Creativity

If you're doing work at a coffee shop because of the free WiFi and great coffee, you should know that there's another benefit to working at your local Starbucks, according to a study published in the Journal of Consumer Research. Research found that working in a place with a "moderate level of ambient noise" causes the sort of distraction that boosts creativity. The study says:

"[I]nstead of burying oneself in a quiet room trying to figure out a solution, walking out of one's comfort zone and getting into a relatively noisy environment may trigger the brain to think abstractly and thus generate creative ideas."

So if you're stuck on a task, maybe all you need to do is to step into a lively coffee shop to get the your imaginative juices going again.

As one of the 90 percent of right-handed people in the world, I've already happily said lefties are not innately more creative than right-handed people. Now there's new evidence that ambidexterity is an outward reflection of a versatile brain, so I will give lefties this: they're more likely to be ambidextrous.

"Left-handers have less asymmetric brains, with more even distribution over the two hemispheres," Dr. Daniel Geschwind, a professor of human genetics, neurology, and psychiatry at UCLA, told The New York Times. "Perhaps a more accurate conceptual way to think about them is as non-right-handers. Many of them are much more likely to be ambidextrous and have fine motor abilities with their right hands."

Essentially, the lefty-creativity connection is a numbers game and not an innate gift. The left-handed are forced to live in a right-handed world, developing an ambidexterity that lends itself to art; however, there is nothing stopping a right-handed person from developing it, too. Besides, most of us are a little ambidextrous. It's just that we define our handedness by the hand we write with, and that does not reveal the whole picture. In fact, only 20 percent of people who write with their left hands are true lefties!

New research is weakening the old stereotype that lefties are more likely to be alcoholics. While lefties may drink more often, they aren't more prone to risky drinking. But I'm more interested in the most widespread left-handed stereotype — the creativity connection.

I don't know one left-handed person who isn't effusively proud of her left hand. Some will come right out and tell right-handed me they are more creative. But are they?

A 2007 paper in the Journal of Mental and Nervous Disease found musicians, painters, and writers are more likely to be left-handed, but it's not their left hand or their right brain talking. It's the balance of the two hemispheres — the right and left brains' ability to work together — which results in the type of innovative problem-solving that reads as creativity.

True lefties, the 20 percent of the left-handed with absolute right-brain dominance, are not any more likely to be creative than the righties. Most people who write with their left hands lack a dominant side of the brain, and this versatility gives them a creative advantage. Yet there's no reason the same trait couldn't be found in right-handers using both sides of their brains.

Twitter is full of "creative" spelling and bad grammar, but can it actually make you more creative? Judging by the raft of creative riffs on the microblogging craze, tweeting can lead to truly innovative things.

With its 140-character limit, Twitter's constraints force users to be creative with their language, for better or for worse. But Twitter-fed art goes far beyond the web. Here are just a few of the ways that Twitter is changing our artistic outlook.

1. A haiku revival. Former Sun Microsystems CEO Jonathan Schwartz famously announced his resignation with a tweeted haiku poem. Now, you can find all sorts of feeds based on the 17-syllable Japanese poems, from NASCAR haikus to cat poetry.
2. Very short stories. From the delightful @VeryShortStory feed to the six-word storytellers, Twitter offers a challenge inspired by Hemingway.

For four more ways Twitter spurs creativity, and one way it doesn't, read more

The film Julie & Julia, which tells the parallel life tales of chef Julia Child and blogger Julie Powell, comes out today. Julie recently sat down with YumSugar and talked about her Julie/Julia project, where she cooked her way through Julia's cookbook and blogged about it. Julie previously worked a very corporate cubicle job in Manhattan and noted the project was about her "finding my vocation as a writer."

Sometimes a job is just a job, but when we're lucky, we find or create jobs and careers that also fulfill our artistic desires and skills. I'm excited to see the film because both Julie and Julia strike me as women who made inspiring careers for themselves. Are you lucky enough to do work that keeps your creative juices flowing?