Creativity Is Half Seeing, Half Believing
I read the book, John & Paul: A Love Story In Songs, by Ian Leslie recently, and it’s a revelation. In it, he describes the early Beatles as a fusion of the Everly Brothers’ honeyed harmonies and Little Richard’s raw, electric howl. Take one part Everly and another part Little Richard, smash them together, and boom, Beatles. Of course, nothing is ever that simple, but that smash-up of ideas stuck with me. You could imagine an engineer in the early 20th century gazing at an arrow’s sleek flight, then seeing a rumbling combustion engine, and then the revelation of a rocket piercing the sky. Steven Johnson puts it this way: “A new idea is a network… the result of existing ideas colliding.” But here’s the twist: those sparks don’t fly by chance. They demand seeing the world with eyes wide open and, just as important, believing every odd detail—a song style, a machine’s hum—might hold the key to something new.
Creativity, in other words, is half seeing, half believing. Seeing means noticing the raw materials—sounds, shapes, ideas—floating around you. Believing is the conviction that even the most trivial bit (a song lyric, a weird cloud, a news item) could spark something brilliant. This isn’t fluffy optimism. It’s a deliberate mindset, backed by science, that anyone can cultivate. Let’s unpack how it works, with a few studies, stories, and weirdly practical tips to get you started.
Ideas can only Collide if You Notice them
Johnson’s point about idea collisions is deceptively simple. Take Velcro. That was George de Mestral spotting burrs clinging to his dog’s fur and imagining a new kind of fastener. Or Airbnb mashed up the sharing economy with old-school hospitality. Even penicillin came from Alexander Fleming noticing a moldy petri dish and wondering what it could mean.
These breakthroughs share a common thread: someone saw the raw materials. Not just the obvious stuff, but the odd, overlooked bits that most people ignore. The burrs. The mold. The couch in a stranger’s apartment. But seeing isn’t enough—you need to spot those pieces in a way that lets them collide. That’s where most of us get stuck, because we’re primitively wired to dismiss what seems irrelevant in order to survive.
But we’re not primitive anymore.
Seeing Like a “Lucky” Person
Richard Wiseman, a psychologist obsessed with luck, ran a brilliant experiment to figure out why some people seem luckier than others. He took two groups—self-proclaimed lucky folks and those who swore they were cursed—and gave them a simple task: count the images in a newspaper and he would time them. The unlucky group slogged through it, taking about two minutes. The lucky ones? They were done in ten seconds. Why? On page two, in big, bold type, the paper screamed, “Stop counting, there are 42 images.” The lucky people saw it; the unlucky ones didn’t.
The lucky folks weren’t smarter. They were just open to information that seemed irrelevant to the task. They didn’t filter out the random text on page two—they let it in. Wiseman’s study, detailed in his book The Luck Factor, shows that “luck” is not some mysterious outside force, but really a result of how we look at the world around us.
This openness to the irrelevant isn’t just for luck—it’s a creativity superpower. Shelley Carson and Jordan Peterson, researchers at Harvard and the University of Toronto, found that people with lower latent inhibition—the ability to filter out information previously deemed irrelevant—tend to be more creative. In their study, high-IQ individuals who scored high on creative achievement (think artists, composers, inventors) were seven times more likely to have low latent inhibition scores. Why? They let more thoughts, even “irrelevant” ones, flood their consciousness, increasing the odds of unexpected connections. (This is also why people with ADD, who struggle to focus, sometimes have a creative edge—their minds are wide open to everything.)
Christian Busch, in The Serendipity Mindset, calls this “seeing what others miss” through active curiosity. It’s not passive observation—it’s a choice to notice the weird, the random, the out-of-place.
Want to try it? Jot down one odd thing you notice each day—a stranger’s quirky hat, a line from a podcast. Or talk to someone outside your usual circle and steal one idea from them. Better yet, force something irrelevant into your thinking. Open a book to a random page and use the first sentence as a prompt. Put your playlist on shuffle and let the first song shape your next idea. Look out your window—what’s the first thing you see? Use it. These aren’t gimmicks; they’re ways to train your brain to see like the lucky ones do.
But seeing is only half the story.
Believing any Detail Could Matter
The other half is believing—specifically, believing that any detail, no matter how small, could lead to a creative breakthrough. This isn’t blind faith; it’s a mindset that says, “That random thing might just be the spark I need.” And science backs it up in the weirdest ways.
Take a study from Lior Noy and Liron Rozenkrantz at the Weizmann Institute. They had 90 students sniff cinnamon. Half were told the scent would boost their creativity; the other half got no such pitch. Then they took creativity tests—think brainstorming wild uses for a brick. The group that believed the cinnamon was a creativity enhancer crushed it, scoring way higher. The cinnamon did nothing, of course—it was a placebo. But the belief? That was real. The researchers said it probably made people less fearful, but I’d argue it’s less about fear and more about mitigating self-doubt. The placebo convinced them they could be creative, so they were.
This tracks with Carol Dweck’s work on growth mindset. When you believe your abilities—like creativity—can improve, you perform better. Another study, by O’Connor and colleagues in 2018, found that optimistic expectations juice up divergent thinking by boosting confidence. Believing you can connect the dots makes you more likely to try.
You can hack this mindset yourself. Try telling yourself, “I’m open to every connection, no matter how weird.” (cue Stuart Smalley). Or visualize nailing your next creative project before you start. Want something more tangible? Here’s a ridiculous one that might just work: next time you’re eating breakfast, stare at your poached egg and say, “This egg is going to make me more creative.” Then eat it and see what ideas bubble up. Sounds nuts, but if a whiff of cinnamon can trick your brain, why not an egg? Note: even those in the cinnamon study who knew it was a placebo still outperformed the control group.
The point is to convince yourself that anything—a smell, a taste, a random lyric—could be the key. Then believe it.
When Openness Overwhelms
Being open to everything—every sound, every sight, every stray thought—can leave you drowning in input. If you try to connect every dot, you might end up with nothing but noise, no ideas gelling at all. The fix isn’t to shut down your curiosity. Instead, trust your gut. Sometimes, an “irrelevant” detail jumps out—that quirky hat, a random lyric—and you don’t know why it grabbed you. That’s your instincts whispering that there’s a connection, maybe one your conscious mind hasn’t caught yet. Don’t dismiss it. Write it down, mull it over, keep thinking. Your gut might be onto something, and believing there’s a link is half the battle.
Your Next idea-Collision Awaits. Believe me?
Creativity isn’t some mystical gift—it’s half seeing the world like a lucky person, half believing any detail might matter. The science is clear: people who notice the irrelevant (like a newspaper’s hidden message or a moldy dish) and trust their ability to connect dots (like a cinnamon-sniffing placebo group) are the ones who make new ideas from Johnson’s idea-collisions. From the Beatles to penicillin, history backs it up. And the best part? You can train yourself to do it.
So, pick one trick and try it today. Force a random song into your next brainstorm. Tell your poached egg it’s a creativity booster. Jot down the weirdest thing you notice and see where it leads. Then hit the comments—or find me on X—and tell me what happened.
Will Burns is the Founder & CEO of the revolutionary virtual-idea-generating company, Ideasicle X. He’s an advertising veteran from such agencies as Wieden & Kennedy, Goodby Silverstein, Arnold Worldwide, and Mullen. He was a Forbes Contributor for nine years writing about creativity in modern branding. Sign up for the Ideasicle Newsletter and never miss a post like this. Will’s bio.