The science of having ideas in the shower | Hacker News Reader

The science of having ideas in the shower

nationalgeographic.co.uk

275 pointsColinWright166 comments

Maybe I’m discovering the obvious, but I began using THC for sleep in my 30s and as a side effect, I kinda get a little bit high for about 20 mins before bed.

I’ll be having a shower that usually turns into a bath for safety and I just close my eyes and think. And it’s truly miraculous… My brain just wanders so freely among the ideas of the day. But what interests me most are these “eureka!” moments. They’re so fast and fleeting and my brain struggles to focus that I rush to orate them to my phone before they fade. It’s an interesting sensation to have where I’m confident that the idea was brilliant but I can’t for the life of me remember what it was seconds later.

Upon review the next day, 75% of the time the ideas are gibberish and I have a laugh at my own expense. The other 25% aren’t brilliant but are colourable and sometimes actually pan out. Usually about software design or parenting.

I experience EXACTLY the same thing moments before falling asleep (no thc). It's truly amazing. If I manage to jolt myself awake I will write them down, otherwise they will be surely forgotten. And the ratio is similar to yours, good idea/gibberish(or not feasible).

Is it just as amusing to you, the sensation of being 100% convinced the idea is absolutely brilliant, only to review it and find its nonsense?

I've also experienced that a few times while semi-asleep, it is really intriguing. I haven't been able to write the ideas down yet, and had a tendency to discrad them at the thought that being in that state made the ideas sound amazing but wouldn't be in retrospect. I wonder how that phenomenon works, and if taking any psychoactive drug would produce similar results.

You can force the hypnagogic state by holding something heavy that you drop as you fall asleep.

https://institutducerveau-icm.org/en/actualite/sleep-and-cre...

Cellphones are perfect for this. For maximum effect, hold it above your face while falling asleep.

(Only semi-joking, I've done this multiple times.)

Tangentially, it's one of the reasons why I'm still using an older iPhone for my daily life because the haptic Home button (which was removed in newer models) makes it easier to use in an half-asleep state whereas I end up tapping on things accidentally when using my 13 Pro in that state: that button is the escape hatch, like ESC on a keyboard.

Any friction between the time I have an idea and the moment I can capture it increases the risk I will forget it before I have time to write it down.

I think capturing ideas is lame. It delays thinking of more of them. The benefits of thinking to oneself come not from a single idea, but from the compounding effect of all of them. And you're not thinking of your next idea while you're wasting time capturing the last one.

It's better to let your mind wander to maximize the compounding effect between the ideas, rather than to fret about memorializing every vainly appealing thought (and btw, I bet if you did that while sober, it would look just as ridiculous when reading it the next day).

Just let it flow, man. You'll remember the good stuff.

You can totally force the state of wakefullness and falling asleep by just staring at the wall too. Lots of creative ideas. No bed required. It is how I face planted in to a marble table early in 2022. New lesson learned: Check your surroundings before you do this.

Did you lock your knees and restrict blood flow?

Tell ya what, I come up with some damn catchy gibberish tunes in that state.

Here's some recently written-down lyrics from sleep-composition. Meant to be sung in a call and response hip hop kinda style, I think.

Professor: freedom's under your desk (desk)

Audience: huuuh?

Professor: freedom's under your desk (desk)

Audience: ohhhhh...

The chess genius David Bronstein famously dreamt a game of chess, woke up and wrote it all down.

I experience a similar kind of state before I fall asleep, but not every day. I sense the trigger of going into it, but most of the time I suppress it due to tiredness or lack of interest. However, there are certain days during which, I go into the state of super alertness, where I get amazing clarity of thoughts; one would wish to be in it while solving a new coding problem or trying to write super intricate code.

I started reading _The_Electric_Kool-Aid_Acid_Test_ by Tom Wolfe a few months ago. He relates how Ken Kesey would write while high as a kite, to help the flow of ideas, and then edit sober.

I didn't end up finishing the book, because it was all just too foreign a subject for me to get into.

> I didn't end up finishing the book, because it was all just too foreign a subject for me to get into.

