A Wandering Mind is a Creative Mind…

…No matter what our elementary school teachers said:

Want to get the creative juices flowing? Let your mind wander – by Sian Beilock

There is no denying it, whether at work, school, or in everyday life, we often encounter situations where thinking outside the box is necessary. It’s also true that sparks of insight can be somewhat hard to pin down. You just never know when creative thought will arise.

Fortunately, new research published in the journal Psychological Science changes this. Psychologists at the University of California, Santa Barbara have uncovered the very conditions that give rise to creative thought. As the researchers point out, there are countless anecdotal accounts of creativity happening when people take a break from whatever they are working on. The question, however, is whether any sort of break sparks creative thought or whether there is a certain type of activity that is best to perform during the break period. The answer, it turns out, is the latter. When stuck on a problem that needs a creative solution, turning your attention to another task that requires just a little bit of focus (but not too much) is the best way to jump start the creative process.

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Not to be a wiseass – we’d never wanna be like that – we already knew this. In fact, the only reason we’re posting this article is to give our brains time to charge up for another one that we’ll be writing from scratch. We call this the “undercover psych.” Try it and let us know how it goes.