It is an interesting phenomenon. We often have moments of insight or creativity while showering. What is it about bathing that causes us to suddenly see solutions to previously perplexing problems or come up with a brilliant blog series idea? Other times our thoughts are not especially brilliant but involve the more mundane (but important) chores of life such as "I have to remember to buy eggs!"
I'm not exactly sure why we get good ideas in the shower, but I do want to take advantage of that inspiration. I've had my share of running down the hall in a towel just to find a pad of paper and a pen, fearful that I would lose the perfect idea I just visualized in almost crystal clear fullness.
Here are ways to record your ideas while in the shower. No towel needed. Just pause in between the lather and rinse to jot down your thoughts as the water keeps running.
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Comments
So awesome! I just pinned this to remember. :-) Makes a lot more sense than keeping my phone just outside the shower & hurrying up so I can write it down with still-wet hands...
I love this. Though I wish I were more alone and undisturbed. Seems like someone or somecat always comes in!
Wonderful! I never thought of writing on the wall. I'm a grownup now. I can do that!
Good ideas are always coming when we are not distracted with outside noise and showering time is one of rarest opportunities where we can actually listen to our own thoughts. I didn't know there are waterproof notebooks on the market...
Thanks!
You ever watch that show Eureka? The first few seasons the sherriff lived in a house that was a converted silo but it had a living computer in it that would talk to him, even in the shower- I was thinking how cool would it be to have an interactive recorder that's voice activated installed so when your showering you can simply say "record" and bounce your ideas into the omnidirectional microphone- then you could use speach to text software built into many programs these days to convert it to text then just edit it into your article, list of ideas, etc... :)
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Great article! I love the kids soap crayons idea!
I have actually put quite a lot of thought into this years ago when I was studying the brain and wanted to figure out this phenomenon so I could somehow duplicate it at my desk :)
What I came up with:
(You said):
"It is an interesting phenomenon. We often have moments of insight or creativity while showering. What is it about bathing that causes us to suddenly see solutions to previously perplexing problems or come up with a brilliant blog series idea?"
My Take (similar to yours)
I too have wondered this and came to the conclusion that it's the isolation from stimuli or rather the focusing of stimulus (vs. all the complexity that is outside that shower). It's also the fact that the water soothes you and makes you feel meditative, safe, isolated from any distractions.
Your movements are also constricted to a limited set and thus this limits the things you have to think ahead about (i.e. not tripping over the bump in the carpet or over a toy etc...).
In this state your mind is actually freed up and processing power is tripled! The same phenomenon happens at bed time- that period where your almost asleep but your brain is racing. Both scenarios take you into a "theta" brain state where creativity runs rampid (we dream in theta state).
One reason dreams are so vivid sometimes is that we truly have relaxed our body and reached a stage of sleep just beyond the Delta (deep dreamless sleep- or recuperative sleep) state and entering theta (closer to the waking state) super relaxed is what gives us those powerful and highly creative dreams!
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The bottom line is the shower and going to bed, the darkness, the stillness, the meditative state of the body, all lead to the brain being able to relax it's thought stream away from, for lack of a better term, responsibility thinking, and into child like exhuberance thinking where there are no rules, no limitations, no stresses (if your stressing a lot you won't have a creative shower or theta experience before bed)- this is where creativity prospers and thrives. With all that garbage on the back burner now those thoughts that have been standing in line for days or months tend to "when the cats away the mouse is at play" so to speak!
When you leave the confines of the shower and re-enter the world of clutter (not mess so much as everything in the room that has associations of thought attached to it that muddy up the thinking) your mind clicks back into responsibility mode and all the things in the room tend to make you think about a gazillion things at once (by association and memory triggering) and all those great ideas you had in the shower start to get crowded out by other thoughts and "the inspiration is gone". cool huh?
That can be a wizzle all it's own :) (feel free to take all my words here if you want to create it- I got 30 in the oven no time to make new ones haha). Thanks for the stimulation!
Jerrico
I need to try this--but I'm not sure how my brothers would react. :p
Some of my best ideas come to me in the shower. I love the idea of hanging a waterproof notebook!!!
Perfect for people like me who are constantly writing thoughts, notes and reminders (my mind is always running but my memory is terrible)! Now can you please help me solve the flashes of inspiration while cycling problem? :)