Speaker 1: 0:28

hello all the friends. Hi, we're so glad you're here. Uh, welcome to how to be a grown-up. This is the how-to show for women who've mastered the art of conversational tangents, and we'll circle back to that.

Speaker 2: 0:44

Maybe, yeah, I don't know. Circle back circle back.

Speaker 1: 0:47

I'm caitlin, and with me today co-hosting for jenny is ariela monti. She's a five-star Yelp review come to life and the author of the incredible novel Roots in Ink and the forthcoming Bound by Ink in January.

Speaker 2: 1:01

So this is so exciting to have you here again. I love this. I'm having a lot of fun.

Speaker 1: 1:06

Yeah, it's been great. Sorry, as we're trying to record this, my dog is shoving my chair around as she uses the chair to rub her own butt because she loves butt pads. So if my voice is like shaking around, it's because the dog is literally shaking my chair and moving me all over the place. About ADHD and creativity, because, as my friend Anne who in our house is known as friend Anne says, adhd is a superpower and sometimes we all need a little reminder about that. So, before we do, I want to remind our listeners that if you like your books, like you like your campfires nice, slow burn you can get Ariella's books.

Speaker 1: 1:50

I like it. You can get Ariella's books I like it for 20% off using promo code ck and gk all one word uppercase on her website, ariellamontecom, which is linked in the show notes. So let's go ahead and get started. I'm gonna let you take over this conversation because you're the. You are the actual creative. That's how you employ yourself, so I'm just gonna, yeah, I'm just gonna sit back and do my crochet while you're talking nice, nice.

Speaker 2: 2:17

So we've got a whole bunch of sources here. They will be in the places that sources live in the show notes I pulled from a couple of different places attitude places, attitude Magazine, scientific America, scientific American sorry, understoodorg. And just our lives, our existence as ADHD people as we are. Yes, yeah, so to get started, caitlin, what comes to mind when you think of creativity?

Speaker 1: 2:53

I think I go to the default definition of like the artist right. However, as I've gotten older, I've come to learn that creativity also involves problem solving. So just you know different ways of looking at a problem and how to tackle it. I think would also fall under that category.

Speaker 2: 3:17

Exactly, yeah, and so when we think about creativity, I think most of us will have those two kind of related but also opposing, yeah, ideas or definitions, um, and we're gonna kind of talk about both of them today. But to start, we need to talk about the aspects of creative cognition, which is basically creative thinking like you were like the creative problem solving and like this kind of goes into what we do as creative people.

Speaker 2: 4:00

So there isn't a ton of research on ADHD and creativity as they kind of relate to each other, like there's a little bit but there's not a whole bunch of it. But there is a lot of research on creativity and creative thinking, okay, and kind of how that works, and I, as y'all know, am not any sort of brain scientist that's why this works, because we, we are explaining it to you, as we hope someone would explain it to us, right?

Speaker 1: 4:36

Plain language jargon-free, no doctor. Just as it is.

Speaker 2: 4:41

This is going to be very boiled down and hopefully, if it tingles your hyperfocus, you turn it into a hyperfixation and you can dive in more on your own time.

Speaker 1: 4:54

That's why the sources are in the show notes and go Exactly.

Speaker 2: 4:59

So the three aspects of creative cognition are divergent thinking, conceptual expansion and overcoming knowledge constraints. Those sound like big words and they do right, yeah actually very simple concepts, great, and stuff that we, especially as adhd people, do all the time. Okay, um, because a little bit of research that there is on adhd and creativity has shown that these three aspects of creative cognition are strengths in people with ADHD.

Speaker 1: 5:38

Oh cool.

Speaker 2: 5:38

Yeah, and it's not to say that, like, neurotypical, people don't have these things. This is a thing that, like, all people do, but people with ADHD seem to this. The little bit of research out there shows that people with ADHD seem to have an edge, and it seems to be that these are strengths. Okay, so divergent thinking this is the ability to think of many ideas from a single starting point. So in this very unscientific, very watered down example of divergence in thinking, so you're talking about birds with your ADHD friends and 15 minutes later you're discussing the new movie with Chris Evans and Pedro Pascal and you're like how did we get here but?

Speaker 2: 6:26

if you right, and we all do it. We're like how did we go from birds to, you know, love triangle movie, which I have thoughts on even though I didn't see it, but that's for another episode.

Speaker 1: 6:41

There's a whole episode in there somewhere.

