72 | HealthLinksSC.com In his 2016 book “Wired To Create,” cognitive scientist Scott Barry Kaufman described a study he spearheaded which showed that 72% of people get creative ideas in the shower. And Harvard University researcher Shelley Carson added that everyday activities or distractions allow our brains to keep processing problems while letting our unconscious processes help us mull them over in fresh ways. “A distraction may provide the break you need to disengage from a fixation on the ineffective solution,” Carson said. “This is why a new idea can suddenly pop up out of the blue.” Consider these three historical examples: • On Sept. 12, 1933, Hungarian physicist Leo Szilard stood on a curb near the British Museum on a cold, semi-drizzly morning, waiting at a stoplight. As the light changed from red to green, Szilard stepped off the curb – and the answer to a seemingly insolvable problem came to him in a flash. Before he finished crossing the street, Szilard had the answer to how successfully sustain a nuclear reaction. • One day in 1973, Margaret Young of Sydney, Australia, was listening to her two brothers playing music. They had just formed a band, and Young often enjoyed sewing while listening to them play. But on this day, there was a problem: The band needed a name, and, despite tossing ideas around for weeks, nothing had worked. So Young offered a name from some letters on the back of her sewing machine which she thought fit perfectly with her brothers’ highly charged type of music: AC/DC – and a legendary rock band was born. • In the days before showers, ancient Greek mathematician Archimedes was trying to solve a problem for King Heiron II of Syracuse, who believed his crown had been mixed with both silver and gold by a dishonest goldsmith. You probably know about Archimedes’ eureka moment when the answer came to him during a tub bath – further proof that even geniuses like Archimedes utilized the power of distraction to keep his mind moving in the right direction. “It’s a good strategy to unwind. … and take some time for self-care,” Carson said. So if you’re struggling with something at work, in your personal life or even whether to go to the ballgame or to your 11-year-old nephew’s violin recital, Carson said your best bet is get it away from it all – while still taking it all with you. “This is going to put you in a disinhibited state that allows creative ideas to feed forward,” she said. “Although it may not make an Einstein out of everyone, practice and exercise can definitely make any brain more creative.” “A distraction may provide the break you need to disengage from a fixation on the ineffective solution,” Carson said. “This is why a new idea can suddenly pop up out of the blue.”
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