It’s Not Where Good Ideas Come From. It’s When.
In this office we’re always uncovering some new video, podcast, song or book—which is wonderful, because The More You Know and all that. But what we don’t spend much time talking about is alone time. Or, to make it sound less frightening, “solitude.”
Between our recent 90,000 Hours student event and our peer-enacted mastery check-ins, there have been many conversations lately about the source of ideas. What triggers them? How long do they take to come up with and how do you know when you’ve got the right one? If you’ve been reading our blog for a while, you’ve probably come across the notion that creative ideas are not epiphanies. They’re simply what happens when you’ve built a large knowledge bank of random information (through videos, podcasts, songs or books) and suddenly you’re faced with a problem that causes you to recall that one little tidbit of info you’ve been storing for just such an occasion. Essentially, when what you have meets what you need.
What we talk less about, however, is the mental state that enables these connections. While sometimes they happen immediately, what’s more often true is that these non-epiphanies, these mental connections between problems and the information that provides the creative solution to them, come to us in solitude. Which means we have to give that to ourselves, whether we find it intentionally during meditation or randomly in a traffic jam.
A quick internet search of the perks of solitude yields a bazillion results from publications from Forbes to Inc.to Psychology Today, and there are dozens of them. Below are just my four favorites, and the ones I find most relevant to what we’re all trying to do: be happier and more creative.
1. Creative ideas and problem solving
Yeah, I kind of already touched on this. But since it’s the answer to half the questions we’re ever asked about inspiration, I think it’s warranted twice. When your brain is occupied with consuming media, it’s not as good at coming up with ideas or solutions to problems, creative or otherwise. Fortunately, a little intentional silence around your daily commute or in the shower may be all you need.
2. Planning your future
Holy cow, the things we forget to do when our minds are busy elsewhere. Apparently we’re all so busy with the day-to-day and the immediate that we can make it a lifetime without zooming out to think critically about what we’d like to be doing five or ten years from now and the steps we take to get there. Daydreaming lets us travel a little further down that road.
3. Knowing yourself
It’s a bit shocking to consider, but we spend so much time around other people and the things they think that we don’t always bother to completely know what WE think. Solitude gives us the ability to mentally sort through new information, beliefs and opinions to land in self-awareness.
4. Thinking critically about your own happiness
This wasn’t one of the top reasons I came across, but I know it to be true, and it’s similar to number two, planning your future. When we check out completely with a Netflix binge or fail to look past the next item in our Google Calendar, we fail to check on our own happiness levels. It’s not just about introspection, but about reflection on your day or week. What did you do that increased or decreased your level of joy? Can you do more or less of that? Can planning ahead increase the number of things you look forward to? A whole lot of happiness is simply being more aware and knowing where to look for it.
The next time you have to search deeply to discover where you stand on an issue, decide how to begin a difficult conversation or make a decision that seems so important it’s all you can do not to head straight to the couch (or wherever your television is located), just take a minute. Take a longer-than-usual shower, or leave the radio off five minutes longer than you would have. You might be pleasantly surprised by what your brain comes up with when you’re not bothering it.