Lucas Cantor
Holly CumminsTIL there's a technical name for why ideas happen in the shower: the "default mode network" is a pattern of brain activity, measurable using fMRI, that happens when we're unfocussed. When the brain goes into idle mode (reduced activity), this part of the brain actually becomes *more* active. What does the default mode network do? Research is ongoing, but part of it definitely seems to be making connections, which is associated with curiosity and creativity.
I had an idea once that - in opposition to what Shopify are doing, by reducing meetings - organisations should have *more* meetings. The more terrible, tedious, and dull, the better.
Why? In bad meetings, our mind wanders, and we become creative. Meetings - if they're bad enough - are a bit like the shower of the modern workplace.
(Well, except that showers make you happy and clean, and bad meetings make you irritated and grubby. And stupid, because of carbon dioxide levels.)
Rob de Voer@holly_cummins Bad meetings even prevent creative moments. We don't need to be abused to get creative.
A meeting with like minded people that is aimed at brainstorming or even freewheeling, oh yeah.
@robdevoer I agree an ordinarily-bad meeting prevents creativity. A *truly* terrible meeting, the kind where no one in the room is paying attention to an endless series of status reports and everyone's mind is wandering, frees up participants to think about other things. :)
Pamela Ehn@holly_cummins @robdevoer nope. Meetings kill creativity, no matter how boring. I need to be AWAY from people to be creative. In fact, the demand on us to be constantly working is why we keep hitting our heads against the brick wall as a society instead of actually solving our problems.
sabik@holly_cummins
Maybe we need zen meetings, one person in a rock garden
Maybe we need zen meetings, one person in a rock garden
Scott Danzig@holly_cummins if people are not engaged in a meeting, then someone did a bad job organizing the meeting. But if that’s acceptable, then yeah, this is a creative way to salvage the situation. Did you come up with the idea in a meeting, or was it the shower this time?
Uberto Barbini@holly_cummins or maybe forcing people to have showers during office hours. ;)
John Doyle@holly_cummins Is this a subtoot? 😁
Flatbush Gardener 🌈@holly_cummins
I think my meeting doodlings served the same purpose.
I think my meeting doodlings served the same purpose.
Daniel Gibson@holly_cummins
(yes, that's pretty much the problem - after a long meeting I usually don't feel like working at all, I at least need a big break; it can ruin the whole remaining day in terms of productivity)
(yes, that's pretty much the problem - after a long meeting I usually don't feel like working at all, I at least need a big break; it can ruin the whole remaining day in terms of productivity)
JohnW@holly_cummins If you let people have 1/2 hour extra after waking to just muse, I'd bet many more ideas would be realized.
The muse state is even better than the shower for creativity and problem solving.
Catherine is not complacent@the_Effekt @holly_cummins that becomes problematic if you have children, especially when they’re babies. Thus parental brain fog.
Lars Fischer@holly_cummins Connects well with the idea that art requires suffering.
Major Clanger@holly_cummins There always used to be a tradition in the RAF of end-of-week drinks in the Officers' Mess Bar ("Happy Hour"). It was widely agreed that an awful lot of admin and organisational problems got sorted out over a pint or two (and it was a lot more pleasant than a formal meeting.)
ekes@holly_cummins
Just because our mind gets creative due to boredom doesn't mean nothing else plays a role.
For instance, in meetings your thoughts get interrupted, you aren't comfortable enough to completely relax so you only think of banalities, same thing if you're actually getting tired, and you can't document, memorize, or pursue any good idea or intuition.
At the same time, the type of circumstances where you may relax, e.g., taking a shower or a jog, may vary for someone else.
Terry Carter@holly_cummins Bad meetings used to make me wonder about the meaning of life, in which I always came up empty-handed.
