“The intuitive mind is a sacred gift, and the rational mind a faithful servant. We have created a society that honours the servant and has forgotten the gift.”
— Albert Einstein
Have you ever had a good idea in the shower? Or perhaps you sometimes notice your best ideas come to you when you go for a walk? While we strive to focus better and get ever more done, it’s only when you stop working, and your mind starts to wander, that solutions sometimes present themselves.
The Neuroscience of A-ha Moments
Neuroscience helps explain why. Research tells us that flashes of insight, experienced as ‘A-ha’ moments, are associated with a spike of high-frequency gamma activity in our brain that happens 300 milliseconds before the A-ha moment.
It is thought this spike in electrical activity represents the binding together of neurons, as a new creative association is formed.
(This reflects the writer William Plomer’s take on creativity as “the power to connect the seemingly unconnected”).
Critically, these flashes of insight tend to be preceded by alpha brain waves: A-ha moments tend to happen when your brain is in a particularly relaxed state.
How to Apply This to Become More Creative
To have more creative insights, you need to get better at shifting your brain to the Alpha state.
Strategies to Shift into Alpha State
- Take a break: One of the simplest and easiest ways to shift brain states.
- Go for a walk: Steve Jobs famously took long walks to solve problems, letting his subconscious do the work.
- Do some light exercise.
- Sleep on it: Dmitri Mendeleev’s periodic table and August Kekulé’s benzene structure both came from dreams.
- Have a shower: You know it works!
- Meditate: Mindfulness and meditation slow your brain down and turn it into a problem-solving machine.
- Distract yourself with something unrelated: Einstein played the violin.
Create Time for Your Mind to Wander
To foster creativity, it’s also essential to change your relationship with your smartphone and create more idle time:
Tips to Encourage Mind Wandering
- Actively schedule time to think, reflect, and experiment.
- Put reasonable boundaries on your use of passive tech.
- Reset your expectations for communication.
- Charge your phone outside of your bedroom.
- Have more breaks throughout your day.
- Work to a deadline each day, then stop working.
- When you find yourself in a queue, let your mind wander.
Conclusion
We forget that our creative brain thrives under different conditions than those under which we tend to work. Your brain needs idle time to process and form new associations.
So have more breaks and learn to switch off. Give your brain the space it needs to shift into its naturally creative mode.
Best of luck.
Phil