Might I recommend starting it again? The beauty of the book has more to do with Wolfe’s writing style than anything else. And if you think about it, it’s not all that foreign. Much of it comes from the spirit and ethos of the Beats (with Neal Cassady at the wheel no less); it might help you get into what Wolfe is talking about by first starting with Kerouac. Once you get through his work, the Wolfe book will make perfect sense. I think if I hadn’t read Kerouac first, I might have felt the same way as you. I’ve found that the themes expressed in both Kerouac and Wolfe are quite universal, and can be found in many different cultures. Give it another try, it’s not as foreign as you might think.

See, the names Neal Cassady and Ken Kesey don't mean anything to me. I enjoyed the writing, but I think it was a story for people who knew the people involved. I honestly spent much of the time trying to decide if it was fiction or biography.

I do have On The Road on my list, I figure I'll give it a try. Also figured I should try Bonfire of the Vanities. Especially once I finish building the new vanity for the bathroom remodel.

Bonfire is great, a true page turner. I read it while living in NYC (where it takes place). What a thrill! Enjoy it.

On the other hand, I went back to reread it 30 years later and found that everyone since has copied Wolfe’s writing style so it's not as compelling.

It’s a time capsule, for sure. For me, the most compelling thing about the book is the strange dichotomy between the sober author dressed in his three-piece white suit on a bus with young hippies and old beatniks in 1964, trying to write it all down for posterity. That’s compelling when you start to look at the entire book from that POV. It couldn’t have been an easy task.

I didn't find Kerouac very approachable (even though every sign indicates that I should), but loved the electric koolaid acid test

Be careful, THC messes with your REM sleep.

I wonder if that's why I felt unbelievably more tired the next morning after I smoked or something before bed,

Sure does. But it beats literally zero sleep. Day after day. Or dangerous stuff like some of the prescription meds. I’ve found a timing that gets me to sleep but I dream plenty.

This is true, although sporadic "single-dose" use will allow enough rem sleep towards the end of your sleep cycle.

Heavy use leaves enough of an after effect to supress rem almost entirely, which is partly why it causes issues with long-term memory

Weed is the secret behind my ability to debug really gnarly problems that others get stuck on. I'm not the best coder, and I'm incapable of finishing projects, but most workplaces I've been at I've quickly become the "hey could you look at this heisenbug" guy.

I never smoke in a professional setting of course. I read the code, set breakpoints, debug prints, yadda yadda. Then when I get home I smoke some hashish and suddenly it's like I can execute and debug the code in my brain and just see the bug in plain sight like I'm Gregory House if he was a programmer. Then I pull out my laptop and throw together a fix in the dumbest, simplest way possible, test it, PR it and let code review turn it into production ready code. Because I have no idea what that looks like, and hopefully the company has other people that do(wishful thinking, i know).

Caveats:

Yes, this is very hit or miss, maybe a one out of ten per try, but you can try multiple times of course.

I'm not recommending anyone mess with psychoactive drugs unless they know it's something they can handle, and more importantly that they know how to do it safely.

I'm not saying I have my shit together wrt drugs, I definitely do not.

Weed is double edged; it has negative effects that greatly limit its functional potential most importantly on working memory and focus. I like to say weed can temporarily turn you into a brain damaged genius.

There are many other ways to get this effect without drugs: Taking a walk, meditation, sleep, sex, and basically anything other than staring at the problem can do the trick through random associations.

I was high when I wrote all this so maybe none of it makes sense, but be nice.

I used to believe this was true, but I tested it and found that I was performed noticeably worse while high across a variety of tasks. The weed made me feel like a million bucks, but actually put me at ~80% capacity. I don’t know your brain chemistry, but I’d encourage you not to sell yourself short and believe that you’re only capable of performing well in an altered start of mind. You’re probably better than you believe.

Uhm, my post said explicitly it impairs working memory and focus and is limited due to that. It plays a rather small role in just providing an extra push for that aha moment. But the aha moment can't come without doing the leg work of digging into the problem first, and that's hard, thankless work that often amounts to hours, if not days of time spent sober and working. The drugs and the work happen mostly completely in isolation from eachother. I just smoke at home to unwind and then suddenly the thing I'm trying to figure out at work clicks for me and I know what to do, so I just jot down a basic PoC fix and then do it properly the next day, at work, sober, when I can hold something in my head for more than 5 seconds at a time. Not sure how that was unclear from my comment.

