Here’s an idea: Take a shower to spark a brainwave
Allowing the mind to wander has long been accepted as part of the answer to how inspiration works. Fresh research suggests that idleness is crucial too
What causes an epiphany? How do eureka moments happen? Newton, after all, was just sitting under an apple tree. Archimedes was in a bathtub.
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Simply allowing the mind to wander has long been accepted as part of the answer. But fresh research suggests that the degree of idleness is crucial too.
A study by psychologists at the Universities of Virginia and Minnesota, published in the journal Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts, in October, tested 300 subjects in an attempt to understand why people seem to arrive at some of their most creative ideas while performing moderately engaging tasks such as taking a shower, exercising or riding the bus (and not, say, while at work or in the classroom).
“One of the things that led to this research was the desire to look at one sort of mind wandering in particular – how thoughts are meandering from one topic to another and how those might be related to creativity,” says Zachary Irving, co-author of the research paper, and an assistant professor and researcher in the field of the philosophy of cognitive science at the University of Virginia. “Earlier research, which studied the matter more broadly, suggested that the mind gets distracted when engaging in mind-numbingly boring tasks such as sitting on a couch and staring at a wall, or randomly pressing a key on your keyboard at intervals. Triggering mind-wandering, which underlies creativity, requires more specific conditions.”
The study, titled The Shower Effect, tested the 300 subjects (all university students) by asking them to come up with as many creative uses as possible for a brick or paper clip. The subjects were then split up and told to watch two characteristically different videos. One set watched a video of two men folding laundry. The other watched a clip from the 1989 romcom When Harry Met Sally.
Participants were asked to report on how often their minds wandered while watching their video, and what directions that wandering took. Immediately after they were done watching, they were also asked to list uses for the brick and paper clip. The researchers found that the wandering mind settled upon the task at hand (the uses for the brick and paper clip) only among those subjects who watched the more engaging clip, the one from the movie.
“We found that a moderately engaging task lets the mind wander in a particular way. It’s not like you’re so busy that you can’t think, which is often the condition we find ourselves in these days, nor are you mind-numbingly bored,” says Irving. “Those kinds of conditions can lead to a productive form of mind-wandering.”
The findings become more relevant in a digital world where we don’t often get to a place where the mind can wander, Irving adds. A long commute is spent listening to a podcast. A run is accompanied by music. We do chores with a show or playlists running in the background.
“A lot of the time that we would spend mind-wandering is now spent on our phones too,” he says. “A big-picture project I’m working on now addresses how digital technology can take away from the kind of spontaneity that we are talking about here, and how that could hurt us.”
Meanwhile, for those looking to get creative, you now know what to do (and what not to do). “If you find that there’s not enough room for mind wandering in your life, take a shower, wash the dishes, ride a bike,” says Irving. “But don’t try to squeeze some more productivity out of those moderately engaging tasks.”
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