Make your mind wander right into a good idea
On trying to plan for those magical “aha!” moments.
You know those unexpected moments of creative breakthrough? When you’re struggling to do something, but you can’t figure it out, so then you stop doing it, and do something else—take a shower or go for a walk—and that’s when you’re able to make sense of the thing?
There’s a special behavior that can set off these moments—mind-wandering. Mind-wandering happens when your “attention drifts from its current train of thought (often an external task) to mental content generated by the individual.”
Now, many forms of mind-wandering are bad, especially when it happens at the wrong time or involves negative thoughts. The behavior can inhibit reading comprehension. Too much of it can make you less happy. And you certainly don’t want your mind to wander far while you’re driving. One study even found that airline pilots mind-wandered while the plane was on auto-pilot.
“The rich imaginative mental life that mind wandering affords is valuable when it is used correctly but counterproductive when it is not,” researchers wrote in an examination of mind-wandering.
So, let’s turn our attention to that “valuable” mind-wandering. The good kind that helps with creativity. In one study, participants were asked when they came up with creative ideas. Here’s what researchers found:
“Over 40% of the participants’ creative ideas occurred when they were engaged in a non-work-related activity and/or thinking about something unrelated to the topic. Moreover, although creative ideas that occurred during mind wandering were not rated overall as more creative, they were more likely to be characterized as involving an “Aha!” experience and contributing to overcoming an impasse. These preliminary findings bear out many anecdotal reports that important creative ideas occur during mind wandering.”
In other words, mind-wandering can help you spark those magical “aha!” moments.
Still, creative mind-wandering is spontaneous. It sort of just happens. But what if you could make it happen more often?
I’ve been testing a way to set myself up for the good type of mind-wandering. It involves taking these two steps in quick succession:
Step 1: Immerse yourself in the problem you’re trying to solve. Examples:
Review the research material for a work presentation you’re designing
Start the first draft of the article you’re writing
Re-watch the video clips you’re trying to edit into a cohesive story
Step 2: Immediately engage in an exercise that’s conducive to mind wandering. Make sure you’re not doing anything that requires you to focus on a task or engage in a conversation. Don’t go on your phone. And please don’t try this while driving a car or flying a plane. Examples:
Take a walk
Go to the gym
Do a house chore
That’s it. It’s not that different from the thinking that happens spontaneously, except that you’re planning it on the heels of studying a challenging task. For example, I like to write at a coffee shop because I know my mind will wander during my walk home, while ideas are still fresh in my head.
And it works for me. I find that by going into a potential state of mind-wandering having just concentrated on a creative challenge, I’m able to carry over those residual thoughts. Do I land on something brilliant every time? Hardly. But most of the time I am able to make a meaningful, even if small, step forward.
Try it out for yourself.
Interesting things
TikTok’s Favorite Camera, by Kyle Chayka, The New Yorker 📄
Should You Hug a Sloth?, by Melena Ryzik, The New York Times 📄 (free-to-read gift share 🎁)
Trade-Offs, The Minimalists podcast 🎧
Thanks for reading, and happy mind-wandering.
Eric
