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Researchers Discover The Most Creative Time of Day
Creativity is least likely to strike in the afternoon, according to a survey that suggests office workers have little chance of solving problems after lunch. A poll of 1,426 people showed that a quarter of us stay up late when seeking inspiration. Taking a shower or just sitting in the bathroom proved to be a popular way of getting the creative juices flowing. The survey found that 10:04pm was the most creative time, while 4:33pm was the least. I'll think of something funny to write here later.
FUCK IT. I'm going home!!!!
(And I'm only working between 10pm and 1am from now on!)
Because I'll be more productive, I can get away with only working for 3 hours.
My new World of Warcraft schedule will be as follows:
8am-1pm (World PvP & farming)
2pm-9:59pm (BG premades & Arenas)
With WotLK I won't need to worry about stupid 25man raid times ...which are such a waste of time anyway -- for all my efforts in T6 content I get to replace it all in 3 weeks! x.x
Wait a minute... it's 4:30pm and I just thought of this brave new strategy. OH SH-
The dangers of knowledge trigger emotional distress in human beings.
Honestly, the most creative times I've experienced have been driving, both with and without passengers, on trips in the two to five hour range. I live in NE Montana, and there are plenty of such trips that offer few distractions (other traffic, road signs or lights, other roads.)
Sometimes I talk to my passengers; sometimes to myself. I go over the subject matter this way and that, and I try to use metaphors to gently prod myself into seeing other angles (by pushing the metaphors until they either break, register completely, or actually show me something.)
My sweetheart, who is both brilliant and kind enough to let me talk technically at her for considerable lengths of time, assists by letting me go through this process:
I'll pick something that either simply seems to need work or is an actual problem, and I'll explain to her exactly how I see the issue at the moment, complete with explanations of why I don't do this, or why I did that. Sometimes - not always by any means, but a reasonable number of times - I run down into a splutter, asking myself... "Why? Why did I do that? Uh... " or "man, that sure could have been done better..."
Which is followed by pulling over and making a note for later. :-)
The thing is, she's not technical (in my field) so I have to explain everything, pretty much. Metaphors help a lot too. But because she's actually paying attention, there's no getting away with hand-waving. I find that many times, inspiration lurks in areas I've discarded as no longer worthy of much (if any) attention. This process forces the issue.
Time of day doesn't seem to matter in my case. Coffee, however, is definitely involved.
We do this for management of our businesses as well; we have a couple retail operations, a software store, a lingerie store (stockings, mostly), a martial arts studio and a portrait photo business, plus I do some consulting here and there. We do a lot of juggling, and it helps to rattle ideas around in an unstructured environment. With the cell phones off!!!
å
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
Well in absolute terms it might be "10:04 pm", but really it's just whatever time of day that all your usual distractions are gone and you've forgotten for a moment what a boring life you lead, but you're not tired enough to sleep yet. Inspiration can only strike when you're energized and your mind is clear and receptive. Far too few people appreciate what a toll the 9-5 shcedule takes on one's creativity. If you ever get a couple months off work/school for any reason, try sleeping only when you're tired and eating only when you're hungry. I did this for six months straight one time, and although ultimately I was exhausted, it was the most creative and rewarding period in my life. It felt absolutely bizarre to be rotating around the clock on a schedule of 20 hours awake followed by 8 hours of sleep, but man did I get a lot of stuff done! Now I'm on powerful sedatives so I can hold down a "normal" existence, stay out of jail/hopsital etc... but what fun I had back in the day. :)
well for some of us at least (those of us reading it).
I'm usually drunk by then.
I'm going to forward this article to my boss and go home early, awesome thanks!! Who says I can't be creative in the afternoon?
Der Tod ist der einzige Weg hier raus!
I'll think of something funny to write here later.
I doubt it.
Having "sitting in the bathroom" and a reference to one's "creative juices" in the same sentence kind of grosses me out for some reason.
I judt got a nre Kinesis keybiartf so please excusr ant egregiou typos.
