When are you at your creative peak? That is, what time of day do ideas flow most easily for you? What activities bring your best ideas to the surface where you can most easily gather them up?
A recent survey by the Crown Plaza hotel group suggests that certain times and activities are more conducive to creative thinking than others [PDF download]. The most creative time, they found, was late in the evening (around 10 pm), while their respondents were at the least creative in the late afternoon (around 4:30 pm). The survey also found that most respondents were likely to have a lot of ideas either in or just after a shower.
I’ll admit the survey is a little silly – the results were “published” in a press release touting the commission of a designer to create note cards (they call them “Think Notes”) that travelers can use to jot down their ideas – clearly this is part of a marketing campaign intended to promote the Crown Plaza chain as most conducive to innovation for the executives that stay there.
Still, the findings do reinforce something that many of us already know intuitively, though we might not pay much attention to it: that there are certain times of the day when we are particularly creative and other times when we simply aren’t.
Call it circadian rhythms, call it the daily ebb and flow of blood sugar, call it magic if you want; the fact remains that or brains keep to a timetable that can be very hard to change and even harder to fight. Whether your personal schedule matches the survey’s results or whether your creative time comes earlier in the day, it pays to understand just how your mind’s abilities wax and wane over the course of the day.
So how can we discover our most creative times – and how can we best make use of them> Here’s a little advice to help bring your work into sync with your daily rhythm.
1. Pay attention
Sometimes your body tells you when it’s ready to rock and roll and when it’s ready to crash and burn. If you can’t keep your eyes open, chances are you’re not at your creative peak.
More often, though, we have to look pretty close to figure out where in our days our minds are really performing at peak levels. To help find your most creative moments, you might consider doing one of these things:
- Add a “creative assessment” to your weekly review.
Think back to all the things you’ve done over the previous week. What were the most creative tasks you did? What time were you working on them? How did it go? What is a painful slog or a breezy jaunt? Make a note and compare your results week to week. - Keep a log.
I’m not a huge fan of mixing work with self-assessment – there’s too big a shift in mindset needed to critically assess your work more or less as you’re doing it. Still, keeping a log of activities can help you reflect back, perhaps in your weekly review. You might also get some use out of automated time tracking tools like Slife, which can tell you not only what you were working on at any given moment but, with a little interpretation, how focused you were. Working steadily on one task over an extended time is a good sign that you were in the creative zone, while rapid shifting from task to task suggests distractedness. - Switch it up.
Since you might be wasting your most creative moments on uncreative tasks, try shifting things around for a while. Start with the survey’s suggestions, scheduling creative work late at night and more mundane tasks for the end of the workday, and see how that feels.
2. Be prepared.
Knowing when creativity is most likely to strike, and what sorts of activities can trigger your creativity, doesn’t mater much unless you’re ready to take advantage of the moment when it arrives. While I can’t sing the praises of carrying a pen and notebook with you all the time highly enough, there are times when ink-and-paper capture isn’t going to cut it.
Like when you’re in the shower. According to the Crown Plaza survey, the shower is the #1 source of creative inspiration. What will you do when an idea strikes you mid-lather? I keep dry-erase markers in the bathroom and scribble notes to myself on the mirror when I get out of the shower – though I like the idea of using kids’ bath crayons to jot ideas directly onto the shower wall as they occur.
What about other contexts? How are you going to make use of your most creative time if it turns out to be while you’re commuting, during your workout, or as you drift off to sleep. Put some thought into it now so you’ll be ready when the next idea comes.
3. Classify and schedule.
What a shame it would be to spend your most creative moments inventorying the supply cabinet! Instead, inventory your various tasks and sort them into those that require your most creative self and those you could manage while unconscious. Then schedule those tasks according to the best time of day for you. Work on that marketing presentation during your peak creative time and do your expense reports when your creative self takes its afternoon siesta.
