I am just pondering about this observation:

“Henri Fehr, the famous Swiss scientist, said that practically all his good ideas came to him when he was not actively engaged in work on a problem, and that most of the discoveries of his contemporaries were made when they were away from their workbench, so to speak.”

― Dr Maxwell Maltz, writing in his Psycho-Cybernetics classic;

Amusingly, I recall this intersting finding in the book, What a Great Idea, by creativity expert Charles 'Çhic' Thompson:

Creative sparks come from while doing the following tasks, counting down from the top ten idea-friendly activities:

x) while performing manual tasks;

ix) while listening to church sermon;

viii) upon waking up in the middle of the night;

vii) while working out in the gym;

vi) during pleasure reading;

v) during a boring meeting;

iv) while falling alseep or waking up;

iii) while commuting to work;

ii) while taking a shower or shaving;

i) while sitting on a toilet bowl!!!

Hey, folks, what do you think?

From my own personal experiences, I must say that the last three and #vii have had been my numerous eureka moments.

In contrast, Steven Johnson, writing in his book, Where Good Ideas Come From: The Natural History of Innovation, argues that good ideas do not for the most incidences come from inside someone's head.

Instead, as he puts it, they come from outside, specifically social interactions.

I will write a separate post on his findings.