Wander into Wisdom: How Idleness Leads to Innovation

“I was in the shower this morning, and I had a great idea.”

At my old job, we’d hear this all the time around the office — especially from our Chief Marketing Officer.

At first, I thought, "Am I showering wrong?" And then, as fate would have it, I stumbled upon a few articles that shined a light on why the shower was this epiphanic oven of great ideas. 

Do you remember what it was like to be bored? I mean, before the time of smartphones, and smart screens and hyperconnectivity. Do you remember what it was like to just wait? In the doctor’s office (no magazines), at the bus stop for school, in line at the grocery store. With nothing in your hand and nothing on your mind…

Hang on to that feeling because apparently – it’s the key to innovation and creativity.

It turns out that boredom gives our brains the opportunity to “wander into wisdom” – to give our thoughts just enough runway and space for all of those random nuggets of information in our minds to meet each other. To make connections and conjure scenarios in a way our noggins never would have had it not been for boredom.

Now granted, I know I’m speaking of ideas and thoughts as if they’re two random strangers who bump into each other on the street and sparks start flying. But according to Mary Helen Immordino-Yang, a neuroscientist at the University of Southern California, that’s pretty much exactly what happens.

In her 2012 study, “Rest Is Not Idleness: Implications of the Brain’s Default Mode for Human Development and Education” – she shares that when the brain has some downtime and the opportunity “to roam freely,” it starts up the “default mode” – a form of neural processing that she describes as a “dynamic stream of free-form thought.” This stream ebbs and flows from hypothetical scenarios to the spontaneous recollection of memories and other thoughts and imaginings.

This downtime gives our brain the chance to wake up in wonderland and invigorate our minds with new ways of thinking.

Dr. Sandi Mann, a psychologist, author and boredom researcher, agrees. She says that once you “allow your mind to really wander, you start thinking a little bit beyond the conscious [and’ a little bit into the subconscious, which allows different connections to take place.”

Now instead of enjoying idle moments, I prefer to watch TED talks. And in her 2017 talk, "How boredom can lead to your most brilliant ideas," Manoush Zomorodi, who also wrote a book on this topic, shares findings from her conversation with professor of informatics Dr. Gloria Mark. According to Dr. Mark, a decade ago – so this would have been the late 2000s -- we shifted our attention at work every three minutes. Now we do it every 45 seconds, and we do it all day long. The average person checks email 74 times a day, and switches tasks on their computer 566 times a day. 

That’s a lot of multi-tasking, which some of you may say you’re quite good at. But just because you can do something doesn’t necessarily mean you should. Switching tasks so frequently actually has an adverse effect, according to research summarized by the American Psychological Association. It causes our brain to deplete the nutrients it needs to perform optimally and creatively.

If you’re looking for inspiration, you won’t find it toggling between the 15 tabs on your computer.

Instead, you’ll find it when you let your mind embrace the mundane.

In several studies, researchers asked a group of folks to perform a boring task – from sorting beans to copying numbers out of a phone book. Afterward, these groups — along with a control group — were tasked with generating ideas. In these studies, the groups that led with the boring task generated more ideas than those who didn’t complete the boring task beforehand. As Dr. Mann says, boredom is “a search for neural stimulation that isn’t satisfied. If we can’t find that, our mind will create it.”

So the next time you’re struggling to come with a big idea, go back to basics.

Dr. Mann recommends doing something that requires little to no concentration – a going through the motions of sorts, whether that’s walking a familiar route or doing the dishes – and just letting your mind wander with no stimulation.

As it turns out, I was showering wrong.

And I look forward to embracing boredom and letting my brain go down a rabbit hole the next time I’m in the doctor’s office or waiting in line at the grocery store.

Wonderland and all its wisdom is just an idle moment away.