Dustin M. Wax is the project manager at Stepcase Lifehack. He is also the creator of The Writer's Technology Companion, a site devoted to the tools of the writing trade. When he's not writing, he teaches anthropology and gender studies in Las Vegas, NV. He is the author of Don't Be Stupid: A Guide to Learning, Studying, and Succeeding at College.
译文:
什么时候你才最具创造力？
什么时候是你创造力的高峰期呢？一天中什么时间是你构思想象的最佳选择呢？什么活动能激发你的灵感组织好这些新想法呢？
最近Crown Plaza饭店的调查小组公布的一项结果显示某些时间和某种活动更有利于进行创造性思考【PDF可下载】他们发现被调查者最具创造力的时间是晚上（大约10点钟），而最不据创造力的时间是下午（大约4点半），调查还发现大部分被调查者在淋浴中或淋浴后可能产生许多新想法。
我认为这些调查结果有些荒谬，实际上，他们是在报纸上宣传一种创新记录卡（他们称为思想卡片），旅行者用这些卡片可以记下自己的灵感。很明显这是一种推销手段，用“最能引发创造力”为主题来达到提高Crown Plaza饭店知名度的目的。
确实，这些发现证实了一种现象，这种现象我们直觉上感觉得到而没有细心注意，即一天某些时候最具有创造力，而其他时间却没有。
你可以称这种现象为生理节奏规律，或血糖引起的兴奋变化，或时隐时现的魔力；而事实是不变的，我们的头脑遵循一种生物钟，这种生物钟很难改变，更难克服。不管你的生物钟是否符合调查显示的结果，你都很难明白思维能力在一天中是有强弱之分的。
我们如何才能找出自己的最佳创造时刻并充分利用呢？下面提供一些建议以供采纳。
1注意观察
有时我们的身体会告诉我们何时最具活力，何时精力衰竭。你连眼睛都睁不开时，就不会处于发挥创造的最佳时期。这些身体的感觉还不够，我们还必须细加观察才能找出这一最佳时期。你可以尝试一下如下一两个方法：
*每周回顾
回想一下上周所做的一切，什么是最具创造力的工作，何时做的，如何做的，什么工作需要冥思苦想，什么工作轻松即可完成。整理一下并每周进行比较。
*坚持记录
我并不热衷于对所有工作进行自我评价。因为思维变动很大，在不同时刻评价不同。然而做记录确实会帮你回顾从前，像每周回顾所做记录。也可以用一种自动记忆工具，像slife功能,不但能告诉你在某一时刻做了什么，而且能显示当时所花费的精力。花费超长时间做一项稳定的工作，表明你处于创造力的 活跃时期，频繁更换工作则表明创新状况不佳。
*适时调整
当你把最具创造力的时间浪费在不需创造力的工作上时，那就调整一下，可以参照上面所提的调查结果，像把最需要创造力的工作安排在晚上，把不需创造例行不变的工作安排在周末，观察一下效果如何。
2精心准备
知道了何时最具创造力及何种活动最能引发创造思维，还远远不够，你还必须能充分利用并服务于实践。我并不赞成用纸笔把每时每刻都记录下来，有些时候是无法记录的。
像你洗澡的时候，按照Crown Plaza的调查结果，洗淋浴可以激发创造灵感，然而当你抹了一身肥皂时突发灵感，你该怎么办，我可能会先在头脑中记着，洗完后再记录下来，然而像孩子似的当灵感来临时，就直接画在浴室墙壁上不是更好吗?那么在其他情况下呢？当你在上下班路上时，在体育锻炼时，在昏昏欲睡时有了创造的灵感，你会如何利用呢？现在不妨考虑一下，当下次灵感来临时，就会有所准备了
3分类安排
在最具创造力的时候做一些整理橱柜的工作是可惜的。那就列出你的工作，分成最需创造力和不需创造力等不同类型。然后按照你的思维特点安排这些工作，例如，在创造力活跃的时候做推销，在创造力休眠时记录日常花费支出。