From a scientific perspective, creativity is your ability to think of something original from connections made between pre-existing ideas in your brain.
These connections are controlled by neurotransmitters like adenosine, which alerts your brain when you’re running out of energy and reacts by slowing down the connections made between neurons by binding to adenosine receptors.
Adenosine is kind of like your brain’s battery status monitor. Once your energy levels get low, adenosine alerts your brain and starts to slow down brain functioning.
This is why after a few hours of intense work, you begin to feel tired, like your brain has run out of juice.
When adenosine receptors are blocked, chemicals that increase the performance of your neural activity, like glucose, dopamine, and glutamate, are allowed to work overtime.
So while you may feel that coffee is giving you more energy, it’s simply telling your body that your energy reserves are good to go even after they’re long gone.
The peak effect of caffeine on your body happens between 15 minutes and 2 hours after you consume it.
When caffeine from your coffee enters your bloodstream, you become more alert from an increase in the production of the hormones adrenaline and cortisol.
The problem is, if this over-stimulation of adrenaline and cortisol occurs too regularly, your adrenal glands, which absorb adrenaline to help make you feel energized, gradually begin to require more adrenaline to give you the same ‘pick-me-up’ feeling as before.
When researchers at Johns Hopkins University looked at low to moderate coffee drinkers (as little as one 14-ounce mug per day), they found that even this little amount of coffee can cause your body to develop a tolerance to caffeine and require more of it to get the same stimulation.
While caffeine pulls a number on your brain to make you feel like you have more energy, alcohol has its own way of influencing your creativity.
After you’ve had a couple beers, drinking makes you less focused because it decreases your working memory, and you begin to care less about what’s happening around you. But as researchers at the University of Illinois at Chicago discovered, this can be a good thing for creativity’s sake.
Half of the men drank two pints of beer before playing the game while the other half drank nothing. The results showed that men who drank, solved 40 percent more of the problems than sober men.
It was concluded that a blood alcohol level of 0.07 (about 2 drinks) made the participants better at creative problem-solving tasks but not necessarily working memory tasks where they had to pay attention to things happening in their surroundings (like driving a car).
By reducing your ability to pay attention to the world around you,alcohol frees up your brain to think more creatively.
In an interesting study on the topic of alcohol and its effects on creativity, author Dave Birss brought together a group of 18 advertising creative directors and split them into two teams.
One team was allowed to drink as much alcohol as they wanted while the other team had to stay sober.
The groups were given a brief and had to come up with as many ideas as they could in three hours. These ideas were then graded by a collection of top creative directors.
The result? The team of drinkers not only produced the most ideas butalso came up with four of the top five best ideas.
While alcohol may not be the drink of choice when you need to be alert and focused on what’s going on around you, it seems that a couple drinks can be helpful when you need to come up with new ideas.
Both coffee and beer (in moderation) have shown to be helpful when you’re working on certain types of tasks, however, you shouldn’t drink either when you need to do detail-oriented or analytical projects like your finances.
The increase in adrenaline from caffeine and inhibition of your working memory from alcohol will make you more prone to make mistakes.
The best time to have a beer (or two) would be when you’re searching for an initial idea. Because alcohol helps decrease your working memory (making you feel relaxed and less worried about what’s going on around you), you’ll have more brain power dedicated to making deeper connections.
Researchers found that about 5 seconds before you have a ‘eureka moment’ there is a large increase in alpha waves that activates the anterior superior temporal gyrus.
These alpha waves are associated with relaxation, which explains why you often get ideas while you’re going for a walk, in the shower, or on the toilet.
Alcohol relaxes you so it produces a similar effect on alpha waves and helping us reach creative insights.
Coffee meanwhile, doesn’t necessarily help you access more creative parts of your brain like a couple pints of beer.
If you’ve already got an idea or an outline of where you want to go with your project, a cup of coffee would do wonders compared to having a beer to execute on your idea.
The general consensus across caffeine studies is that it can increase quality and performance if the task you are doing seems easy and doesn’t require too much abstract thinking.
If you decide to drink coffee or beer while you’re working, stick to no more than 2 drinks per sitting and try not to do this more than once or twice per week to prevent dependency.
They are ways to create chemical changes that occur naturally in your body with a healthy lifestyle. Quality sleep, a healthy diet, and allowing yourself to take breaks by splitting your day into sprints will do the same trick.
But, if you have to choose between coffee or beer, think about what type of task you are about to do and make sure you don’t over-drink.
