Most creative geniuses rely on specific activities to tap into the creative zone. This article, featuring numerous real-world examples, explores the leading-edge research on this topic. Additionally, it offers a simple three-step process to help you easily enter your creative zone and unlock your most brilliant ideas.
Ideas Spark When We Are Not Focused
Let’s explore Jeff Bezos’s morning routine. Here’s how the visionary founder of Amazon describes it:
“I like to putter in the morning. I get up early. I go to bed early. I like to read the newspaper. I like to have coffee. I like to have breakfast with my kids before they go to school. So, my puttering time is very important to me. That’s why I set my first meeting for ten o’clock.”
According to the Merriam-Webster Dictionary, puttering is “spending time in a relaxed way doing small jobs and other things that are not very important.”
Scientific research consistently highlights that a relaxed state of mind boosts creativity.1 In contrast, being overly busy or constantly distracted by digital devices stifles our creative potential. Activities like daydreaming, mind-wandering, embracing boredom, and maintaining open attention have been shown to ignite and enhance creative thinking.
Dr. Jonathan Smallwood, a renowned cognitive neuroscientist, has extensively researched mind-wandering, daydreaming, and the brain’s “default mode network.” His research has revealed that daydreaming is not a mere distraction but a powerful tool for generating creative thought.
As Dr. Smallwood explains, ”Scientifically, daydreaming speaks to the capacity that people have to create thought in a pure way rather than thought happening when it’s a response to events in the outside world.”
Dr. Sandi Mann, an expert in boredom and daydreaming, points out: “Once you start daydreaming and allow your mind to wander, you start thinking beyond the conscious and into the subconscious.2 This process allows different connections to take place“.
Manoush Zomorodi, an American journalist and author of Bored and Brilliant: How Spacing Out Can Unlock Your Most Productive and Creative Self, led a project to explore how constant digital engagement affects our minds. Her experiment yielded compelling evidence about the benefits of boredom. It also offered practical recommendations for unlocking creativity by reducing digital distractions.
How to Harness Mind-Wandering to Unlock Creativity
Many creative geniuses use their open attention, mind-wandering, puttering, and daydreaming time for creativity. Here are some examples.
Driving. Sarah Blakely, the founder of Spanx, an innovative brand that revolutionized the shapewear industry, found that she got her best ideas when driving. Sarah created a “fake commute” designed to generate creative ideas by adding an hour of driving to her way to work.3 Sarah told Forbes she saw the name Spanx across the dashboard while sitting in traffic in Atlanta during one of these fake commutes. Sarah pulled over and wrote the name on a piece of paper. Sarah generated many vital ideas for her company during her fake commutes.
Walking. Many great minds use walking to generate creative ideas. 4 The philosopher Nietzsche claimed that “all truly great thoughts are conceived while walking.” Steve Jobs, the co-founder of Apple, was famous for his walking meetings. Charles Darwin, the father of the science of evolution, had a “thinking path” on his estate, where he would walk daily. The list of famous people who walked for creativity includes Tchaikovsky, Einstein, Ludwig van Beethoven, Henry David Thoreau, and William Wordsworth, among many other great thinkers.
Washing Dishes. Agatha Christie, the renowned mystery writer, claimed she created her best plot and storylines while doing dishes. “The best time for planning a book is when you’re doing the dishes,” she pointed. Two billionaires, Jeff Bezos and Bill Gates, wash dishes too.5 Bill Gates mentioned that washing dishes is a great way to relax and unwind.
Pushing a Stroller. Manush Zomorodi, the author of Bored and Brilliant, said in her famous TED Talk How Boredom Can Lead To Your Most Brilliant Ideas that when her son was a baby, he could only sleep in complete silence in a moving stroller. As a new mother, Manush could do nothing but push the stroller for hours and get bored out of her mind. During that time, she came up with her very best ideas. 6
Playing Music. Madeleine L’Engle, an American writer best known for her classic novel “A Wrinkle in Time, once said.
“Playing the piano is for me a way of getting unstuck. If I’m stuck in life or in what I’m writing, if I can I sit down and play the piano. What it does is break the barrier that comes between the conscious and the subconscious mind. The conscious mind wants to take over and refuses to let the subconscious mind work, the intuition. So, if I can play the piano, that will break the block, and my intuition will be free to give things up to my mind, my intellect“.
Similarly, Albert Einstein used to play the violin as a source of inspiration, which enhanced his creativity. 7
Yoga. Miss Excel, also known as Kat Norton, built a multi-million-dollar business within less than two years. Kat credits her success to giving herself time to get into “a creative flow state.” A big part of this includes Kundalini yoga and dancing. 8
Rowing. Author Anne Janzen finds her creative inspiration while working out on the rowing machine. It’s during this rhythmic and repetitive activity that her mind wanders, allowing fresh ideas to surface. The physical movement combined with mental relaxation helps her tap into her subconscious, fostering creativity.
The list of open-attention, mind-wandering activities that can stimulate creativity is long. It includes showering, bathing, waiting in line, getting a massage, gardening, knitting, and doing various household chores.
A Three-Step Formula to Unlock Your Creative Potential
Here is a three-step formula that can help you generate creative ideas consistently.
Step 1: Discover the Space Where Your Muse Thrives
Almost every business collects valuable customer feedback by asking, “How did you find out about our product?” and offering various answer options, such as social media, word of mouth, or online ads. This question is a tool to understand the customer’s journey.
We can use the same approach to locate our creative muse, that elusive source of inspiration and ideas that guide our creative work. Just as businesses uncover patterns in customer behaviour, we, too, can uncover patterns in our creative thought processes by observing when, where, and how our best ideas come to us.
