Chewing the Pencil or More Washing Up?

Sometimes it feels hard to be creative and other times it comes quite easily. The barometer for this may be the number of teeth marks in the pencil end as you sit there chomping away with not very much else happening. I recently saw a program by the BBC where it was surmised that mundane tasks or doing something that requires minimal thinking like taking a shower,  or washing up allows the brain to be more creative.  Whilst solving a creative problem or trying to come up with new ideas or solutions a mundane task allows the brain to meander around the thousands of kilometres of connections.  Under pressure to be on task  to do a job in hand, whilst sitting chewing the pencil in an attempt to be creative, forces the brain to concentrate and fast forward on the most direct route to the supposed answer, without paying attention to any other possible junctions along the way.  In this instance if no solution comes to mind  this presumably is the equivalent of writers block.  In its simplest form less brain  efficiency  means more creativity.

Barely Legible……but A Good Reason to Watch TV

I subscribe to this theory as ideas come more readily to me when I am watching TV in the evenings and I will just scribble them down for another time.  Of course I do not mean whilst watching a film where it is critical to pay attention, and definitely not where subtitles are concerned!  Even if the ideas are hardly legible, they at least have been captured and logged ready to work on properly in the morning.  In the morning the need for that elusive idea forming creativity gives way to a more strategic approach and putting the idea to good use.  Here the brain can concentrate fully and hopefully without too much distraction (except for the odd blog write up of course!).

BBC Article – Five Ways To Be More Creative