I could certainly stand to do less no doubt, but I'm on something of a sabbatical right now(personal projects and recovering from burnout) so the equation is different.

I’ve heard many sorts of rationalizations to excuse substance addictions, and this sounds like one, too. It’s easy to be seduced by the feeling of getting high, making you prone to self-deception.

You can learn how to unwind without getting high. Getting high can act as a short term coping mechanism for stress, anxiety, etc. but it also throws you out of balance, leading to burnout.

Oh fun, you created a new/throwaway account just to throw me some off the top of your head, paternalistic bullshit.

So here's the thing "dude". I am a 30 year old "dude" with an IQ of 130 who never even finished high school due to severe, chronic mental illness, this particular dude tried to kill himself at 19 to where he was in clinically dead for one minute then in a coma then and developed a mild then severe then synthetic weed addiction almost immediately after release from long term mental hospitalisation. I've been through every nook and cranny of the mental health system you can imagine. Closed ward, open ward, inpatient rehab, outpatient rehab, even assisted living with around the clock psych nurse staff present. I've tried almost every class of psych drugs out there except the ones I refuse to try because they're more dangerous than most of the illegal drugs I've tried(phenelzine, neuroleptics). Pretty much the only illegal drug I haven't tried is heroin because I watched that destroy my brother's life.

And yet in spite of all of the above, I was able to pull myself up by the bootstraps, saving up my allowance to buy a copy of k&r, learning C when I was 15, and eventually even being able to work as a coder. The only place I ever felt at home was in front of a keyboard or a chess board. The longest job I held down was 1 year, cofounding a since defunct custom electronics company designing, prototyping and building bespoke automation and at a hefty premium. But then I got worse again and it cratered.

So, you still want to educate me on the "danger of the marijuanaz?" I can almost guarantee I know more about it than you unless you literally have an advanced degree in psychopharmacology.

You're gonna educate me on rationalisation? I was rationalising before you were born.

Why the throwaway though, are you really so cowardly that someone at your precious FAANG job might think you inhaled? It's so ridiculous that you think that might a real problem that I'm half tempted to dox you just to tell your boss.

Paranoia is a very common side-effect from weed. Not saying it's not a throwaway, just saying.

Keep it real.

I'm just tired of being drive by therapised man. And then when I get annoyed enough to genuinely and truthfully pour my whole soul out just to prove how incredibly facile they were being I get downvoted. HN can be as cruel and unwelcoming as it can be illuminating and inspiring.

Don’t pay too much attention to them. Your posts were a big contribution to the discussion and thoughts on here. There’s a stack of evidence even a small amount of alcohol a week has repercussions - I doubt you’d see the same evangelism if you posted how sometimes a few glasses of red wine helps you tackle thorny problems - but it’s not wholly dissimilar if someone wanted to take the same stance.

Thanks for sharing your story!

I wonder how much of it comes from the ritual and creating the space for thought. I found just putting time between fact-finding and actual debugging has always helped me debug the wilder bugs, and I noticed GP was doing the same. Not taking away from GPs experience in general though, weed is a human experience like any other so if it works then it works. We can think about drugs too clinically for some discussions I think.

Thank you!

It can be frustrating and downright hurtful to share a true, and in some ways deeply personal story, looking for an intellectual discussion on a fascinating neurocognitive phenomenon, only to be met with some low effort off the cuff remarks suggesting I might be an addict when I actively admit to being an addict! I'm not here to talk about my addiction issues, my comment was not a solicitation for out of context medical advice. I'm guilty of this myself, too, but I try my best not to after I got served my nth harrowing "you think I haven't tried that" tale like mine down below. If you want to talk to someone about their mental health issues, the only way I've found is to expose yourself and share your own experiences. This helps make them(us) feel less alone and isolated.

Thank you once again for understanding my point of view. A glimmer of light in an otherwise depressingly unproductive thread.

I’m so glad I have this experience before I get out of bed. Each day I have a morning “what do I remember from before getting out of bed” review, right after I greet my pup for the morning. It’s mostly lost, but a lot of times during the day something will come back to me.

I've had the same experience, and often(when I'm not too lazy from smoking), I'll write down the ideas to read when I'm sober.

Usually they are correct and kind of insightful(by this I simply mean, insightful relative to the level of my normal "sober thoughts") but not as ground breaking as I thought - in fact it's usually something very obviously true and "known" but not "realized", as in the unique aspect wasn't having the thought, but recognizing the significance of the thought.

