A 1964 art school study predicted who would still be painting in 5 years

In 1964, the School of the Art Institute of Chicago handed 31 of its students an hour, a sheet of paper, and a long table covered in oddities: grapes, a gearshift, a glass prism, an old book, and 23 other items chosen by two researchers in the next room. Each student could pick whichever objects appealed, set them up however they wanted, and draw. About half got moving fast. They grabbed three or four items, arranged them, blocked in a sketch within minutes, then refined it for the next 55. The other half barely seemed to get started. They picked things up, turned them over, swapped them out, switched paper, erased, restarted. Some were still rearranging at the 50-minute mark and finishing the drawing in a panic.

The study named these two patterns: problem-solving (settling on a sketch quickly) and problem-finding (spending most of the hour deciding what to draw). It was run by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (who later coined "flow") with Jacob Getzels, and Keith Sawyer recounts it in The MIT Press Reader.

A panel of art critics judged the slow group's drawings more original. Then the researchers waited. Five years after graduation, they hunted down 27 of the original 31 and tallied who had gallery shows, dealer representation, paintings hanging in museums, or any sort of art-adjacent paycheck, and who had quit. Among the 11 lowest-ranked problem finders, eight had quit art entirely. The top-ranked were still painting.

Csikszentmihalyi published the findings in The Creative Vision (1976), long out of print. Sawyer, his former doctoral student, argues the same pattern shows up wherever the problem itself isn't clear yet. People in design and planning now call those "wicked" problems.

Previously:

• Rick Rubin explains why more choice doesn't always lead to more creativity
• The Onion founder reveals tips for boosting creativity
• Discovering hidden faces in unexpected places: how pareidolia reveals your creative potential