At the same time, research has shown that feeling even slightly happy, as opposed to anxious, is conducive to eureka moments and insightful problem solving. Being anxious creates a lot of “noise” in the brain, drowning out the space for insight. The prospect of making an important decision can induce a great deal of anxiety, which, unfortunately, is a number-one enemy of creative insight. This way your mind will be truly free to wonder, and your brain won’t miss the next light bulb moment when it happens. Try to turn your devices off for several hours a day – or several days a week if you can. Rather, allow some downtime on a regular basis - even small doses can have a big impact. Conversely, the participants who completed the demanding task failed to show improvement.Īha! tip: To stimulate optimal daydreaming conditions, don’t over-schedule your days. The people in the latter group performed approximately 40% percent better the second time they completed the creative object-use task. Others were given a simple, undemanding task aimed at eliciting mind wandering. The participants then took a 12-minute break, during which some of them were given a demanding memory task. In one standard test of creativity, researchers gave people two minutes to come up with as many uses as possible for ordinary objects such as bricks or shoes. The genius inventor may have been onto something: Scientists have since found mind wandering to be crucial for triggering insights. “He would then write down his thoughts during that period, in the belief that they were often creative,” they note. As Jung-Beeman and colleagues point out in the Neuroleadership Journal, Thomas Edison would routinely let his mind wander hoping to capture fleeting bits of innovative thought. Internal focus often goes hand in hand with mind wandering-another crucial ingredient of the insight-generating recipe. That can help people notice the internal “aha!” moment. These alpha waves indicate that external information is reduced. Mark Jung-Beeman has identified that right before a person has an “aha!” moment, there are brain-waves in the alpha range in the brain’s visual cortex. In other words-zone out rather than glance at your buzzing phone. Once you have found a quiet spot, try to focus on your inner thoughts and ignore what’s going on around you. (Walking might in fact spur your next insight, according to scientists.) Look inward Go to an empty conference room or, even better, leave the office and take a walk outside. People in the study made smarter decisions after just 15 minutes of undisturbed time spent meditating because it made them more resistant to their own biases.Īha! tip: No matter how busy you are, do your best to take breaks between meetings and find some alone time. And the ultra-quiet state of meditation has been linked to better decision making, suggest findings published in Psychological Science. Researchers have recently begun to pay more attention to the benefits of quiet for insight. Insights themselves can be thought of as quiet - below the din of everyday thought. You and Your Team Series Decision Makingīut silence and solitude are crucial for nurturing precious eureka moments. As a result, you end up spending a lot of time surrounded by people, without a chance to enjoy some peace and quiet. Whether you are a business owner, an executive or an employee, your calendar is likely packed with meetings. Each of these steps helps you to notice new activations in your brain, which are the source of these creative moments. For years, we’ve been noticing that the research supports four specific steps to take to help you have more insights. The good news is that these flashes of insight are not as random as they seem, and can be fostered by specific conditions. These aha moments are often the only way to solve truly complex problems that are too big for our conscious mind to process. This is because ‘aha!’ moments that spark brilliant, unexpected solutions tend to crop up when our minds are quiet and our consciousness is at rest. People commonly report that they make the best decisions not while actively trying to make a choice but, say, taking a shower, knitting or working out. But both anecdotal evidence and published research suggest that taking a moment of inaction may be just as, if not more, important. Your problem-solving instincts may tell you that she’d better start brainstorming and making a detailed spreadsheet with a step-by-step plan. What should she do? And how exactly should she go about deciding what’s best for her business? Even a seemingly bulletproof marketing plan that worked in the past is now yielding crickets. The owner of a graphic design firm worries that her clients have dried up despite her best efforts.
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