The easiest parallel I can think of during sobriety, is when you take something you know like "the ocean is filling with plastics", you're always aware that it's true and really messed up, but sometimes you'll think of it and see the thought from a specific angle that really makes you internalize how serious it is and how crazy it is that this is something happening in the world. You didn't realize anything you didn't already know, but it's still a new and useful insight

This is my ADHD super power. When I have a problem I take a shower, a walk, play a video game, just to let it stew in the background, sometimes for days. Get intoxicated. You'll eventually get that eureka! effect. It has never failed me.

It's often suggested that one needs to work hard to crack a hairy problem. Nonsense. You've got a subconscious system always processing some idea, integrating external unrelated stimuli while you're doing something else: what is commonly called thinking outside the box. The hairier the problem, the least effective pointed focus is to crack it. You can't think outside the box if you're putting all your effort on the box. Go do something else.

Conscious thought and focus is but a very small part of our intelligence. Learn to delegate some tasks to your background process.

This is why I’ll never work in an office again. Why would I want to get stuck on a problem and be actively working against solving it because I’m stuck at work with nothing else to do?

Same here. My focused problem solving is powered by my legs: if stuck, I need to pace around with a notepad. Can't do that in an office without weird looks.

When I was a smoker, I took a smoke+coffee break with a notepad to problem solve, that is more accepted in corporate life but I've dropped the habit.

I was a cigarette smoker too. I was doing the same thing and it worked wonderfully but I had to stop the nasty smelling habit. However, those vice forced brakes every 1-2 hours or so made me a lot more productive overall. Current office culture is very much desk bound, walking around, is not encouraged at all, and if I squint I could sort of see it in the product itself

Same, the legwork of "working hard" on a problem for me these days is just making sure I have all the information I need to stew over. I write up a factfinding doc of points in the codebase that I think are relevant, any context that's relevant, and symptoms of the bug. I never used to write it down but I work across a bunch of projects now so I can sometimes have the bug de-prioritised in my brain.

Writing something down, even if not for long term storage, is great. It feels like freeing up RAM that can be used for something else.

But definitely there needs to be preparatory work before you need to let everything stew. Get all the facts, internalise them, and move on.

>It's often suggested that one needs to work hard to crack a hairy problem. Nonsense. You've got a subconscious system always processing some idea, integrating external unrelated stimuli while you're doing something else: what is commonly called thinking outside the box. The hairier the problem, the least effective pointed focus is to crack it. You can't think outside the box if you're putting all your effort on the box. Go do something else.

Doing both is quite possible, and helps ...

>Conscious thought and focus is but a very small part of our intelligence. Learn to delegate some tasks to your background process.

I'll just leave these here:

Tech Video: Rich Hickey: Hammock-Driven Development

https://jugad2.blogspot.com/2016/03/tech-video-rich-hickey-h...

Lateral thinking:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lateral_thinking

I have used this to solve leetcode problems. Initially, I read and understand the problem; and then I try to solve it for ten minutes. If fail to find a solution, I move on to the next problem; I do that for 3–4 problems on a single go. When I visit those problems the next day, I find myself hitting the solution way more than I would be if I had sat there for hours with hard focus to solve those problems. However, I feel that I cheated because you are expected to solve those problems in limited time.

It's also something quite difficult to talk about in practice because claiming that a problem was solved via dreamily staring at clouds, or some similar activity very far from normal perceptions of 'work', sounds like boasting.

This effect used to be the bane of my ADHD-addled existence until I found these: https://www.myaquanotes.com/. I buy them in 5 packs now.

Its my working theory that artists (The Beatles or John Carmack) are always operating in this type of mental 'shower' environment. Makes me wonder if maybe there is a 'myaquaguitar.com' alternative haha

Never seen John Carmack described as an artist before

could writing code be considered as an art? genuinely asking

"Art is a diverse range of human activity, and resulting product, that involves creative or imaginative talent expressive of technical proficiency, beauty, emotional power, or conceptual ideas.

There is no generally agreed definition of what constitutes art,...":

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Art

If I quoted ChatGPT for this question, how does HN feel?

