Note to Self: Showers Are Important

see also: sitting on porches. star-gazing. standing over your sink, mindlessly eating something while casting out your best thousand-yard stare.*

In some ways this is a sister post to Marc’s inaugural entry, and while something topical would perhaps be preferential, I tasked myself with focusing my first post on the overarching concept of ‘creative ideas’, so I’m going to stick to that.

So while I feel that there are many times when Marc is right, that being creative is truly solely about losing control;  sometimes, creativity, to me, seems more elusive.

I find that if I set out trying hard to be creative, I can almost guarantee that what I’ll yield is NOT my best idea. It may be appropriate, timely, even effective, but it seems that those really great ideas are saved exclusively for the moments when I’m not paying attention.

Sitting idly, waiting on something or someone. Staring at the chips in the paint on a wall. Standing underneath cold water in the shower, suddenly aware of my surroundings. Or often, simply waking out of a dead sleep. An idea will hit me, and it’s all I can do to get that idea down in some form, a dream journal, a voice memo, whatever is fast. efficient.

Just the other day, the New York Times ran a great editorial, “Why We Need to Dream“.

I’d recommend the article in its entirety, but one of the more interesting ideas within the piece is the concept that our idle thoughts are sometimes more effective than our conscious ones.

Referencing both rats (specifically the studies of Matthew Wilson, a neuroscientist at M.I.T.) and us human-folk (Jan Born – a neuroscientist at the University of Lübeck), the piece speaks to the importance of sleep, most especially R.E.M. sleep, and the fact that while we feel we may be resting quietly, our subconscious is hard at work, compiling the data we’ve processed during the day, and trying to form associations between random occurrences -  in essence struggling to solve our conscious problems while we rest.

I find this fascinating. And while not solely an excuse to sleep in on one’s weekends, I think there’s some merit to valuing one’s downtime.

A good friend and colleague of mine, Andrew, is rarely stumped. But when he is, he will stop everything, and plead only that he be given some time to figure out an answer.

“I’m going to let my subconscious work at it for a bit”, he says.

And honestly — as hokey as it sounds — more often than not, a day or two later, without the help of google or wikipedia or any of the memory-replacers we have on-hand, that puzzle will be solved in his head. We’ll be in the middle of some other conversation and the answer will just come blurting out. Seriously.

This type of thing speaks to me. The idea that sometimes the best work I do is when I don’t think I’m doing it it at all. I find that when I stop trying, when I rest my head, step away from the computer and all its delightful temptations/inspirations/etc and offer some minutes up to silence, every once in a while, that elusive lightbulb will shine on.

Now, can I speak to the metrics of the merits of this type of behavior and its affects on creative ideas and inspiration? Sadly, I can’t. But I can point out to you several sets of wet-footprint stains on the hardwood floors in my house, where I’ve bolted from the shower to a computer to scribble down some (arguably) great idea down before it got lost in the steam.

Please know, I am not at all advocating the wasting of precious water, but I am trying harder to give myself those little idle moments, knowing that while I may not even be thinking about it, those great ideas may be bubbling up, just under the surface.

And, who knows, maybe that’s something to ponder the next time you’re stuck at a red light.

* a shout-out here. this phenomenon was first brought to my attention by a very talented fellow creative, mike wong . i will consistently catch myself staring out past my sink with a bagel, and think. wow. so true.

Related articles by Zemanta

• Why We Need to Dream (opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com)
• Want to Boost Your Memory? Try Sleeping on It (time.com)
• Conquering Creative Block (andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com)

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