Speaker 2: 6:43

That's a whole nother episode. But if you trace that's actually a really good example of the next one.

Speaker 1: 6:51

Okay, anyway, circle back, circle back, the next one. Okay, anyway, circle back, circle back, circle back it's happening.

Speaker 2: 7:00

So if you trace the conversation you can see how one thought did lead to another. But you're kind of like, how did we get here? But if you actually sit there and you're like, well, this thought led to this, which led to this why I have to tell four different stories in relation to your one story.

Speaker 1: 7:35

um, because I make, and sometimes those connections are really obscure and I find myself doing it in my head and and then the person I'm talking to who is not an ADHD person will be like, wait, what, how does that go with this? And you're like, oh, because it's like six degrees of Kevin Bacon, where I, like I, then I did this and then I was talking about this and then I got here and that's why you can talk about the office in relation to Shakespearean, whatever, like you know what I mean. The connection is so random, but it does come from a place of understanding what you were talking about initially and and where all those like synapses went in my head at one time, exactly, exactly, super fun.

Speaker 2: 8:18

The next one is conceptual expansion. So that's the ability to loosen the boundaries of concepts, which is a very science-y way of saying that you're going to MacGyver something. So when was the last time you MacGyvered something?

Speaker 1: 8:36

This week when I was trying to stop my dog from eating what's in the calendar box. I don't know why some dogs need to do that, but I had to rig up something in order to make her stop or, at the very least, make a loud noise or something. So I would know she was in there, because, as clean as I keep those boxes, I can't stay on top of it all the time. So, yeah, that's what it was. So it was this week. Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2: 9:05

Yeah, I had one person tell me once that they didn't like cats because cats were dirty and they used litter boxes. And I'm like my dog eats the poop out of what's in there.

Speaker 1: 9:19

Yeah, so right, like I like, I like.

Speaker 2: 9:22

I feel like they're both kind of equally gross, disgusting animals yeah, I think I had an.

Speaker 1: 9:29

I have an injury on my hand and the doctor was like from my dog? And my doctor was like so, just so, you know, no matter how much hydrogen peroxide or, frankly, bleach we put in there, there will always be bacteria in that wound. So that's why we don't stitch dog bites. And I was like, oh great. So I mean now I'm on antibiotics because of this.

Speaker 2: 9:53

So, like there's, dogs are gross too right, and now we are not talking about the topic circling back, circling back, sir, circling, circling back okay, I've, ever, I've ever this week. Okay, right, you mcgyvered something, so so say, you've got like the like a paperclip, and the primary use of a paperclip is to hold individual pieces of paper together. That's the concept of the paperclip. Conceptual expansion is when you use that paperclip to do something like pop the SD card out of your cell phone.

Speaker 1: 10:30

Oh, I thought you were going to talk about how you're going to use a Clippy reference.

Speaker 2: 10:33

I was waiting for the Microsoft Word Clippy reference, but yes, I see what you're saying, so that is a good example of the next one, which is overcoming knowledge constraints.

Speaker 2: 10:47

So, this is the ability to overcome recently presented information. So if we're using the paperclip example, if I ask an ADHD-er and a neurotypical person to come up with a brand new way to hold paper together, and then I gave them examples of tools that they're already available, like paperclips, staples and binder clips, the neurotypical person is more likely to come up with an invention that incorporates aspects of the examples but the.

Speaker 2: 11:22

ADHD-er is more likely to come up with an invention that is completely new. So the fact that you connected paperclip to clippyippy, which has nothing to do with holding papers together, it has everything to do with, like microsoft word is, is kind of an example of that thinking, you know I'm unmedicated today, so it's gonna be a ride so the real, the real connections and and all the things are coming out today.

Speaker 1: 11:53

So all right?

Speaker 2: 11:54

Well, that's pretty cool Okay.

Speaker 1: 11:56

That's all super interesting, yeah.

Speaker 2: 11:58

So these are all like cognitive processes that we're doing every day and they're just kind of like happening in the backgrounds, you know, while we're talking about like creative problem solving or working on art. All of these things are just kind of happening in the background and those are strengths that we have that come.

Speaker 2: 12:28

Other creative strengths that come with ADHD is that wide lens of attention that you know, the ability to see the big picture and how everything works together as a whole, and it can be really overwhelming when we do that, yeah, but the ability to sort of see everything and all of like the moving parts, it can lead to a lot of like creativity, creative problem solving and creative ideas that's super interesting, because I always feel like I, I miss the forest for the trees.