GE2015 will go down as the social media election. With all the rallies being streamed online, parties making announcements on their respective social media platforms, people flocking onto Facebook to see ‘real’ photos of rally turnouts, and even Twitter tracking the elections — if anything, it’s hard to go through a day without being presented some form of news about the elections.
Given the sheer amount of information swirling around on the interwebs, it can get a little difficult to track down what is trending in real time. But SG Party Time — a monitoring tool that shows all the trending activities revolving around the General Elections — will do just that. An odd choice of name we must say. For a website that is actually useful and chock-full of information, it sabotages itself with a frivolous name. But a name is just a name; let’s move along from that and focus on the good bits.
According to the website, the word cloud is an accumulation of data from “salient keywords and channels, a high-speed crawler that extends deeper than traditional RSS feeds and search engines to draw out relevant data that is presented in a visual and comprehensive manner.” And the bigger the word, the more discussed it is.
To find relevant social media posts on a topic, click on any word. Upon clicking ‘Foreign Policy’, you’ll find a neat presentation, or a ‘party graph’ of how many times it was mentioned by the relevant parties. Watch how the issues changed over the past few weeks as you scroll on the right-hand side of the cloud — four weeks ago, ‘Job Market’ was the pressing issue but it has now been replaced by ‘Opposition’.
While I know this is all relevant, I was a bit surprised that no names appeared in the cloud. No Chee Soon Juan, who has been making rousing speeches, no mention of Chiam See Tong, who recently spoke at a rally, nothing on Koh Poh Koon performing CPR — surely they’ve missed out on something?
What is also interesting is that at the bottom of the page, it shows the platforms that most Singaporeans are engaged with — it’s quite strange to know that instead of an online magazine or news portal, it’s actually Hardwarezone that’s keeping Singaporeans occupied this election season. Interesting.
Ling and Vincent, both ex-colleagues at an ad agency in Singapore, were in town when I accidentally bumped in them and somehow got their namecard.
They spoke about how passionate they were about their start-up, and more importantly, how this idea can empower so many individuals out there with a passion that might be still hidden under the lamp.
Enter Lensy, a community marketplace where the everyday photographer can sell his or her photos to other individuals and businesses that require high quality images.
Lensy is more than just another virtual community. It is a platform that seeks to democratise stock photography by championing the everyday photographer and photography enthusiast. Now, you as a person armed with a camera can be given an equal opportunity to grow and develop your passion and craft, while making your photos available for sale to brands and businesses.
What’s unique about Lensy is that it focuses on photography from Asia, addressing the lack of them from typical stock photography libraries we find from the U.S. or within Europe.
Speaking on the revenue model of Lensy and how it can serve the community, Ling and Vincent were quick to point out, that “most current stock photography licenses are complicated and expensive for buyers, with only a small percentage of revenue generated from each sale going back to the photographers.”
For Lensy, they are going to change just that. Now, for every photo sold, Lensy gives 50% of the revenue to the photographer, and retains 50% to cover maintenance and transaction cost. That simple.
Lensy Tasks is a place where brands, big or small, can engage their fans and involve the Lensy community. This crowdsourcing method avoids the usual costly photoshoots and allow for unique and tailored photos to be generated for brands’ content strategies. There is also no enforced subscription model, so brands can just buy what they want – royalty free at $10 with no hidden costs.
When asked on how Lensy is changing the landscape for pseudo-photographers, both founders were clear on their mission.
“Lensy is built upon The Sharing Economy, where people are able to leverage on unused or excess capacity (in this case, great photos that they have taken and are really proud of but would otherwise sit in their hard drives, image hosting sites like Flickr etc) and monetise these assets; in a similar fashion in which Airbnb has done by allowing everyday people to rent out their spare rooms or houses to others like hotels,” said Ling and Vincent.
In terms of copyright content, both founders were also quick to share that it is fundamental for their business to make it fuss free (no complicated licenses) and low cost, so that that buyers will be willing to pay to licensed photos and not choose the other awry path of content theft.
For everyday photographers and photography enthusiasts, the founders emphasised that they also want to help them understand their copyrights as owners and provide a platform for them to easily license their photos to brands and businesses for a usage fee.
I spoke to a few friends who are heavily involved in photography, and some mentioned that the root problem of stock photography platforms is not the pricing itself, but the ability to find what you really want.
In Lensy’s case, their photo discovery process is made easier with descriptions and tags. Not necessary the finest of platform filters, but hey, it is pretty user friendly given the fact they launched only November last year.
Lastly, here’s a shout out to all photography enthusiast- This Valentines’ Day, take part in Lensy Task’s Love is in the Air by uploading photos that can portray the rosy sweet mood of this special day.
