May 2025

Are You Leaving Your Artist, Creative Insights Behind?

by Ariane Goodwin PhD | May 8, 2025 | Selling Your Art, Your Creative Mindset

Finally, my jaunty narcissus, with their delicate fragrance and puff of cream, have officially broken into a song of Spring.

Of course, this cheery outdoor bloom is a bit offset by all the crunchy, brown leaves and dried out twigs scattered around them.

But, hey! As much as I’d love to clean up outside, my CreativeSelf is in full bloom inside. And that is a creative spring I’m not about to neglect.

Last time we checked out chronotypes and how paying attention to your natural rhythms helps you intentionally activate creativity.

Remember that crucial insight about your daily slump?

Turns out, that’s just the beginning.

Why Sleep & Rest Drive Your Creativity Forward

Sara Mednick’s groundbreaking sleep research revealed something fascinating and counter-intuitive: those “unproductive” moments, when your brain craves rest, are unmined, glittering gems of creativity.

Mednick’s studies show how your REM sleep—during a full night’s rest or a strategic afternoon nap— substantially improves your ability to make unusual connections and solve creative problems.

Think of REM sleep as your brain’s private gallery opening, where ideas that would never meet in waking life suddenly find themselves in conversation. During REM, your neural networks play with combinations that your conscious mind might ignore or dismiss.

The best part? You can expand your creative options by using Mednick’s research for yourself.

One 90-minute afternoon nap, rich in REM sleep, can begin to reproduce the creative enhancement that longer rest periods give us.

Or shorter naps (20-30 minutes) can boost specific types of creativity, particularly if you review your creative challenges just before closing your eyes.

For those who can’t manage longer naps, there’s still good news. Mednick’s team found that consistent nappers develop more efficient “sleep architecture” over time – your brain learns to access creative sleep stages more quickly during shorter rests.

The key isn’t how long, but how consistent.

And, your weekend recovery matters too. Allowing yourself, once or twice a week, to sleep until naturally waking (no alarms) refills your creative cup from days of overuse.

Three Ways To Harvest Your Creativity

The most practical approach? Start with what fits your schedule:

A 20-minute power nap during your natural afternoon dip because this timing works with your circadian rhythm to enhance specific memory processing.

Note: Mednick’s studies show these shorter naps are effective for sharpening your rational processing while making creative associations.

A 40-60 minute “sweet spot” nap that includes light REM sleep because this duration allows your brain to enter creative problem-solving modes.

Note: Mednick’s research validates that naps containing REM sleep significantly improve your creative connections and pattern recognition.

One morning a week of unlimited sleep because it allows your brain to complete multiple REM cycles, maximizing your creative potential.

Note: According to Mednick’s findings, REM-rich sleep periods are crucial for enhancing divergent thinking and your creative problem-solving abilities.

And for an extra creative kick:

Before resting, briefly review any creative challenge you’re facing. Forget trying to solve it; your sleeping brain will work on your problem for you, behind the scenes.

About Your Creativity, Ask Yourself…

What if those moments when I feel least productive are actually my brain’s way of calling me to deeper creativity?

What creative insights might show up if I stop fighting my need for rest ? What if I use rest as a transformational tool for my artistic growth?

How wide could I cast my Creativity Net if I began to challenge the productivity mania our cultural peddles to all of us?

P.S. If you decide to set an intentional Creativity Rest, let me know how that goes for you.

Tell me in the comment section at the end of this post and I promise to respond!

P.S.S. If you want to work with me, here are three places to start.

I’ve been prowling around online, visiting artist websites, and honestly, I’m disappointed. About pages are so neglected it makes me cringe! Forget artist statements; there are barely any boring bios either. Or sometimes a slap-dash, mish-mash of both, with neither winning.

But, there is an obvious solution. It requires that you take charge. That you value how people think about your work (words). That you value what you think (also words!) about your work. Because the people who love your work do value what you think. So, tell them!

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See my work with artists here: arianegoodwin.com

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Artists… Can You Jumpstart Artistic Creativity?

by Ariane Goodwin PhD | May 2, 2025 | Selling Your Art, Your Creative Mindset

After my creativity surge from my five-week hiatus from life (surgery recovery), I became intensely curious.