Speaker 1: 13:05

Like I, I really do feel that way because I think all of the little details, the logistics of something bog me down and make me feel anxious, because I need to know how all of the little pieces are going to work. But maybe that's not the ADHD, that's the anxiety that I also take pharmaceuticals for. But I see what you're saying about how, like, yes, okay, I can, I can do those things.

Speaker 2: 13:34

Yes, yeah and think about it as, like so say, you're gonna sit down and do a project. If you are planning the project, you have everything kind of in front of you and you, like you can kind of see the whole picture and breaking down to get to the whole ability to kind of see everything, and I don't remember where I was going with that- but also I'm just thinking about, like, how all the little pieces matter in that big picture.

Speaker 1: 14:22

Maybe that's kind of what I fixate on, where it's like I'm seeing, okay, well, if we're talking about, for example, event signage, whereage, I can see how, like, this piece needs to look over here and this one needs to come to an order for the signage to look cohesive and all of that stuff. So that stuff does make sense in my head and the details matter in that. But yes, I can see what you're talking about there. That makes sense. Yeah, okay.

Speaker 2: 15:04

Yeah, and we got to remember, too, that a lot of this stuff is going to be like it's going to be impacted by the environment that we're in and that's kind of we're gonna you know that we're gonna talk about like in the next episode, but yeah, so it might feel like, oh man, like I really suck at that, like that is not a I would not consider that a strength, but it might be because of everything like the world in which we live, like we're not able to tap into those strengths as well as we could have if we were in, like a different kind of environment. Yeah, that makes sense. You know like if the world wasn't burning, you know like maybe Then the event signage wouldn't overwhelm me.

Speaker 1: 15:46

I don't know. Yeah, exactly.

Speaker 2: 15:49

Exactly, and. But even our hyper focus can be considered a creative strength, because we become consumed by things that we enjoy, and so if we find something creative that we do enjoy, we want to learn more about it. We want to practice more often, and so we do. We want to learn more about it. We want to practice more often, and so we do. We start to get good at it, maybe not like it's not going to be our career good, but we get to be good at it enough, or we overcome a problem enough times that it gives us like a little dopamine cookie, and so we do more and so like.

Speaker 2: 16:27

Eventually, you know we, we start to really hone those skills, because it's a thing that you know, that we really enjoy doing and that we can hyper focus on it um and risk taking, you know like sure, I mean all of these things can have like a threshold, like their strengths until their weakness. But, like you know, that idea of like sure, why not?

Speaker 1: 16:49

let's see what happens, right when it comes to creativity, like right, what's I mean? We're obviously talking about. We're not talking about like risk taking in, like cliff jumping. We're talking about like problem solving and actual artistic expression, like what's the harm in testing these two colors if I mix them together? Like why?

Speaker 2: 17:09

not see what happens.

Speaker 1: 17:11

Yeah, that's very different, but yes, I see that too.

Speaker 2: 17:14

Yeah, yeah, I mean I'll do that. Pottery is really great with that, because you could have something. And then, like you put it in the kiln and then it's like I don't know what's going to happen when it comes. Like, what is it going to be when it comes out of the kiln? You know, like if I did something wrong, like the whole thing could explode, you know. And so I'll just go and be like, oh, let's see what happens when I do this.

Speaker 1: 17:47

And then it comes out of the kiln and it's like, oh, this is actually pretty interesting. You know, the other piece of that is with with something like that is okay, so your structure didn't work while you were building it. So what's the worst that happens? You flatten it out and start over like there are.

Speaker 1: 17:57

You know, there are things like that, where it's like the creativity and the risk taking are completely part of the process. So I yeah, that makes a lot of sense to me too. Yeah, yeah, so that is, that's the strength of our creativity. Those are, those are the. That's one of the benefits or multiple superpowers we have within this umbrella of the creativity superpower. So next week, what are you sharing with?

Speaker 2: 18:26

us. So next week we'll get into the challenges around creativity, because you know, like with anything, with ADHD, like with every up there's a down, and you know everything's a strength until it's a weakness, or everything's a weakness until it's a strength, and so we'll get into the challenges around creativity and how to work with your brain when, you know, gets a little difficult.

