Unlock Your Brain’s Hidden Power: 6 Tools to Boost Focus, Confidence, and Creativity

KEYPOINTS

• 01

  Adult life runs on an "algorithmic lifestyle" that flattens creativity

  Dr. Jeff Karp, who runs a medical-innovation lab at Brigham and Women's Hospital and teaches at Harvard Medical School and MIT, argues that creativity is something everyone is born with but society and schooling flatten. As kids everything is new; as adults we wake at the same time, eat the same breakfast, scroll the same sites and see the same people. His book Lit offers "life ignition tools" to break that single track and tap what he calls your evolutionary inheritance: the capacity to sense, learn, feel awe and create.

• 02

  Do new: small novelty opens new possibilities

  Karp's first tool is to deliberately inject something new, even into your thinking. He handed Mel prism glasses that turned studio lights into rainbows, a simple frame shift that sparks curiosity. Stopping to watch clouds move is another; it pulls you out of rumination and into the moment, which he says is the actual process behind "be present."

• 03

  Press pause: real breaks let the brain connect ideas

  After days of back-to-back meetings that felt like "two marathons" but left something missing, Karp began taking 5–10 minute breaks between meetings with no email, texting or social media, just doing nothing or walking. He found himself linking something someone said months earlier to the meeting he'd just had, sparking new collaborations. His view is that subconscious information needs time to swirl and settle.

• 04

  Learning consolidates in the pauses

  Karp cites neuroscientist and musician Molly Gebrian, who told him "it's in the pauses that mind turns into matter": the rewiring happens during breaks and sleep, not only during practice. Rather than an hour straight, she recommends 15–20 minutes of practice, a 5–10 minute break, then returning. Coming back reveals what you forgot, which focuses attention and helps the skill stick.

• 05

  Fall in love with practice by varying it

  Practice gets monotonous, so change how you do it. Karp interviewed five-time US memory champion Nelson Dellis, who started training his memory after a family member developed Alzheimer's; when card memorization gets boring, Dellis adds extra cards to the deck to create a new challenge. Karp ties enjoyment to persistence: if practice has joy in it, you keep going and notice the small "click" of incremental progress.

• 06

  Focus beyond failure: treat it as a prerequisite, not the opposite of success

  Karp says nothing came easily to him. He was rejected by all three medical schools he applied to, booed off stage singing in high school, and lost student council races until his final year. He now sees failure as a chance to learn and explore options he hadn't considered, and drops the expectation of succeeding the first time.

• 07

  Flip the switch: a four-step way out of autopilot

  Step 1: notice your inner desire for another possibility. Step 2: take stock of what's working and what's holding you back, acknowledging what works is empowering. Step 3: look for other possibilities and ways of thinking, often by talking to people who think differently. Step 4: take one deliberate step forward. Mel notes she does this by reaching out to a trusted friend for advice.

• 08

  Pinch your brain: use intention to direct attention

  Pick any object, like a pen, mug or tree bark, and study its colors, textures, light and writing. This squeezes out other thoughts and can interrupt overwhelm, doom-scrolling or rumination. Karp calls each round "a bicep curl for your attention," especially useful with ADHD, when a huge advertising and marketing industry is competing to hijack it.

• 09

  Diversity of thinking is a creative engine

  Karp deliberately limits overlapping expertise in his lab. He has had chemists, materials scientists, immunologists, a GI surgeon, a cardiac surgeon and a dentist, from about 30 countries. Different training means different wiring, which he says is how the sparks start. The lab's work includes a nasal spray tested against COVID-19 and flu, and a needle that delivers gene therapy to the back of the eye, now headed to a clinical trial.