look like? How does it change politics and elections? Believe it or not, a minimum voting age of zero is a real big idea being explored by many communities today. Whatever flipped facts you come up with, spend time mentally immersed in these upside-down worlds. Make sense of them. Why did this change happen? How does this new reality work? Keep looking for clues in the news, on social media, and in your own life and community that make these flipped facts seem more plausible and realistic. Type your flipped facts into search engines and discover some signals of change that you would otherwise have missed. This is a fun, mind-stretching game to play, but it's also profound. Turning the world upside down can help you get clarity about what changes you want to make in society and in your own life. Big idea number five. Build your urgent optimism for the future. Urgent optimism is a highly motivating and resilient mindset made up of three key psychological strengths which we can measure and we can improve. These three strengths are mental flexibility, realistic hope, and future power. Mental flexibility is the opposite of being stuck mentally. It's the ability to recognize that anything can become different in the future. Even things that seem impossible to change today. Realistic hope is a balance of positive and shadow imagination. It's knowing which risks and threats it makes sense to worry about and which new solutions, technologies, ideas, and positive actions it makes sense to be excited and optimistic about. Future power is a feeling of control and the agency to directly impact how the future turns out by taking intentional action today. The good news is that urgent optimism is not a fixed personality trait. It's not something you're either born with or without. It changes often throughout our lives and crucially, it's changeable. We can purposefully build more urgent optimism when we need it most with future imagination training and by practicing futures thinking habits. Taking 10 years of your life to think about your future is a great way to 10-year trips to the future. Being ridiculous at first, flipping the facts of today upside down, looking for signals of change. These are all mental habits and skills we can practice and use to build urgent optimism so we can face the future with more hope and creativity. Those are my five big ideas. I hope you enjoyed stretching your imagination and learning how to build urgent optimism. Be sure to check out my other videos. I'll see you in the next one. Bye. Check out my book, Imaginable, for more practical ways to see the future coming and feel ready for anything, even things that seem impossible today. Thank you, Jane. Okay, everyone, if you got something out of today's show, please leave us a rating and review so others can find it. And you can grab copies of the books we talked about using the links in the episode notes. While you're there, sign up for our free newsletter so you can get these big ideas right in your inbox. I'm Michael Kovnet. I'll see you tomorrow. you