Speaker 1: 18:50

Yeah, well, make sure that you, if you're not already subscribed to our show, make sure that you tap subscribe right now so you don't miss that episode. We'll be right back after a quick break. Hey y'all, hey y'all. Pov you find a diary exposing forbidden magic and the hot museum caretaker's life depends on you burning it, roots and Ink. The debut novel by Ariella Monti is the fantasy romance for rebels. Use promo code CKANDGK to get 20% off your copy at AriellaMontecom. Again, that's all caps C-K-A-N-D-G-K for 20% off on AriellaMontecom. Get your copy for 20% off today and scene. Okay, we're back.

Speaker 2: 19:55

You were talking about hyper fixations as a strength I am dying to hear what your current one is right now. Oh uh, well, before we started recording, I was hyper fixated on organizing all my event crap yes it was very, it was very likely that I was gonna text you and be like I'm gonna be 15 minutes late because, I was organizing listen, you gotta ride that out a half hour, right?

Speaker 1: 20:19

yeah, yeah exactly.

Speaker 2: 20:20

Well, I, I, I saw a window. I'm like let me put this stuff away, and I was just hyper fixated on getting everything organized so that I can store it for a couple of weeks before my next event.

Speaker 1: 20:39

So the other problem with that is the needing 15 minutes. That's the time. Blindness, that's what that's. One of the dangers of that hyper fixation is that you completely underestimate how long that hyper fixation is going to last, or the dopamine need, right like you just don't. Yeah, I gotcha, I don't know that this is a hyper fixation for me, but I will say this is my new favorite thing. Uh, so we'll go with that for now.

Speaker 1: 21:06

There is a product that I have discovered called bite away. No, I am not sponsored. We've discussed this. Please sponsor me. I will happily take your sponsoringness, folks.

Speaker 1: 21:18

Bite away is is the goat of mosquito products. Let me explain. It's like a little thing that looks like a pen and it's about the size of like a hand sanitizer spray bottle. It is small, okay, you can put it in your purse if you're going out, whatever, and it has batteries. You turn it on. It powers on for three seconds or five, whichever one, doesn't matter, but there's two settings on it and you put this ceramic tip on the mosquito bite, like directly on top of it, when it's itching or whether it's not doesn't matter, because sometimes they flare up and itch hours later, right, and it it turned. It gets hot like it's a ceramic plate. So if you, if you're someone who's ever used like ceramic curling iron or straightener, you know these things conduct heat and it zaps the top of your mosquito bite, not like an electrical thing, but it just gets hot and then it kills whatever, that bacteria or whatever it is that mosquitoes leave on your skin in their saliva that makes you itch, on your skin in their saliva that makes you itch. It sounds way more complicated because of the way that I described it, but think of like a fingertip, a fingertip getting really hot on your leg for three seconds, that's it, that's all it is, and then it doesn't itch at all.

Speaker 1: 22:42

And I have severe reactions to mosquito bites. I am I don't know if I just released copious amounts of carbon dioxide because they are. If you are next to me outside and you get bitten, you will not get bitten if you're next to me, like I am just the magnet. And now that I have the dog, I have to go in the backyard and it's humid in Texas and the mosquitoes are ridiculous. And no matter how much you Texas and the mosquitoes are ridiculous and no matter how much you spray, they still are there. So I have to have this pen on me at all times and I love this thing. As soon as I know the bite's there, I put the little bite away, tip on there and it goes in three seconds and it kind of hurts. Not going to lie, it's a little painful, but it's only for three seconds and it's totally worth it because then I don't itch anymore. Completely, 100% worth it. And all these people are like it's hurting me. That is no, it's not, it's helping you. Let it burn.

Speaker 2: 23:37

That is wild, it is the best. That is crazy.

Speaker 1: 23:41

It is. You know those like. There's that whole the bug bite. It's literally called the bug bite thing. Where you like, suck the venom or whatever it is yeah.

Speaker 1: 23:49

Yeah, no no, I thought that worked. I was wrong. That does not work. This works. Okay, I also like lavender hydrosol, which is a spray you can get on Amazon. You can make it yourself. Just look it up and it does feel better, but it doesn't work. This works. I have bites all over my body and they do not itch, and usually I'm the person who itches for several days after these butt bites and I am not itching. I already. I'm so obsessed with this thing I literally carry it around from room to room in the house just in case I get bitten by a mosquito that we accidentally let in or I feel a bite later after I let the dog out. It's already on the website. Go to ckngkpodcastcom and click on resources and then go to our favorite finds and it's a direct link to it right there. I'm again, not sponsored. I just firmly believe in this product. If you are somebody who itches from mosquito bites all summer long, like I do this is life-changing information for so many.

