your brain on creativity

one thing i've always wanted to do was watch my brain work while i was thinking.  "this is your brain," they'd say, "and this is your brain on creativity."  it's what i call 'the zone'.  time as we know it ceases to exist, you're in a state of heightened focus, and you and what you're doing blend into one continuous action.  it's important.  it's relaxing.  and it's something we hardly ever get.  i heard someone say recently, speaking of simplicity, that they didn't think we were meant to be filled with too many details of varying sizes.  for example, can we really attend well to simultaneous thoughts and news items such as the middle east crisis (global/macro) AND what sandra bullock wore yesterday (individual/micro)?  or, say, the latest ways to cut our mortgage fees AND the cute puppy trick that someone captured on youtube?  i think you get my point...at some point we have to focus on something, which means there are a lot of other things that we are filtering out.  it seems that the ability to do this is lessening as the stiumuli increases and i'm wondering what it's doing to our brains.  a life coach once gave our team a chart with four quadrants labeled:  urgent/not important, not urgent/important, urgent/important and not urgent/not important.  she challenged us to spend the majority of our time on the things in the square labeled "not urgent/important", such as planning time, exercise; the things that get easily crowded sometimes by what's right in front of us.  "attend to a crisis, obviously," she said, (speaking of the urgent/important), "and then get right back to investing in the things that pay the long-term benefits."  people paid her a lot of money to tell them this and then ask them if they did it.  so, no doubt sandra bullock rocked the pink dress, but i think i hear my exercise shoes calling me.  and then i'm going to read, maybe draw; spend some time in "the zone".  this is your brain.  this is your brain on happy.