Daniel has moved@holly_cummins Please tell me that idea came to you in a tedious, dull meeting!
swish@holly_cummins replace the bad meetings with scheduled time to zone out and do nothing at all and you’ve got a stew goin’
Marc-Antoine Ruel@holly_cummins Thanks for the link! https://www.nationalgeographic.co.uk/history-and-civilisation/2022/08/the-science-of-why-you-have-great-ideas-in-the-shower was a good read.
re: "[To activate DMN], allow yourself to spend time doing activities that aren’t cognitively demanding—such as going for a walk, taking a warm bath, or gardening—without listening to music or a podcast."
I feel the real DMN killer is social networks!
As someone who has over 20h of meetings per week and being fairly strict on weeding out low value meetings, my favorite mid-day activity is doing the laundry.
Julian Elve@holly_cummins there will be a mega-corp along to steal THAT idea in about 5 minutes! 🙂
Grant Gainey@holly_cummins Been saying for years that bad meetings should be called "vegetable"ings, because that's what I feel like coming out of them. I like your idea for making such travesties useful - but I think I'd prefer teaching ppl how to have actually productive, *useful*, mtgs instead :)
Jennifer Slack@holly_cummins
I see a lot of people in meetings getting a lot of non-meeting-related work done. However, there are those that get so dispirited by terrible meetings, their enthusiasm for life and creativity gets occluded by a crust of crud. I count myself among the latter group. Terrible meetings demand far too much recovery time, many showers as it were dedicated to washing the grime off before creativity can again emerge.
I see a lot of people in meetings getting a lot of non-meeting-related work done. However, there are those that get so dispirited by terrible meetings, their enthusiasm for life and creativity gets occluded by a crust of crud. I count myself among the latter group. Terrible meetings demand far too much recovery time, many showers as it were dedicated to washing the grime off before creativity can again emerge.
Ben Evans@holly_cummins This is what happens when I'm cooking. Added bonus: The outputs are tasty food.
@kittylyst @holly_cummins when I was in my first coding job and was stuck on a problem time at the foosball table always resolved it.
Ah foosball, good times.
JamesLaPlaine@holly_cummins @JamesLaPlaine This confirms my observations on where and when we are creative. https://www.paradoxpairs.com/where-we-do-our-best-work/
Where We Do Our Best Work
A while back I asked several dozen employees a simple question: > Where do you do your most creative work? They each took a moment and then captured their answer on a sticky note. Looking through the results revealed a common theme: > We do our most creative thinking when we are
aarontempler@holly_cummins Dr. Matthew Lieberman in his book "Social" talks about the brain activating the social network during down time probably because social connectivity is such an essential function to our survival that we need it to be well developed. Wonder if that's at play here at all...?
Rob Christopher@holly_cummins I have gotten so many amazing creative ideas in the shower ... Thus checks out.
Justin Ferrell@holly_cummins I experienced this when I was a CS student and it felt like someone turning on a spotlight into my eyes. Struggled for months with OOP concepts, especially in mobile dev, and it literally just clicked like a light switch one day in the shower.
Stacey Campbell@holly_cummins Almost everything I've ever done for an employer that could be considered vaguely clever and useful was designed on either a morning walk or in the shower.
Desk/office time is for implementation and debug.
Frank Bennett 🇯🇵@holly_cummins Ah, so *that's* why I'm so often overwhelmed with grief when I take a shower. Good to know.
andreas@holly_cummins sounds like something that could happen on longer walks as well.
Dark Fantasy Media@holly_cummins Anytime I am stuck on a work issue or story idea, I'll fire up Portal or Sudoku and just veg on puzzles for a bit.
The solution usualy pops into my head while I do this as though it was running in background.
Have i been Default Node hacking this whole time?
The solution usualy pops into my head while I do this as though it was running in background.
Have i been Default Node hacking this whole time?
Keegan Neave@holly_cummins
There was a BBC Horizon special that talked about how the visual cortex can derail other activity. The idea was that if there was a pattern it could recognise (like a face) in your field of view it would track it. This somehow reduces the brains concious abilities, the example they gave were solving maths puzzles.
