Why Great Ideas Come When You Aren’t Trying

This is a little something that I've known forever. As an artist, I've have found down-time to be one of the most important things I can do to remain creative. Now it looks like this is one of the things ALL of us can do to work through problems and find answers.

In this Nature article, psychologists Benjamin Baird and Jonathan Schooler at the University of California, Santa Barbara, gave 145 undergraduate students two 'unusual uses' tasks that gave them two minutes to list as many uses as possible for common, everyday objects such as toothpicks, clothes hangers and bricks.

"After the two minutes were over, participants were given a 12-minute break, during which they rested, undertook a demanding memory activity that required their full attention or engaged in an undemanding reaction-time activity known to elicit mind-wandering. A fourth group of students had no break. All participants were then given four unusual-uses tasks, including the two that they had completed earlier. Those students who had done the undemanding activity performed an average of 41% better at the repeated tasks the second time they tried them. By contrast, students in the other three groups showed no improvement. The work will be published shortly in Psychological Science."

So there you have it. Now we know for sure that keeping your nose to the grindstone will only result in big cosmetic surgery bills. Instead kick back, take that break and be more resourceful AND creative.