If you are one of those people who cant hold a lot in mind at onceyou lose focus and start daydreaming in lectures, and have to get to someplace quiet to focus so you can use your working memory to its maximumwell, welcome to the clan of the creative. Having a somewhat smaller working memory means you can more easily generalize your learning into new, more creative combinations. Because your learning new, more creative combinations. Having a somewhat smaller working memory, which grows from the focusing abilities of the prefrontal cortex, doesnt lock everything up so tightly, you can more easily get input from other parts of your brain. These other areas, which include the sensory cortex, not only are more in tune with whats going on in the environment, but also are the source of dreams, not to mention creative ideas. You may have to work harder sometimes (or even much of the time) to understand whats going on, but once youve got something chunked, you can take that chunk and turn it outside in and inside roundputting it through creative paces even you didnt think you were capable of! Heres another point to put into your mental chunker: Chess, that bastion of intellectuals, has some elite players with roughly average IQs. These seemingly middling intellects are able to do better than some more intelligent players because they practice more. Thats the key idea. Every chess player, whether average or elite, grows talent by practicing. It is the practiceparticularly deliberate practice on the toughest aspects of the materialthat can help lift average brains into the realm of those with more natural gifts. Just as you can practice lifting weights and get bigger muscles over time, you can also practice certain mental patterns that deepen and enlarge in your mind.