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.

Comments

World of Warcraft Time!!!

[mfh]

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-

My Take

[fyngyrz]

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

Re:My Take

[HTH NE1]

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.

Indeed, talking to a human is much better than "talking to the [teddy] bear" as it is called here in that a human pays attention. And talking to a human that doesn't know the subject has its own benefits, as Douglas Adams pointed out:

"There really wasn't a lot this machine could do that you couldn't do yourself in half the time with a lot less trouble," said Richard, "but it was, on the other hand, very good at being a slow and dim-witted pupil."

Reg looked at him quizzically.

"I had no idea they were supposed to be in short supply," he said. "I could hit a dozen with a bread roll from where I'm sitting."

"I'm sure. But look at it this way. What really is the point of trying to teach anything to anybody?"

This question seemed to provoke a murmur of sympathetic approval from up and down the table.

Richard continued, "What I mean is that if you really want to understand something, the best way is to try and explain it to someone else. That forces you to sort it out in your own mind. And the more slow and dim-witted your pupil, the more you have to break things down into more and more simple ideas. And that's really the essence of programming. By the time you've sorted out a complicated idea into little steps that even a stupid machine can deal with, you've certainly learned something about it yourself. The teacher usually learns more than the pupil. Isn't that true?"

"It would be hard to learn much less than my pupils," came a low growl from somewhere on the table, "without undergoing a pre-frontal lobotomy."

BTW, I wouldn't suggest you compare your sweetheart to a very slow, dim-witted pupil. Certainly not to her face.

4:20

[Daveznet]

Sounds about right, right after 4:20 people usually tend to get lazy and just not do work in general.

Remove stimuli

[jedrek]

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.