It made me wonder if the inverse was true, it'd explain why so many folks minds start racing when trying to sleep with the lights out
varx/social@neaveeng @holly_cummins At some point I discovered that if I closed my eyes during meetings, I could pay attention way better. (I had to reassure my coworkers that no, I was not just napping. :-P)
@varx @holly_cummins I can 100% relate to this, I have ADHD and possible ASD so anything that reduces sensory noise really helps with concentration
ChefRaven@holly_cummins Thats why I keep AquaNotes in the shower. To jot down those great ideas!
Tom Helmut Rathke 📷☕🇩🇪🇺🇸🇺🇦@holly_cummins Ever since I remodeled my shower I’ve been getting even better ideas.
Mark Stout@marthawells Famous British code breaker Dilly Knox liked to use the bathtub at work for this reason. #SIGINT #Codebreaking
ryderdavid 🔭🚲🪐🌌@holly_cummins @JPhoto shower, aka humid code debug chamber
Dr. Juande Santander-Vela
Karen Elaine 💫@holly_cummins
Interesting, I thought it had something to do with the negative ions the turbulent water produced.
Interesting, I thought it had something to do with the negative ions the turbulent water produced.
Bashar3A@holly_cummins interesting. And explains why relaxing and taking breaks is necessary
@faktoider@holly_cummins The best place I know for getting such great idle mode ideas was a laundry room. Waiting for the washing machine triggered my brain like nobody's business.
Doohickie 
@holly_cummins That's why I like mowing the lawn instead of hiring a service... it puts my brain into default mode.
Wendy Nather
Dan Johnson@holly_cummins @glassbottommeg Super interesting... it makes me wonder what that kind of activity looks like in an ADHD brain. "Unfocused" is a common descriptor for ADHD... are ADHD brains more creative on average as a result?
Yingtai@djdesign I've always thought ADD people are more creative! I'd be amazed if that weren't true. @holly_cummins @glassbottommeg
@yingtai @holly_cummins @glassbottommeg I've often heard it, but framed in the idea that a "wandering mind", in its wandering, happens upon more unlikely ideas (ask someone with ADHD to unpack a string of mental tangents/connections sometime, it's hilarious).
The idea that the wandering-mind state *itself* encourages creative thought - that's new and intriguing. (:
WowSuchCyber@holly_cummins @fj pretty sure the same mechanism happen when you go out for a smoke, which is very unfortunate.
CTaymor has moved@holly_cummins hmm. Maybe also why those connections happen less when I’m filling up every moment of idle connections with my phone. Which I try not to do, and yet… I do
Eric@holly_cummins Cycling is a perfect activity to get creative ideas 😃
https://scientias.nl/dringend-behoefte-aan-inspiratie-spring-op-de-fiets/
https://scientias.nl/dringend-behoefte-aan-inspiratie-spring-op-de-fiets/
LadyT@holly_cummins wonder if that's why ideas pop into certain peoples heads and keep them awake just as they are dropping off
d.rift 
I wonder if part of what social media / endless web feeds / youtube vids / late night tv do, is keep the brain out of this state.
I wonder if part of what makes journal keeping and writing practices valuable is ritualistically entering this state on a consistent basis.
Aphrodite (recharging)I genuinely wish I could have some kind of testing for my DMN done due to significant neurodiversity and some rather dramatic changes in my mental health recently.
Granted, assuming I understand the concept correctly which obviously is a challenge as i’m not a neurologist or a medical specialist, just a hacker, i would wager mine at the moment is operating on some extreme past three sigmas. (Long story.)
Ergative Absolutive@holly_cummins For me it's when I'm brushing my teeth.
@ergative I always say offices should have showers for employees to use for problem-solving.
Having tooth-brushing areas might be a less expensive way of doing the same thing - with a secondary benefit of having lots of employees with healthy teeth and nice breath!
Having tooth-brushing areas might be a less expensive way of doing the same thing - with a secondary benefit of having lots of employees with healthy teeth and nice breath!
Den Spier 
@holly_cummins inventor Håkan Lans (AIS, digitization board, color graphics) claimed that “uninteresting long meetings is when the best ideas come to you”. In striving for efficiency, we forget how effective - and necessary- boredom can be.