Allowing the Mind To Wander Aids Creative Problem Solving

ananyo writes "From the Nature story: 'Scientists from Archimedes to Isaac Newton and Albert Einstein are said to have had flashes of inspiration while thinking about other things. But the mechanisms behind this psychological phenomenon have remained unclear. A study now suggests that simply taking a break does not bring on inspiration — rather, creativity is fostered by tasks that allow the mind to wander.' The researchers gave 145 students 2 minutes to list as many possible uses for an everyday object (the creative thinking task). Participants then either rested, undertook a demanding memory activity that required their full attention or engaged in an undemanding reaction-time activity known to elicit mind-wandering. A fourth group of students had no break. The researchers then set the students a second set of unusual-uses tasks and found those that had, in the interim, been set the undemanding task that encouraged mind-wandering performed an average of around 40% better than they did before. The students in the other three groups showed no improvement."

Comments

Camping

[Hatta]

This is why I like camping. Nothing like being stuck outside, hopefully far away from any sort of electrical devices, alone with nothing but your mind and dappled sunlight through the trees to keep you company. I'm never more productive than the week after I spent a weekend sleeping under the stars.

Stuck at home, my hobbies use a lot of the same parts of the brain my work does. But I enjoy them more, so I work harder at them. That often leaves me wearier on Monday than I was on Friday.

Re:Creativity

[vlm]

Meth should be illegal because 99.9% of meth users eventually start stealing or killing to support their habit

As an ex totally legit chemist not involved even remotely in the amateur pharm trade, I none the less know that the cost of precursor chemicals would make legal meth roughly (very roughly) as expensive as your average OTC generic pharmaceutical. There's nothing in that chemical structure that should cost much more than psuedoephedrine cold medicine and its biologically active "around" that level. A couple days worth of the stuff, if legalized, would cost about as much as a weeks worth of cold medicine, in other words pretty damn cheap compared to the cost of food, etc.

When you have to steal copper cable every day to get one day's illegal supply society has a big problem. When the cost of a 6-pack of beer is more than the cost of a months supply then society has no real problem. It is true that scum occasionally kill for the cost of a soda, but its rare enough to be an outlier, thankfully.

It would be cheap enough that junkyards could give it away in order to improve their public image (hey general public, we don't accept stolen goods anymore because we give the addicts stuff for free, so stop blaming us for your stolen catalytic converters, mkay?)

Its much harder on the body than alcohol, so unlike drinking where you have senior citizen bums, meth heads, especially if given all-you-can-smoke-for-free would not live long, leading to a ridiculously lower total lifetime cost and a much smaller population.