Mind wandering

Did you know that Lin Manuel Miranda came up with the idea for Hamilton whilst sitting in an inflatable, floating around a pool drinking a margarita?

Mind wandering can be a powerful weapon to have in your creative arsenal and Andy Neal and Dion Star in their book ‘Creativity begins with you’ have come up with a great way to harness it.

They recommend alternating between easy brain tasks, demanding brain tasks and pure idea generation.

Furthermore a key aspect is to have a creative brief/question/problem in mind before you start.

For example if I wanted to try and figure out the topic for my next video I would take a pen and paper lay them beside the sink and spend ten minutes washing the dishes.

This is a light brain task as it’s mostly repetition and all during the ten minutes I’ll write down any ideas I think of on the paper.

Then I go do a more mentally challenging task like a sodoku puzzle and bring my pen and paper with me noting ideas as I go.

Then I spend ten minutes doing pure idea generation.

Then 10 minutes meditating.

Then ten minutes doing a jigsaw puzzle.

Then ten minutes idea generation.

It’s a pretty cool way I think to hand over the work to your subconscious and give it some space to work it’s magic.

But also there’s no one size fits all.

If daydreaming on the bus is your favourite way of mind wandering then go for that.

If long showers are how you harness the power of your subconscious then by all means continue doing that.

Just thought I would share in case it helps!