Sounds about right, right after 4:20 people usually tend to get lazy and just not do work in general.
GL HF!
"...sitting in the bathroom proved to be a popular way of getting the creative juices flowing."
Just think about it.
Some cultures have figured out the low point and adjusted their whole day around it. My biological clock agrees. I find my energy levels and creativity at their lowest sometime between 2-4pm. It is almost a depression. Best to nap through it.
I peak emotionally and creatively at dusk. Something about the night coming on just starts it. I stay this way until I go to sleep. Best time for coding, thinking something out, or just plain enjoying music, movies or reading. You do must make it a point of stopping at a reasonable time, as your whole next day is wrecked without a solid nights sleep.
Its 4:30 and I'm suppose to be writing on nuclear power. Yet I find myself here. Its going to be a long night
YOUR DESK, Your office (Work) -- The chances of you finishing writing this article without getting interrupted or distracted are slim.
U.S. office workers get interrupted on the job as often as eleven times per hour, costing as much as $588 billion in paid time lost to open content production each year. The digital communications that were supposed to make working lives run smoothly -- cc'ed email jokes, Internet porn and chatting up that hottie in the next office by IM -- are actually preventing people from getting critical tasks like writing Uncyclopedia or Wikipedia accomplished.
The typical office worker is interrupted every three minutes by a phone call, e-mail, instant message or other distraction. These take up 2.1 hours of the average day -- 28 percent -- with workers taking an average of five minutes to recover from each interruption and return to their original gag-writing or witty picture editing, or querulous talk page arguments and arbitration cases about the correct format for subheadings on articles about disused former US highways. The problem is that it takes about eight uninterrupted minutes for our brains to get into a really creative state.
From online shopping at work to planning the office holiday party, workers are bombarded with distractions. "It's certainly a recipe for even less writing getting done," said a typically bone-idle and parasitical Uncyclopedia timewaster. "It's 'There's my BlackBerry. What time is it in Kittenhoeffer right now? How many phone calls did I get? Can I win the sales office spider solitaire competition?' It's a lot of productive timewasting turned to useless 'productivity.' People like the convenience and possibilities that this technology affords them when they want to use it, but that doesn't increase the average quality of Wikipedia or pump up the funneh on Uncyc!"
Still another study found a group of workers interrupted by e-mail and telephones scored lower on an IQ test than a test group that had smoked marijuana. Unfortunately, EPA regulations still forbid bong hits at one's desk, even when trying to fix one's makefile.
There is a mini rebellion under way, however. Desperate for some quiet time to think, people are coming up with low-tech strategies to get away from all their technology. "If you don't have that sort of free time to dream and muse and mull, then you are not being creative, by definition. I find hiding in the server room with my laptop is a good place to work on witty tales of Britney Spears flashing her lunch at paparazzi."
The problem appears to be getting worse. A study by Wikia earlier this year found that 62 percent of British Uncyclopedians are addicted to their e-mail -- checking messages during meetings, after working hours and on vacation, hoping to get their funny take onto UnNews first.
"If I wanted to work," said the user, "hell. I'd get a job."
(original link)
http://rocknerd.co.uk
Taking a shower, washing my hair, working out hard enough that the sweat is dripping off, IME facilitates creative thought flow.
My vacation was supposed to start on a Monday, but something broke on Friday and it manifested itself in my code (although ultimately the error was detected in a recently submitted change from another programmer). Late in the evening, I ran out of ideas. Fortunately, the exercise room downstairs was open 24/7. Forty minutes on a treadmill, and I lost significant water weight through my pores and gained several useful ideas for different approaches to debugging.
Early to bed and early to rise makes Jack miss out on his peak creativity period.
A slashdotter who didn't build his own computer is like a Jedi who didn't build his own lightsaber.
Quite likely it's due to the chance to decompress a bit that creativity occurs outside of normal hours. It's really hard to focus and think up anything actually creative when the PHBs are bugging the hell out of you, or the phone is ringing with someone panicing about what is usually a non-issue.