Personally if I want ChatGPT's opinion I'll just ask it myself. I'm here for the human comments.

Everything can be considered art depending on who you ask, I don't think anyone agrees on what actually is or isn't.

Whenever I hear someone describe programming as art, I think of this essay[1].

That isn't to say it can't be art. Only that those with an interest in calling it art usually aren't the appropriate authorities.

[1]: https://idlewords.com/2005/04/dabblers_and_blowhards.htm

It's a good day to reflect on code recently pushed, or a PR submitted, to retrace the lines and marvel at it (in one's head, on the commute home, or underneath a watery drone).

If programming itself isn't art, the cognition of its product surely is. Art in a gallery asks to be observed again, studied again, brought to the context of each discovered age, again.

There is "code as art" where the code itself is art. A while back there was a program floating through the nerd community that was C code laid out in the shape of a giant C, which actually compiles to a valid program.

Then there is "code as an artform". Think code golf, or other such challenges that encourage incredibly creative solutions.

Then my personal favorite is simply "beautiful code". Sometimes an algorithm or a function will just be elegant in its construction or simplicity. Sometimes you have a real hairy problem that seems very complex at first, but the solution ends up as a small, clean function with no frills, no bugs. It's about beautiful solutions more than the text of the code.

Code can be art, but it usually isn't. The first two categories are something done intentionally as a form of expression, but the last is more akin to a sunset or a rainbow. Sometimes beauty appears when we don't intend or expect it. But I think that still qualifies as art.

I think the art is to find the best abstraction/metaphor for the problem needed to be solved that is both easy to reason and maintain.

"While my aqua-guitar gently weeps"?

Yes and no. Too much 'relax mode' and you don't really get anything done either.

These are great for leaving your SO a note in the AM

I love that they even have a variant for this purpose!

However, having a separate bathroom from my SO is something I credit with our relationship going so well lol

Brilliant! I use the iPhone for my purposes because it’s waterproof. At least the newer models are. Have dropped it in deep water with no ill effects.

My understanding was that both heat and steam are bad for waterproof electronics, just be careful mate

Edit: Aww HN strips emoji, should have seen that coming lol

I was warned of this one (like the parent comment I use my phone in the shower for notes).

Not had a problem in 2 years* of daily showers. I realise I'm taking a bit of a risk but nothing bad has happened so far. Could always just be luck of course. iPhone 11 for reference.

* Almost exactly, ha. 24mo contract expired last week. Sod's Law says my next shower will destroy the phone having written this down.

Sending good juju your way mate!

Neat! I'm particularly fond of bath crayons...

https://shop.crayola.com/toys-and-activities/bathtub-crayons...

Look up "write board for children", they can be had for under 5 USD for a small one. I keep one in the shower too!

This is an example, just the first one I found:

https://m.aliexpress.com/item/1005004626987148.html

I just write on the wall with a window marker. Less elegant, but works too.

I tried a dry-erase patch for the shower wall but it didn't go well with water/steam. Will try a window marker, thanks!

You don't just write in the water droplets?

Is there more research on how boredom relates to creativity in general? I've been wondering recently about how my default in most cases is to look at my phone (reddit, social media, texting).

That must detract from my net new ideas. I know many a child driven to weird ideas, fun games, and general creativity from lack of anything else to do.

It's probably a spectrum (reading reddit/HN/etc. is likely to introduce new ideas), but I'd venture to guess that most people could stand to trade a lot of their daily phone time for some intentional boredom.

You need time to think but you also need something to think about.

A favorite quote on the topic whose source I never remember: The news doesn’t tell you what to think, it tells you what to think about.

Hamming talks about this effect as The Open Door Policy in his wonderful you and your research talk – https://www.cs.virginia.edu/~robins/YouAndYourResearch.html

The key seems to be to tend to your inputs, make sure they’re decent quality and on topics you care about, then create time away from inputs to ruminate and ponder. Reading outrage-of-the-day content won’t give you better software engineering insights in the shower. But reading hyped-tech-trend-of-the-month content might.

Conversely, if your mind is constantly engaged in other people’s thoughts, it won’t have time to create its own. For me personally that means avoiding external stimuli for the first 2 to 3 hours of the day (doesn’t always work).

That's something you can easily experiment on yourself, unless you're hopelessly addicted to your entertainment devices

I'm extremely easily bored so creative state of mind is my every day normal I guess.

