""[My train of thought] let its line down into the stream. It swayed, minute after minute, hither and thither among the reflections and the weeds letting the water lift it and sink it until-you know the little tug-the sudden conglomeration of an idea at the end of one's line.""
"Woolf faced the challenge confronting all writers when preparing to write or speak: How do you extract from the swirl of your thoughts a worthy insight? What kind of catch can you reel in to reward your audience?"
"According to the latest controlled studies, hither-thithering is a good bet.[ii] A period of downtime, or incubation, nurtures creative ideas. Scientists don't exactly know why. They have scanned people's brains with EEGs and fMRIs to figure it out. Alas, though they can watch the neurons of incubating minds fire back-and-forth between the hippocampus, cortex, and other brain regions, the process of bringing an emerging insight to the surface remains unclear.[iii]"
Periods of quiet incubation—intentional breaks from focused effort—promote creative idea generation by allowing associative linking and restructuring of thoughts. Mind wandering and light sleep stages foster associative thinking, weaken fixation on irrelevant items, and enable recombination of mental representations. Neuroimaging reveals coordinated activity across hippocampus, cortex, and other regions during incubation, but the exact mechanism that precipitates conscious insight remains uncertain. Controlled studies indicate that downtime reliably nurtures creativity. Practical approaches include relaxed attention, letting ideas drift into unconscious processing, and brief drowsy states or naps that can trigger sudden consolidations of insight.
Read at Psychology Today
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