A degree of relaxation is necessary to have good ideas because one doesn't have them so much as receive them—and one cannot receive anything with clenched fists.
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A degree of relaxation is necessary to have good ideas because one doesn't have them so much as receive them—and one cannot receive anything with clenched fists.
When you're in fight or flight, your brain only works in a very limited capacity compared to when you are at ease, relaxed—which is why great ideas come to you in the shower, because you're relaxed. You have warm water pouring on top of your head, and so your brain kind of melts away and can start to put together different data points that are not ... See more
Shaan Puri • My First Million on Apple Podcasts
remember that relaxation is one of creativity’s greatest champions — not its enemy.
Jane Roberts • The Magical Approach: Seth Speaks About the Art of Creative Living (A Seth Book)
Give yourself some time. You have a lot of control over the rate at which you turn yours into a prepared mind, but you have less control over the stimuli that spark ideas when they hit it.
Paul Graham • How to Get Startup Ideas
creativity appears to depend partly on processes taking place in your brain while you’re not focusing. (Limiting the time allotted to high-stakes work also helps reduce the feeling of being intimidated or oppressed by it, which causes some people to procrastinate.)
Oliver Burkeman • Meditations for Mortals: Four Weeks to Embrace Your Limitations and Make Time for What Counts
Studies showed that the best way to engineer an epiphany was to work hard, focus, research, and think about a problem—and then let go. Do something else. That didn’t necessarily mean meditate, but do something that relaxes and distracts you; let your unconscious mind go to work, making connections from disparate parts of the brain.
Dan Harris • 10% Happier: How I Tamed the Voice in My Head, Reduced Stress Without Losing My Edge, and Found Self-Help That Actually Works - A True Story
‘Only the man who learns how to relax is able to create, and for him ideas reach the mind like lightning.’
Daniel Reid • The Tao Of Health, Sex And Longevity
And yet, it’s not rest alone that made the idea arrive, but the oscillation of effort and rest. Poincaré continues:
These sudden inspirations...never happen except after some days of voluntary effort which has appeared absolutely fruitless and whence nothing good seems to have come, where the way taken seems totally astray. These efforts have not be... See more
Mandy Brown • The unconscious machine
You can't become playful and therefore creative if you're under your usual pressures, because to cope with them you've got to be in the closed mode...You must make a quiet space for yourself where you will be undisturbed.