The task ends in 9 days and the chosen photograph by the organising brand will stand to win a reward prize of SGD $200!
As for Lensy, I can’t wait to see how they will improve their user experience as more users jump onboard.
Even though many companies around the world are on a layoff spree to cut down costs and to reconsolidate their efforts towards more profitable avenues, especially in these economic times, there are still many companies in Malaysia that are currently looking to hire fresh talent to spur them closer to their vision.
After a quick search on social media and on a few job recruitment sites, here are some of the cool companies in Malaysia that are going against the grain, and are on a recruitment spree.
iflix, the Malaysian streaming service and Netflix competitor, has more than 20 job openings listed on their career page. They’re hiring on a permanent, contractual and a regular basis, and they even have an internship program called “The ‘Interns Aren’t Slaves’ Internship Program”.
Their jobs range from Account Executives to a full stack Software Engineer all the way to a Payroll “Guru”.
Describing themselves as “an online fashion destination for girls who embrace femininity in all shapes and sizes”, Twenty3 is looking to hire curious, highly driven individuals that believe in their vision and their products.
Currently they have 5 internship positions available on their careers page in the areas of business development, marketing, fashion design, etc., and they’re also hiring a few on full-time basis.
MaGIC is an organization that’s dedicated to building and strengthening the Malaysian startup ecosystem, and they’re also hiring talent for key positions like Manager of Investor Relations, Marketing Executive, Assistant Director, and numerous others.
They also have a graduates and internship program that’s supposed to train more technical and non-technical junior talent by pairing them up with startups and other companies.
Firefly, a wholly owned subsidiary of Malaysia Airlines, is also hiring an Executive, Systems Analyst that has more than 3 years of experience in the relevant technologies. And they’re also hiring a Captain (ATR Rated) for their flight operations, according to their careers page. So if you have love for the friendly skies, and if you have experience to operate an aircraft, you can know where to be.
KFIT is a subscriptions-based platform that gives you access to various gyms and fitness centers, and it has a string of full-time and internship positions available in Kuala Lumpur, Manila, Singapore, Taipei and Seoul, on their careers page.
This rapidly growing startup is looking to create healthier communities and healthier cities across Asia-Pacific, and they’re looking for individuals that can support this vision.
If working at a cool office with even cooler vibes fits your bill, then you’d be glad to know that Mindvalley also has a good number of job openings at the moment.
Mindvalley is a learning experience company that publishes ideas and teachings by the best authors in the areas of personal growth, well-being, spirituality, etc., with a digital edge. Currently, most of their openings have a technical inclination, so you’d be a suitable candidate if you have the relevant skills and support their overall vision.
And you’d also be glad to know that Mindvalley’s office even made it to Inc Magazine’s World’s Coolest Workplace List in 2012.
500 Startups is a Silicon Valley based seed fund that invests money in startups and scalable businesses. Currently, they’ve more than 1600 investments in over 50 countries, and they happen to be the most active Seed investor. According to Managing Partner Khaliee Ng’s Facebook post, they’re currently looking to fill up 6 key roles, and they also have an internship available for students, fresh graduates or graduate students.
A cool thing about working at 500 Startups is that you even can get to travel to either San Francisco or an exotic location twice a year.
Maxis is a communications service provider, that also has a good number of job openings listed on their careers page. They offer jobs either on a contract, mostly permanent or on a temporary basis, and the listings range from business to development to software development all the way to customer service.
It’s important to note that many of the job listings have a 30-day deadline, and only the shortlisted candidates will be notified.
Maybank is currently one of the top five banks in ASEAN and it’s also a Qualifying Full Bank in Singapore. Currently the bank has various openings in the fields of auditing, community financial services, global banking, human capital, IT, etc. You can go through the available positions on their careers page and apply for the ones that you’d qualify for.
KPMG is a professional service company and it’s also one of the Big Four auditors, as such they offer a range of audit, tax and advisory services in Malaysia. And they also are looking to fill various key roles at both their Petaling Jaya and Penang branch. It’s also important to note that most of the job postings on their careers page has a closing date, so do make sure that you hand in your application before then.
The fact of the matter is there are still a significant number of companies that are looking for talent to help spur their growth and to meet their vision. If you’re currently unemployed and looking for a job, there are plenty of job hunting platforms to take advantage of, don’t give up!
By the way, the Malaysian team at Vulcan Post is also hiring full-time writers! If you have a heart for startups, inspirational people, and digital lifestyle, drop us an email at team@vulcanpost.com!