Creativity & Caffeine

[James]

a playfully wandering state is important for creativity, but people usually say caffeine makes them laser focused, which sounds like it might suppress creativity.

could you guys share your experiences, do you feel more or less creative on caffeine?

[Mossy]

@James I feel less creative on caffeine. Activities that benefit from finesse and nuance, and as you say, wandering, tend to be more difficult and less appealing while on caffeine. More simplistic, immediate, and focused types of physical or mental activities tend to work with caffeine, though I don't have a large range of experience to judge it by. For instance, working out or playing a first person shooter (computer game), seems to be helped by caffeine; though, I haven't used it with working out in many years. Using design software or creative writing tends to be hindered by caffeine, for me.

[Kvirion]

Yep, caffeine works better for the ideas' implementation phase.
For inventiveness, I prefer Aspirin or Uridine...

[Corngold]

@James

I think dreams drive creative impulse for many people myself included. This usually means less caffeine but more sugar and sunlight. Also, I have this hunch that serotonin is tied to day-dreaming and napping. Not 100% on that, but I enjoy an occasional nap and day-dreaming or at night dreams I feel are very provocative for creating.

At the same time, depending on what you're creating, yes, caffeine, sugar and nicotine are definitely handy. I miss smoking sometimes but yeah, cigarettes/cigars, coffee, sugar, Coke, aspirin.

https://www.bu.edu/writingprogram/journal/past-issues/issue-5/mcclenathan/
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5598771/