The Invisible Architecture of Creative Work: How Understanding Our Brain and Environment Makes Finishing — Not Just Starting — Possible

As I re-engage with creative work, I was recently reminded of something I likely knew when I was creating more frequently but had forgotten—and it bears revisiting.

A few months ago, I found myself staring at a half-finished creative project—again. In early 2023, I had picked up a camera in hopes of reconnecting with my love of photography. I started a small project, photographing a hidden alleyway in my neighborhood. The pandemic was still very much our reality, and this spot—with its unpaved road, trees, birds, squirrels, and puddles—offered a return to childhood play and wonder. Over a month, I returned to the path again and again, photographing anything that caught my eye, and ended up with over 100 images.

I had envisioned the project as a printed object—perhaps a small zine that could be shared with the neighborhood. Despite gathering images, printing drafts, and meeting with friends for feedback, the project sat dormant, tucked away in a closet for nearly two years. Each time I thought about starting something new, I felt the weight of it—this unfinished thing quietly tugging at my energy, like a small, patient seed left waiting to grow.

I recently learned about the Zeigarnik Effect, which explains why unfinished tasks nag at our mental bandwidth—our brains remember incomplete work more vividly, creating mental "open loops" that sap attention.

When I finally picked it back up, something clicked that I hadn’t fully grasped before: creative work doesn’t just require inspiration or discipline. It requires switching modes inside your brain—and crucially, knowing how and when to switch.

The Brain Behind Creativity: Why We Get Stuck

A recent study in Nature Communications offered a piece of this puzzle. Researchers found that during open-ended creative thinking, our brains show a rise in theta wave activity, especially in the prefrontal cortex. These theta waves help us keep multiple ideas alive at once, imagining new connections without rushing to judgment.

But when it's time to narrow down, make decisions, and bring a project to completion, our brains need to shift: theta activity decreases, and we enter a different mode altogether. Finishing isn't just a matter of "pushing through"—it calls on different cognitive resources.

This helped me make sense of why creative work often stalls (and, frankly, AI helped me better understand the Nature article too). It's not a failure of talent or willpower, but a natural cognitive hurdle.

Psychologists have mapped similar ideas for decades. Dual-Process Theory, for instance, describes two types of thinking: System 1 (intuitive, fast, divergent) and System 2 (analytical, deliberate, convergent). Creativity demands both, but at different stages.

In addition, it turns out that where and how we work matters too. Distributed Cognition shows that thinking isn't confined to our brains—tools, layouts, even where you place your drafts physically can either support or hinder your ability to move from exploration to execution.

This realization helped me reconnect with something I'd once known but hadn't fully understood.

Creating a Better Environment for Creative Switching

It’s quite likely that each of us is creative. But we each need our own working process. If the mechanics of creativity—including how our brains function—were more widely taught, it might be easier for us to catch ourselves when we’re stuck in one phase too long.

Now that I understood there are two distinct modes at play, I remembered something one of my photography mentors emphasized: print your work and place it where you can see it, and create a container—a physical one—for your projects. I had followed her advice at the time, but without fully understanding why it worked, I eventually let the practice slip away.

Interestingly enough, understanding the science helped me create new structures—and helped me switch modes more deliberately.

Here’s what I found helped me move between the open, expansive mode of creating and the focused, decision-making mode required for finishing:

Containers: I laid out printed images where I could see them daily. Seeing my work-in-progress made it easier to engage with it casually, inviting the decision-making part of my brain to activate. I also created a digital file to hold the project together.

Tiny First Actions: Rather than overwhelming myself with "finish the project"—which, let’s face it, is my go-to tendency as a struggling perfectionist—I committed to a very small, immediate step: review the printed stack of images and select only those that felt strong and cohesive.

Scheduled Time: I booked short blocks of protected time, something I’m learning to incorporate into my life. Holding myself to these small commitments is a way of showing respect for the creative self that initiated the project.

Each micro-decision and action built momentum, and what had once felt stuck transformed into a very doable project. The key was learning how to switch modes—and building simple structures that allowed momentum to grow naturally.

Looking Outward: Creativity Beyond the Self

In the February 2025 issue of Wallpaper magazine, I read an interview with architect Sou Fujimoto, who introduces forests as a model for how we might live and create our environments for the future. His message is ultimately hopeful, encouraging us to become "softly interconnected." Forests, he says, "show us how distinct identities can thrive in diversity while still being connected, and how harmony between humans and nature can be rediscovered."

This echoed another book I am slowly reading: The Mushroom at the End of the World by Anna Tsing, a meditation on life and possibility amid environmental collapse.

These ideas feel intertwined, each pointing to nature as a source of wisdom and a model for resilience.

Understanding how creativity works, even at a basic brain level, might seem like a small thing. But it could be a seed: a reminder that hope and new futures aren’t born only from grand visions. They also emerge from the quiet, deliberate practice of learning how to move between dreaming and deciding.

Finishing is a skill. So is imagining. We can learn them. We can teach them. And maybe, in doing so, we can build something better.

Thank you for being here—and for building alongside me.

Further Reading:

The Mushroom at the End of the World — Anna Tsing

Wallpaper Magazine (Feb 2025): Interview with Sou Fujimoto

"Prefrontal theta oscillations track open-ended creative thinking" — Nature Communications (2025)

Background on Dual-Process Theory and Zeigarnik Effect