It's why great authors often are almost recluses while working on a book.
Stress, meetings, coworkers, etc. do more to kill creativity than anything else.
Creativity requires being relaxed and focused on the actual problem to be solved. Normal office life is the exact opposite of that environment.
Isn't 10:04 about when the effects of that third shot of scotch is starting to kick in.
Why doesn't Slashdot ever get slashdotted?
I once decided to change from high carb lunches (sandwiches) to low carb (salads - rather hefty ones though). Seems to make me a lot more active in the afternoon.
Damn, that explains why I never get any good ideas/dates!
The enemies of Democracy are
no
nice timing on the boring post -- 4:33pm
it would be interesting to see what a shifted sleep schedule does to this. Personally I have a very flexible work schedule and generally wake up between 11 AM and noon and go to sleep between 3AM and 4AM.
I actually feel the most creative around the 3-4PM area (which would be equivalent to most people's 10AM whereas around 7 or 8PM I start dragging serious amounts of creative ass unless I'm highly caffeinated.
I'm not saying that me alone shows this is relational to the time you normally wake up, but it would be interesting to find that out also.
Well, back to rejecting software patent applications.
I go to bed somewhere between 9:30 and 10:00 pm. After about 9 PM I'm generally too tired to do anything but watch TV, and even that usually puts me to sleep.
But I get up around 5 AM and my most productive time seems to be between about 6 AM and about 10 AM. I feel the most alert and productive then, possibly because I'm enjoying the benefits of sleep + coffee (without being overcaffeinated or relying on it for energy) and I'm not "bogged down" psychologically by all of the bullshit and stress accumulated during the course of the day.
Now that I'm fully entering old farthood (41), I'm guessing the study conclusions must be biased towards the under-30 set, since most people I know in my age/lifestyle category (over 40 with kids) are largely in my same situation with regard to being dead by about 10 PM, although most don't seem to be up at 5.
Epiphany Toilet
Install a royal throne on the roof of your employer's building. There's nothing like a crap at 40 ft. Just don't let your building janitor catch you using it.
Posted @04:33PM. Indeed.
"If anything can go wrong, it will." - Murphy
This might be an averaged result but as such it might have little value. I would expect that the creative times of day vary widely between individuals. For me, e.g., it is quite the other way round. I can only do routine tasks before noon and I rarely come up with realy creative ideas before about 4pm. I wish I could be creative earlier in the day because as a theoretical physicist I should be creative for as long as possible but my personal experience strongly favours the afternoon.
"...sitting in the bathroom proved to be a popular way of getting the creative juices flowing."
You can't make shit like that up. It's priceless.
-- You can't idiot-proof anything, because they're always coming out with better idiots.
Take that you early risers! I always knew there was something wrong with you people.......
To: All Staff
Subject: Revised working hours
Effective immediately, working hours are revised to:
Mon-Fri 8:00 a.m. to 4:27 plus 10:03 to 10:05 p.m. at which times all employees are expected to be in the office at their workstations.
I thought the most creative time of day was just after 4:20?
When I was in my late 30's, I could code from 7 am to 2 am with an hour break for lunch and a 3 hour break for wife and kids at night. The rest of the time I was able to crank code. Ideas came at all hours.
It's been 20 years since those halcyon years and my level of creativity and productivity haven't ever since come close. The one thing I've learned in an attempt to recapture those years is that fasting during the day helps. I don't eat breakfast or lunch and am able to work from 9 to 5 without difficulty. If I eat either breakfast or lunch, forget it. Both meals will either put me to sleep an hour later or I'll just be sluggish the rest of the day.
I call BS. The absolutely most creative time is right before whatever your working on is due, making you decide between turning in a sub-par piece or turning in a late masterpiece. The grade is always exactly the same.
Think about it again.
http://xkcd.com/323/
No 4:20 jokes? Oh shit... I need to get the chips ready...
