Note Details
- Stage: seed 🌱
- Type: note
- Topics: creativity concept
- This is likely why some of my best ideas come while in the shower without my phone, or in the car driving.
Neuroscience research supports this intuition. When the mind is not occupied with focused, goal-directed tasks, it shifts into what is known as the default mode network (DMN) — a set of interconnected brain regions that become active during mind-wandering, daydreaming, and unfocused thought. The DMN enables a kind of loose associative processing that draws connections between seemingly unrelated ideas, memories, and concepts. This is precisely the neural mode that underpins creative insight.
The shower and the car are ideal environments for this because they involve mild sensory engagement (warm water, the rhythm of driving) without demanding cognitive attention. The absence of external input — no phone, no notifications, no task list — creates the conditions for what creativity researchers call the incubation period: a phase where the unconscious mind continues to work on a problem after conscious effort has been set aside. Studies on incubation effects have shown that people who step away from a problem and engage in an undemanding activity are significantly more likely to arrive at novel solutions than those who continue to grind on it directly.
Boredom, in this framing, is not the absence of productivity but its precondition. A culture that fills every idle moment with scrolling, podcasts, and notifications systematically eliminates the mental conditions under which original thinking arises. Protecting unstructured time is not laziness — it is a practice of creative hygiene.