Why You Get Your Best Ideas at Night
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Storified by Wiggio · Thu, Dec 20 2012 13:17:50
Wondering how
Albert Einstein ,
Walt Disney ,
Henry Ford , and
Steve Jobs come up with innovative ideas that re-shape the world while so many of us sit around for hours trying to come up with a simple idea? Psychology to the rescue! Psychologists have researched this question to ultimately develop a theory that will help us boost our creativity and do our best.
Psychologists realized that famous musicians, artists, novelists, writers, inventors and many other creative people have done some of their best works at night. These characters, colloquially considered “
Night Owls ,” use an “insight” perspective (less analytic and more creative) when their minds are less focused and less alert. Night owls usually end up crafting ideas when most people think they should be sleeping.
Many experiments have shown that for challenging, attention-demanding tasks like studying, we work best when we are fully awake, during our peak time of the day. We are able to filter any distraction and focus on the task. However, as Mareike Wieth and Rose Zacks demonstrated,
distractions can be good when we are doing creative tasks. For out-of-the-box thinking we perform better when we are somewhat distracted — because we don’t limit our thoughts to an original interpretation and we consider different options. The time of the day when we are most distracted would be our off-peak time of the day, at night, just before
going to sleep .
Have a creative project but can’t figure out where to start? First, wait until midnight (it’s not procrastination, we swear!) or until you feel sleepy. Prepare yourself a warm cup of milk or tea. And finally, relax with some music and dim lighting. Chances are, you’ll have that idea in no time!
This week’s post is brought to you by Victoria Soto, student at
Emerson College
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