All creativity is is seeing things in a different way and re-organizing them from that inspiration to arrive at something novel. It's more likely to happen when you're not trying to force it and in a relaxed state. This explains the bathroom angle.
13 minutes after 4:20; I wonder why :)
Duuuuuude! Everyone knows that the most creative time of day is 4:20!
Tired of FB/Google censorship? Visit UNCENSORED!
It's worth noting that this is a poll, not any kind of objective research, the only way these researches have "discovered" the most productive time of day is if each participant already knew it.
Just remember, the Japanese Agricultural ministry is not in charge of Creativity; even at 10:04pm.
The super burrito lunch is a weapon of creativity destruction.
Fuck systemd. Fuck Redhat. Fuck Soylent, too. Wait, scratch the last one.
Holy crap - I had to refresh the page just to make sure the summary text wasn't hacked to show the current time!
Looks like they dropped the ball on this one. Usually my most creative moments come about 30 minutes after happy hour ends.
For some reason I refuse to use either spell check or the spacebar properly.
THAT'S AMAZING!! 10:04PM is precisely when lightning strikes the clock tower!!! Perhaps is has some sort of cosmic significance.
This may or may not work for other people, but I too find that my most creative moments are in the shower... because there's no new stimuli there. The rest of the time, I'm usually getting information from somewhere: listening to the radio in the car, watching TV while I wash the dishes, etc. Those 15-25 minutes I'm in the shower, nothing else is happening and my mind wanders. That's when ideas form and it's quiet enough in there for them to be heard.
My employees used to joke that the company would make more money if we had a shower installed in my office. I claimed I would end up looking like a prune, but was told that that might also be an improvement.
It actually mirrors my personal experience. I often wonder why I get such a rush of creativeness just as I'm about to turn in! Now will changing my scheduel around so I stay awake past 10 pm help me get some things done. Or will it just result in me sleeping late into the afternoon...
For me the least creative time of day is right after lunch. I don't know if it's my blood sugar, or they're putting sedatives in the cafeteria food; but I get really drowsy after lunch and can't focus on the job I'm doing. Sometimes I'll take a short nap at my desk, although they recently moved a couple of new people into my room, so I'm not sure how much longer I'll be able to get away with that. Time to start a meth habit I guess, ;-)
By "bathroom" you mean "toilet", right? Otherwise you'd say "sitting in the bathtub", wouldn't you?
I wish you'd say what you mean.
So, is 4:33 PM also the time of day that you corrupt your site's style sheets?
Yeah, mark it as troll, I don't care, its 4:58 PM.
Anyone else find "creative juices flowing" in the same sentence as "sitting in the bathroom" churn their stomach?
Thats right, when sitting on the designer throne, everybody creates something that wasn't there prior to sitting. Then, you wipe the Democrap.
Researchers?
It seems like a lot of the replies all seem to acknowledge that the flashes of inspiration come when we're not directly involved with whatever the task at hand happens to be. Often times I find it helpful to get up and go for a walk. There seems to be something about shifting from actually working directly on the issue, to stepping away from it while still being able to ponder it. The brain seems to shift out of actively doing mode and into pondering how else to do it mode.
Staying up past your bedtime is a mentally liberating thing.
There is probably some serotonin-related brain chemistry; maybe also you're a few hours farther away from the blood-sucking, chemically disruptive digestive process than at other times of the day; but mostly I think it's just that if you know you're "up late" you're working on free time, and not during the times of day that are otherwise owed to the things you haven't gotten done already.
You put aside your 16-hours-a-day budget and use the free time to reach beyond your to-do list.
Also, it's possible the situation is conditioned. Finding something creative to do at bedtime lets you stay up late, which is and always has been a reward, even if you really want to get some sleep because you have something scheduled for the morning.
You are more likely to get creative ideas in the morning when you are fresh than in the afternoon when you are tired and looking forward to go home, catch up with your family, friends etc. Who would have thought of that? Honestly I'm really disturbed by this increasing trend of similar "research" - pick up a group of people, send them a random questionnaire, compile the statistical average of their answers, and bingo, humanity makes a leap forward with a new "discovery". This is NOT what I consider Research.