To begin this journey, keep a journal or log of your creative thoughts and ideas as they arise. When inspiration strikes, don’t just capture the idea. Make sure to take note of your surroundings and circumstances. Write down details like the time of day, location, what you were doing, and your energy level or mood. These small details might seem insignificant initially, but they can reveal patterns about when and where your creativity thrives.
This exercise aims to build a personal “map” of your Muse’s preferred environments. Just as you’d track patterns in customer feedback to improve marketing strategies, tracking patterns in your creative inspirations will help you understand your unique environments for creativity. Perhaps you’ll discover that your best ideas come in the early hours, or maybe they strike late at night. Your Muse might visit you while relaxing at home, or perhaps it prefers to appear when you’re out and about in a bustling city. Understanding these patterns can help you create “idea-friendly” environments.
It’s important to recognize that everyone’s creative Muse is different. For instance, Spanx founder Sara Blakely often finds inspiration while driving, letting the rhythm of the road and the solitude of the car bring her new ideas. Agatha Christie, the famous mystery writer, found her muse while doing mundane tasks like washing dishes, allowing her mind to wander as her hands were busy.
I’ve noticed that my Muse tends to visit when I’m running outdoors. The combination of fresh air, physical movement, and a change of scenery seems to awaken my creativity. These examples highlight the personal nature of creativity — what works for one person might not work for another, so it’s essential to find what uniquely resonates with you.
Step 2: Engage with Your Muse in Her Natural Habitat
Once you’ve identified where your creative muse most often visits you, the next step is to engage with her in her natural habitat. To do it, we need to prioritize activities that spark our creativity and make them a consistent part of our routine. Building these moments into our schedule, even if they seem unconventional, helps establish a space where inspiration can find you repeatedly.
Consider the example of Sara Blakely, the founder of Spanx, who famously created a “fake commute” for herself each day. She drove around Atlanta’s roads before heading to work, even though her commute was only a few minutes. This practice might seem unnecessary and counterproductive for many, wasting time that could be better spent on tangible tasks. But for Blakely, that drive wasn’t wasted. It was a dedicated time to meet with her muse.3
In the same way, you can intentionally build “idea-generation time” into your schedule by engaging in activities that you’ve identified as conducive to your creativity. If your muse appears during outdoor runs, set aside time for running regularly. If ideas come to you while cooking, make space in your week for experimenting in the kitchen. Some people find inspiration during early-morning walks or journaling sessions. Whatever works best for you, schedule it with the same importance as a business meeting.
If you’re lucky, your idea-generating activity might give you extra benefits, like neatly folded laundry, a clean house, or a fit body. However, these side benefits are just bonuses. The real goal of scheduling this time is to stay in the “idea-generation zone” as often as possible, allowing inspiration to find you. It’s about being intentional and disciplined with your creative process.
When ideas strike, be ready to capture them. Keep a notebook or a note-taking app on hand to jot down thoughts as soon as they arrive. Over time, this practice should transform idea generation from sporadic and unpredictable to a reliable, consistent and productive routine.
Step 3: Make Creativity a Part of Your Schedule
“Schedule time for your inner Muse to process your thoughts, and you may be surprised by the insights that appear,” writes Anne Janzer, emphasizing the importance of giving our minds space to develop creative ideas. Creative insights arise not from intensive effort but from a relaxed, open-attention state.
Kate Norton noted that at workplaces, people often quickly move from production-focused tasks into brainstorming sessions, mistakenly expecting creativity to thrive. They miss that shifting from a busy, task-oriented mindset to a creative one requires a much longer mental reset. True creative flow doesn’t usually arise on command, especially in a structured, time-limited session. This is why groundbreaking ideas often emerge during informal, mind-wandering activities like showering, walking, driving, or doing household chores.
Research and experience suggest that achieving this flow state for creativity requires at least one hour of unhurried time. This uninterrupted hour allows the mind to wander and the muse to settle in. Committing to creative hours filled with these mind-wandering activities allows you to access a state of open awareness where ideas flow more freely.
Physical and emotional well-being also play significant roles in fostering creativity. Our physical state influences creativity, so it’s worth assessing: Are we rested enough? Do we feel well physically? Are we in a positive emotional state? These factors directly impact how effectively we can enter a creative flow. A rested body and a positive mindset make us more receptive to ideas, while exhaustion or negative emotions can obstruct the creative process. By becoming more aware of the physical states that best support our creativity, we can set ourselves up for a more fruitful creative session.
By thoughtfully crafting “creativity hours” and optimizing our physical state to support it, we create ideal conditions for our inner muse to thrive. These intentional steps increase the chances of sparking creative insights and allow us to enjoy the process more fully.
By scheduling “creativity” days or hours, we can build a sustainable, personalized framework for ongoing inspiration.
Key Takeaways
- Open attention, boredom, daydreaming, and mind-wandering fuel creativity.
- The activities that encourage mind-wandering are diverse and individualized.
- We can identify our creativity triggers by observing ourselves and taking notes.
- Once we uncover our creativity triggers, we must schedule them into our routines.
Footnotes
1. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7395604/
2. https://www.psychologytoday.com/ca/basics/unconscious
3. https://www.businessinsider.com/spanx-ceo-sara-blakely-fake-commute-2018-11
4. https://www.entrepreneur.com/living/3-reasons-why-walking-boosts-creativity/383403
5. https://www.inc.com/jessica-stillman/the-science-of-why-jeff-bezos-bill-gates-still-do-dishes.html
6. https://www.ted.com/dubbing/manoush_zomorodi_how_boredom_can_lead_to_your_most_brilliant_ideas
7. https://makingmusicmag.com/the-process-einstein-used-to-stimulate-creativity-and-why-it-worked