Pattern Interrupts and Creativity

Thanks to Faris for highlighting this extract from Tim Harford's Messy:

Coincidentally, several days later Tim himself shared a link to this fascinating article on how Charles Darwin decided on the books he was going to read. The piece reports on some extensive analysis that researchers have conducted on 665 of the English non-fiction books that Darwin read, looking in particular at his information gathering approach and whether he stayed focused on one subject in order to delve deeper into it, or whether he jumped around to different topics.

Interestingly, the analysis showed that early on Darwin exploited singular subjects but over time (and particularly as it drew near to the writing of his masterpiece On the Origin of the Species) his reading was increasingly characterised by exploration and sporadic jumps to new topics. As Faris notes, pattern interrupts trigger your attention and can enhance creativity.