Speaker 1: 24:48

This is why I would consider it a hyperfixation. This is life-changing information that I'm giving you, and I'm telling literally everyone that I know that you need this product in your life. So yeah by the way best thing ever it's been.

Speaker 1: 25:01

People like it's expensive, the batteries run out. They gave you batteries. What product ever gives you batteries these days? Shut up, go buy some Amazon batteries. They're relatively. They come with my like order every month. Who cares? Just kind of batteries run out after too many uses. It would be nice with rechargeable yeah, it would, but you know what it's not. So just put the batteries in, shut up and put it on your leg. You're fine, feels great. I'm literally standing there like it burns. It burns so much better All the time, so dumb, but I don't care. Go get this thing if you itch from mosquito bites, by the way, made in Germany. I'm not even joking. Sometimes those Germans make good stuff, man.

Speaker 2: 25:55

Yep.

Speaker 1: 25:56

Alright, I firmly believe in this product.

Speaker 2: 26:07

But let me shut up. What did we get done this week? The same thing that my same thing of my hyper fixation is also organizing my vent. Crap. Nice, I finally got that done so. Now my craft table is free and I can Be creative. Now I can be creative. Now I can sew stuff and or do some pottery. I have a couple of things that need to be glazed, so now I have a table that I can do some glazing on.

Speaker 1: 26:41

Yeah, les, the word glazed, well, obviously I think of a donut. But I was watching an episode of the Valley on Bravo Because if you've listened to the show before at all, you probably know that I'm a big Bravo person and this girl on the show was like, before I I go to bed, I look like a glazed donut. There's so much lotion. I was like, yes, I do that too, got like my lotion, then I put on like my hydro mask thing and then I put like Vaseline over it. I really do look like a glazed donut sometimes, but but that's whenever I hear glaze, that's where I go with it. Now I look like a glazed donut when I go to sleep.

Speaker 1: 27:21

Anyway, I wouldn't say that I finally got this done, because this is a new item, but for our anniversary, which coincidentally is also on my son's birthday, we were having a hard time. We like to do like theme gifts. It's like you know, 13 years and the traditional item is lace or whatever. So we were looking for stuff like that and I was like do not get me anything lace, because you know where men's minds go when they hear lace.

Speaker 2: 27:49

Oh yeah, I was just going to say. I was like do not.

Speaker 1: 27:51

This is not the time for that, but we were talking about getting a new like credenza TV stand thing, our TV is mounted, but there was the one that we had was like one.

Speaker 1: 28:03

It was too low for the space. So there's like this big white space and you could see all the cords behind it, because whatever genius made this did not put a back panel on it. So you can see all the bunches of cords and stuff and I hate it. I hate it so much and I've hated it for years, because we could have bundled the cords and we could have done a thing, but but that never got done and I'm not blaming anyone, but I'm not in charge of the technology over there so it's got to be someone else's fault um, but I was like, for my anniversary you can get me a new credenza thing and it can be a two-fold gift one I get a project because I get to build something which I like to do and two I never have to see the courts ever again yeah

Speaker 1: 28:46

that's just the gift that keeps on giving. So I built that thing. It's pretty big, it's. It's pretty big. It's like six feet long and probably about three feet high, or so it's, it's, it's large, oh wow. It has all these shelves and it's got barn doors that like slide across, so there's the middle section and then you can open the barn doors and I built that sucker in like four hours, man.

Speaker 1: 29:11

Nice. I'm so proud of myself because that's what happened. Like I got fixated on all this crap in my living room. I don't like it and I want to get the project done. So that's my hyper fixation win and the task I got done once I built that thing.

Speaker 2: 29:27

It's super cute too, I really like nice, I want to see pictures.

Speaker 1: 29:30

Yeah, I'll send you, yeah, okay, so this has been adhd in real time or, you know, recorded time with kaylin and ariela. So, as jenny would say, make good choices, uh, go forth and make all the things. Just if you're gonna make stuff from a new hyper fixation, just go get those supplies from a buy nothing group. Okay, right, you know? Yeah, on and use it on your craft table and I love you.

Speaker 2: 30:03

I mean it bad about the mess, diverging tangents and how the office connects to shakespeare.

Speaker 1: 30:10

Okay, bye wow.