Only tricky part is that it's a gradual process over a short time of basic information gathering that has to be captured in the right contexts back and forth for me.

All these comments here also bring new insights, overlapping feelings and an idea we are all in this mess together. To boredom!

> I know many a child driven to weird ideas, fun games, and general creativity from lack of anything else to do.

Unfortunately children are negatively affected by their electronic devices as well.

I'm not sure "boredom" is the right way to characterize the state. Deliberately cultivating this quiet time for creativity is one possible aspect of a meditation practice. David Lynch has an interesting book about that, called Catching the Big Fish.

+1 boredom isn't quite right. I'll check out that book.

Anecdotally it absolutely seems to go hand in hand for me. To the point where I've started considering social networks, booze, THC, etc as dopamine sugar.

I'm allowed them now and then as a treat for hitting a goal* or something but not constantly, and definitely no cake for breakfast.

* for instance I'm enjoying a nice HN binge right now as I've already covered my rent this month with freelance work :)

While I've not had any direct results of any ideas yet I have filled 8 pages of my scratch diary with ideas and notes on my main side project since I've started reintroducing boredom into my life. Previously it was bad enough that I'd forget the diary existed for days and sometimes weeks at a time.

Rather than go insane if the boredom doesn't turn into creativity I'm allowed to read a book at any time rather than slip back to the sugary dopamine sources.

Could just be honeymoon period, I'm only a week or so into it, I might get bored of being bored soon.

I have long held that a good night's rest, a long shower or a walk in nature are some of the best debugging and software architecture design tools that developers have at their disposal. We've all been pulling those late nights and long hours banging our head on the desk just to figure it, only to step away and figure out what we want in that Zen like moment of the morning shower. You absolutely need to put hands on keyboard to get your work done, but generally the amount of code pounded out is (usually) inversely proportional to the amount of thought I've given to the solution.

I think that’s why it’s sometimes important to just leave from work, if you’re doing something hard and get stuck. If you keep working hard, you may not find any solution. It happened really often to me, that on the next day the solution for the problem was „just there“.

It just doesn’t fit our working culture, if our leave two hours early and if the boss asks you say: „I have to do a lot of complicated work, that’s why I’m leaving early“.

I personally believe that the concept of shower thoughts is a bit detrimental. They are often talked about as being nice little quirks of our lives, when in fact they could be so much more. I have written a little blog post about it [1]

[1] : https://but-her-flies.bearblog.dev/shower-thoughts-arent-rea...

I concur. I sometimes get "shower thoughts" while doing the dishes.

It's just the coloquial term for activation of the Default Mode Network (DMN). And yes, it happens everywhere, all throughout the day and to varying degrees.

Also, it's not necessarily always a desirable thing. For example, the practice of mindfulness is literally cultivating the ability to switch off the DMN. The thing that people don't so often click to is whilst it does sometimes lead to those insightful "shower thoughts", it's also what's behind long night torturing yourself ruminating about an upcoming confrontation you're anticipating having with someone etc.

I spent quite a bit of time reading and understanding about the brain and after understanding that the Central Executive Network and the Default Mode Network operate like a see-saw that's mediated by the Salience Network, a great deal more things made sense to me. It helps to know too that for anyone who has experience trauma where they have an elevated HPA-Axis, that the connections between the Salience Network and the Default Mode Network get stronger and hence slipping into rumination becomes the path of least resistance and thus happens more frequently. Actively practicing mindfulness meditation helps counteract this and instead strengthens the connections between the Salience Network and the Central Executive Network.

After learning about the above I discovered Zen Buddhism and realized they've known this intuitively for thousands of years.

Carl Sagan talked about this effect — in combination with cannabis: https://www.organism.earth/library/document/mr-x

Ehh, I have the eureka moments in the bed and ideas during walking/listening to something or reading something offtopic. After all memory retrieval is avalanche based.

I turn off the PC, get in the bed, 5 minutes later I have the answer for that hard problem. I have noticed that sitting before the monitor sucks your brain down and hard problem solving or planning need some horizontal positioning, without any electronic device.

For starters there's less [performance] anxiety while taking a shower of doing mundane tasks.

