Writers’ Rough Drafts – Episode #53 With Scott Barry Kaufman

Or listen on: iTunes| Stitcher| Spotify| Google Play| Download

Scott Barry Kaufman, Ph.D., is a cognitive scientist interested in the development of intelligence, creativity, and personality. He is an author with multiple titles on his bookshelf, including Ungifted: Intelligence Redefined; Twice Exceptional: Supporting and Educating Bright and Creative Students with Learning Difficulties; Mating Intelligence Unleashed: The Role of the Mind in Sex, Dating, and Love; The Psychology of Creative Writing; and my personal favorite, Wired to Create: Unraveling the Mysteries of the Creative Mind. In addition to conducting research, lecturing as a professor, and writing or editing over half a dozen books in the past decade, he is also a prolific essayist at publications and websites like Scientific American, Psychology Today, The Atlantic, and Neurohacker Collective.

Though much of his work is often characterized by redefining and understanding intelligence, he staunchly advocates for doing this in a way that also celebrates the creative and innovative. Through his work as the scientific director of The Imagination Institute in the Positive Psychology Center at the University of Pennsylvania and his leadership in co-founding The Creativity Post, among the many projects he advises on or leads, he is constantly looking for new and interesting ways that intelligence, creativity, and personality complement and align in ways that can lead to meaning and even some happiness.

What You’ll Learn About Writing This Week:

• How people will always tell you what they think you should write
• That there are some things in your past that you’ve written or created that you might not be thrillingly proud of today
• How creativity is riddled with paradoxes
• Why when something bugs you because there isn’t much research or conversation about it out there, you are the one who needs to write about it
• How to balance both academic research writing with blogging and broader communication

Mentioned in This Episode (Links and Resources!):

• Scott’s books
• “The Psychology Podcast”
• Psychology Today
• The Light Triad vs. Dark Triad of Personality (Scientific American)
• Introducing the Light Triad
• “The Psychology Podcast” episode that explores ideas of common humanity
• Light Triad Scale test
• Hara Estroff Marano
• Heidi Gardner episode on “Writers’ Rough Drafts”
• Wired for Creativity: Unraveling the Mysteries of the Creative Mind
• Calm (meditation app)

You Can Find More of Scott and His Writing On:

• The local 7-Eleven on Mondays and Fridays (JK!)
• His website, scottbarrykaufman.com
• His Twitter account, @sbkaufman

Tweetable Quotes From This Episode:

• “I don’t believe in balance … just do it all! Live a full life.” – @sbkaufman on #WritersRoughDrafts
• “I want to do the experiment and show that the light side can be seductive … people don’t find kindness as boring, as researchers have previously thought.” – @sbkaufman on #WritersRoughDrafts
• “I really enjoy infusing humor and general cheekiness into my blog posts … I never really wrote my posts in a way that’s divorced from my general personality.” – @sbkaufman on #WritersRoughDrafts
• “I really like the expression ‘messy minds’ to describe people … it adequately describes the creative process.” – @sbkaufman on #WritersRoughDrafts
• “Life is not all about the experience, so much as it is about our own way of framing what comes at us.” – @sbkaufman on #WritersRoughDrafts
• “Embrace your messy mind.” – @sbkaufman on #WritersRoughDrafts

Thanks to our Season 4 sponsor: Coworker.com