Sustaining Creative Flow

This unit develops students’ capacity to manage internal states and habits that enable sustained creative performance, integrating emotion regulation, mindfulness, habit design, abstract thinking, and sleep science. Students also learn to partner responsibly with generative AI to augment ideation and problem solving; the unit builds on prior foundations of creative management and prepares learners to apply these practices in culminating projects.

Learning Objectives

• Analyze how emotional states, empathy gaps, sleep, and cognitive habits influence individual and team creative performance, using examples from case studies and in-class exercises.
• Apply evidence-based emotion regulation, mindfulness, and habit-formation strategies to a personal or team routine and document measurable changes in creativity or productivity using at least two assessment metrics.
• Demonstrate responsible partnership with generative AI by designing and iterating prompts, integrating AI outputs into creative workflows, and identifying potential biases or limitations in AI-assisted ideation.
• Evaluate current thinking patterns and daily habits and produce a 4-week action plan that leverages abstract/associative thinking exercises, habit interventions, and sleep practices to sustain creative flow.