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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. :)
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!
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.
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
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?
If you show this article to your boss, he will force you to work until 10:04 pm, and beyond.
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.
"...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.
http://xkcd.com/323/
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.
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.
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
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.