That's about 13 minutes later that I expected.
What about those of us who by choice work a later shift? For instance I get in at 13:30 and work till 21:00
no matter how good it is, it is human nature always wants to make things better
It's always 10ish somewhere. It's 4:24p here but I'm sure it's 10:04 somewhere else.
Often wrong but never in doubt.
I am Jack9.
Everyone knows me.
10:04pm is exactly when lightning struck the Hill Valley clock tower on September 12, 1955.
Coincidence..?
I think so....
You can run but you can't hide, except, apparently, along the Afghan-Pakistani border.
Nah, you fell for the tactical cheapo.
He bikes in Euro Metric on the way over and Old English Standard on the way back. The online converter claims 0.5ish km vanished somewhere, so maybe Mrs. Gribblewhimple yelled at him to Get Off Her Lawn (TM) on his way home.
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
Of course 4:33 is the least amount of brain activity. 13 minutes after 4:20, duh...
For some reason, 4:20 seems to be the most creative time of day for me...
"I bow to no man" - Riddick
I agree that creativity pours out mostly when I'm alone and undistracted. But I find that if I schedule too much time alone then I become somewhat lethargic and uninspired.
A couple seminars per week, some social time, and a little busywork to get me into a productive state of mind actually helps stimulate creativity in the remaining downtime.
http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2008/07/28/080728fa_fact_lehrer
The idea that creativity is linked to a time of day smacks of numerology. This recent article from the New Yorker gives a much more sensible explanation to the phenomenon of insight.
Basically when the mind is relaxed it brings together information from across the entire brain. But when we concentrate singularly the mind is incapable of reaching that insightful state. The article seems to suggest the ideal circumstances for insight are to immerse oneself in the facts so they are in the mind, then relax and allow the brain to do its thing and coalesce everything.
I think 4:20pm would be the least useful time to get any work done.
Why don't public servants look out the window in the morning?
Cause they wouldn't have anything to do in the arvo.
Graham
I've seen studies -- better, more serious studies -- that proved, at least to my satisfaction, that different people have different "schedules". Some are more efficient in the morning, some in the afternoon, some in the evening; some are more creative in the... well, you get the picture.
I think the fact that people have different patterns should already have become scientific "common sense"; I'm surprised that anyone can still be doing idiotic "research" like this, lumping everyone on the same baseline.
So, the "researchers" at Crowne Plaza Hotels asked a bunch of people (presumably their customers) to self-report when they're most creative. Then they came up with an average number that's supposed to be everyone's most creative time. Sounds pretty scientific.
What timezone was the research done in? I also need to adjust it for daylight savings time.
Winkey shortcut mapping for 64bit windows. WinKeyPlus
My delayed sleep phase syndrome shifts my creative period by 12 hours, and at that time I'm forced to sleep by medication for not to loose my daytime job and thus I'm only creative while dreaming.
Hmm. Now all I have to do is fly around the world keeping 10:04 all the time.
Anybody have a spare airplane?
10 pm seems right to me... I often get the same stimulating idea at about that time and it isn't sleeping... well, not only sleeping.
Well no wonder it's the most creative time of day - it's time travel time. 10:04 P.M., the exact moment that the lightning struck the clock tower in Back to the Future!
10:04? 4:33? Sounds like somebody doesn't know which type of graph to use for which types of data.
"Could you average them?"
"Yes. I could also multiply them."
-- 'The' Lord and Master Bitman On High, Master Of All
This shit only applies to people with a normal brain (but, most people have at least one minor disorder). And it only applies to those who keep a working-day schedule. The other 95% of us here on Earth can ignore this crock of crap.
Anytime you want to do creative thinking, innovation and creative problem solving use Creator Studio (tm) creative thinking software for business, available at http://compxpressinc.com
Well, I, for one, have created my greatest artistic works while sitting in the bathroom.