Was there a way to jumpstart creativity in normal life?

Turns out, yes. Most definitely.

First stop: figure out my chronotype, which of course led me down a research rabbit hole.

After I dug up nine studies on chronotypes, sleep, and creativity from 1976 to now, I called it quits.

I also learned that it’s not a good idea to depend on the experts and their assessment questionnaires to understand your chronotype.

I tried three of these online, and none of them told me what I already knew. But, hey, I’m happy to offer two of them here, if you want give it a whirl:

AutoMEQ at the Center for Environmental Therapeutics:  This one asks for $5 to offset website costs.

The “Power of When” Quiz by Dr. Michael Breus:  While more popularized, it’s based on chronobiology principles and very accessible.

I answered all of their questions accurately, but the end result—while somewhat in the ballpark—failed on key metrics of my life.

I don’t go to bed before 2 am, no matter what’s going on. I’ve been like this as long as I can remember. Raising children who woke up in the morning was my kryptonite!

And, I need a full 10 hours or I’m pretty worthless.

I spend the first part of my day with minor domestic tasks and catching up on small to-dos; things that don’t require much brain power or creativity surges.

I crash around 3:30 or 4 pm, when I used to force myself to power through until 4:30 or 5 pm, the time my brain wakes up and I’m into the creative work I love.

And, yes, I know I have the luxury of working within my natural daily rhythm. Something that’s nearly impossible when you depend on a work schedule based on the boss’s chronotype, or your family’s multiple chronotypes.

Okay, So Chronotypes… What’s The Point?

Creative behavior, that’s the point.

When you know your chronotype, you also know when (and how) to deliberately activate your creativity.

My guess is that your CreativeSelf already guides your daily creativity for you.

But there’s a huge difference between instinctual creative behavior (you go along for the ride) and intentional (you guide the ride).

Hitting a Creative Slump? Downtime it!

At some point in your day, you slump over. The British, famously, call it Tea Time.

As I’ve said, my slump hits around 3:00 to 4:30 pm, where I used to force myself to power through until my creative brain woke up around 5 pm, or later.

Naps felt silly, especially since I’d only woken up few hours before, so why on earth would I take a nap? Not my thing. Nope… power through, which usually meant aimlessly reading emails.

But Sara Mednick’s studies on napping and creativity changed me forever.

Now, when I slump, I lay in a quiet room, on my back (when you sleep on your side, your sleep is deeper and it’s harder to wake up and get going again), pillow under my knees, some black silk over my eyes.

I begin by giving myself a creative problem or prompt, which (studies have confirmed) gives your brain a task to work on in its unconscious, resting state.

Forty-five minutes to an hour later, I wake up easily, roll over, give myself a few minutes to acclimate and then start my creative work day.

But, What About Your Creativity?

You can take the assessments above, for sure, but I urge you to compare those answer to what your sleep pattern would be if you had your druthers.

If you could structure your sleep/wake cycle just as you’d like, that’s your chronotype: would you wake up easily early morning, mid-morning, or later?

When you go to bed, what time is easiest for you? Early evening (8 to 10) , mid-evening (10 to midnight) or late evening (midnight to 3 am)? Not what’s most convenient. Not what you’ve adopted out of habit. But what would instinctively be the easiest?

What time of day do you find yourself slumping over (even a bit)? Paying attention to this time is crucial because what might seem unproductive, as if you aren’t doing anything at all, is actually the perfect time for your brain to jumpstart up your creative juices.

Wondering…

What if productivity isn’t about how much we push out into the world, but about how deeply we allow our creative spirit to breathe?

What if the real measure of our artistic success isn’t in the quantity of our output, but in the quality of our creative presence?

Let’s dare to challenge our cultural, productivity mandate together. Your art deserves space to truly come alive.

Next Time

There’s so much more I learned about creativity, breaks, incubation, intentional rest/naps.

At this point, I’m still processing a lot of this myself.

And I’d like to bring you along for the ride, so to be continued in a third and last post, yes?

P.S. If you decide to set an intentional Creativity Nap, let me know how that goes for you.