Creativity, Constraints, and Happiness

Should you become an artist or an accountant? Did Sylvia Plath have to be depressed to write The Bell Jar? And what can Napoleon Dynamite teach us about the creative life?

RESOURCES:

• "The Science of Why You Have Great Ideas in the Shower," by Stacey Colino (National Geographic, 2022).
• "So, You Think You’re Not Creative?" by Duncan Wardle (Harvard Business Review, 2021).
• "The Correlation Between Arts and Crafts and a Nobel Prize," by Rosie Cima (Priceonomics, 2015).
• "Report: State of the American Workplace," by Gallup (2014).
• "Poverty Impedes Cognitive Function," by Anandi Mani, Sendhil Mullainathan, Eldar Shafir, and Jiaying Zhao (Science, 2013).
• "Forks in the Road: The Many Paths of Arts Alumni," by the Strategic National Arts Alumni Project (2011).
• "A Meta-Analysis of 25 Years of Mood-Creativity Research: Hedonic Tone, Activation, or Regulatory Focus?" by Matthijs Baas, Carsten K. W. De Dreu, and Bernard A. Nijstad (Psychological Bulletin, 2008).
• "The Relationship Between Creativity and Mood Disorders," by Nancy C. Andreasen (Dialogues in Clinical Neuroscience, 2008).
• "The Broaden-and-Build Theory of Positive Emotions," by Barbara Fredrickson (Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B, 2004).
• "Happiness and Creativity: Going With the Flow," by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (The Futurist, 1997).

EXTRAS:

• "Why Are Rich Countries So Unhappy?" by No Stupid Questions (2022).
• "Do You Really Need a Muse to Be Creative?" by No Stupid Questions (2021).
• "Does All Creativity Come From Pain?" by No Stupid Questions (2020).
• "How To Be Creative," series by Freakonomics Radio (2018-2019).
• "How to Be Happy," by Freakonomics Radio (2018).
• Napoleon Dynamite, film by Jared Hess (2004).
• The Bell Jar, by Sylvia Plath (1963).
• Connections, game by The New York Times. 

SOURCES:

• Stephen Covey, author.
• Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, professor of psychology and management at Claremont Graduate University.
• Barbara Fredrickson, professor of psychology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
• Sigmund Freud, psychologist and founder of psychoanalysis.
• Jared Hess, filmmaker.
• Abraham Maslow, 20th-century psychologist.
• Sylvia Plath, 20th-century poet and novelist.
• Martin Seligman, professor of psychology at the University of Pennsylvania.
• Duncan Wardle, former head of Innovation and Creativity at the Walt Disney Company.