Use Idle Brainpower to Nourish Ideas

June 9, 2008 Author Adam Singer In Inspiration

As a blogger, a marketer and an artist, my success is contingent upon having an uninterrupted stream of creative ideas. Without this flow of ideas, I wouldn’t be able to achieve the results I want in any of these areas.

No doubt, you’re already aware that being pressed to come up with big ideas on the spot is not necessarily the best way to operate. While we must be good at that too, I happen to think the best results come from ideas you have spent time to flush out by yourself and really think through before putting them into action.

Where to find the time?
Life doesn’t always give passionate people that extra bit of time to sit around and contemplate, we’re always taking on so many different things at once. There is, however, untapped time in each day during which you can train your mind to brainstorm whatever idea it is you need to come up with. Whether it is a new marketing campaign or a blog post, you’d be surprised when the best ideas will come to you, sometimes at seemingly random moments.

You can train your mind to create these types of moments daily.

When I say idle brainpower in the title, I don’t mean actually mean time you’re sitting around doing nothing. I mean time spent doing things where your brain is essentially on autopilot and your higher level thought processes aren’t tapped. These are some situations I find ideal for internal brainstorming:

  • Driving
  • Showering
  • Grocery shopping
  • Time at the gym
  • Jogging
  • Cooking
  • Having lunch
  • Cleaning your house
  • Laundry

You get the idea, essentially these are all tasks you are more than capable of doing without using much (if any) of your higher thinking power. While your physical self is occupied and doing things that need to be done, your cerebral self is free to nourish ideas to implement at a later time. In fact, the idea for this post came to me was while I was driving home from the office tonight.

Tap into extra mental RAM during tasks that you can do “on autopilot”
To enable this, you just need to have your tasks already on your mind, not just on a to-do list somewhere. You need to get in the habit of actually pondering ideas during the day not only during moments when you’re not doing anything, but during moments when you have additional mental RAM free.

Many times I find this way of brainstorming even more effective than when I’m purely focused on trying to come up with the idea. It’s because the combination of the simple task with the cerebral task helps you focus on just the cerebral task by quieting all the extra noise we have in our minds due to the complexities of modern life. Doing something simple is incredibly effective at providing focus and a stream of ideas. It’s also a great cure for writers block.

Here are a few more tips that I find really help make this successful:

  • Only work on one idea at a time
  • Be sure to clear your mind of all other thoughts prior to your internal brainstorming session. If you’re preoccupied with something else (besides the low-level task and the cerebral task) you’ll never be successful
  • Don’t get lost daydreaming, try to stay focused
  • Don’t force the idea, just ponder the problem and let your thoughts flow naturally around it
  • Practice using your idle brainpower daily until it becomes habit

Related posts:
10 Tips to Recharge Your Creativity

Momentum and the Flow Experience

5 Simple Ways to Keep Your Mind Sharp