In a way it's the "monday night quarterback" meets the "you missed a spot over there" syndrome; the farther away we are from the point where the rubber meets the road, the more we can observe objectively and have higher level of thinking.

The problem at hand is how to juncture the thinking/intention with proper action.

This article is teaching me that I misunderstood what the default mode network (DMN) is. I was introduced to the term while reading how psychedelics affect the brain. As I understood it, the DMN is a mediator among the many thoughts that normally compete for your brain's attention. By temporarily suppressing the DMN, psychedelics give the weirder thoughts a better chance at center stage. Thus the black dot on the wall looks more like a spider, and a normally tenuous connection between Concept X and Concept Y might lead someone to discover a mechanism for cold fusion while tripping.

This article's explanation, on the other hand, fits the DMN moniker better: it's what your brain does when it isn't doing anything. If psychedelics replace a default value with an uninitialized variable, then the resulting behavior is undefined.

This would explain why so-called "set and setting" are so important while experiencing psychedelics. A preoccupied mind doesn't use the DMN. So it would follow that a preoccupied mind wouldn't benefit as much from a suppressed DMN, because it wouldn't have any reason to try activating it.

Having done LSD, I can’t imagine doing anything resembling coherent productivity while tripping. The best I could do was try to process all the crazy shit happening. There was certainly no room for note taking.

It makes sense why people get all their ideas in the shower. That's about the only time the modern human has where you aren't distracting yourself with some other external stimuli. I've even seen people use a public urinal with a phone in one hand.

Yup. I've been saying for years, the first things that humans did when we started inventing things, is we got rid of all the "boring tasks" that were letting our brains organize themselves.

Chopping firewood? Got machines for that now. Knitting? Mechanized. Walking to the next town over? Now it's a high-concentration game of GTA with a radio for extra distraction.

All of these things also had a mechanical element to them. Hands busy, mind wanders.

We've _so_ deprived our brains of this organizing time, that we had to _reinvent boredom_, and now we call it meditation.

Would you recommend chopping wood or knitting over modern meditation?

Knitting, 100%.

The hurdle a lot of people (including myself) feel with meditation is that the benefits are hard to describe and harder to measure, so it's difficult to get into, or to keep going if you feel like you aren't definitely getting something from it right away.

Knitting is every bit as meditative, plus you end up with a scarf or some other useful object, which reduces the hesitancy. You get a hand-made toque AND clearer thinking probably, so even if that "probably" is a hard sell, everyone appreciates a shawl. Plus you get neat stories, like "I was knitting this when I came up with the '602 patent". Some future museum curator is gonna lust over that artifact.

There's no reason you can't apply modern meditative techniques _while_ knitting, either. If you've read up on meditation but found it hard to get going or stick with it, _add_ some repetitive manual work and try again.

Chopping firewood is better for cardiovascular health, but it's difficult to do year round, and the byproduct is only useful to a diminishing number of households that're set up for wood heat. It's also more hazardous if you're clumsy or didn't grow up doing similar work, so think about how many colleagues you'd trust with a knife, much less an 8-lb splitting maul...

One thing I noticed is that while I had good ideas in the shower, I couldn't remember them! (no pen/paper, phone, etc.)

So, I started using mnemonics to remember my thoughts[0]. Now I take showers without feeling the anxiety of forgetting all the thing I thought about (e.g. chores, talk to someone, respond to email, write down an idea, etc.).

[0] https://alexpetralia.com/2017/12/31/shower-recall/

Left/right brain isn't an accurate summary of the brain, but a useful distinction:

• Left brain is thoughts, analysis, pattern following, etc.

• Right brain is awareness without analysis, flow state, performance awareness

To "listen" to your right brain awareness, you need to shut down the left brain at least a little bit. You need at least a little bit of space (or flow state) to hear the right brain. The left brain pushes itself on you. The right brain needs to be listened to be heard.

One of the best parts of remote work is when I have a tough problem I can just walk into the bathroom and take a shower to solve it - I just need to make sure my hair is dry before the next meeting. I never could have done that pre-Covid since everyone would have wanted to know where I was if not sitting at my desk, and the few places I worked with gyms came with a long list of co-workers I’d rather not be showering with!

Never had shower moments, only "it's late and I should be asleep but brain decided to solve some random problem instead" moments.

Anecdotally, Americans tend to shower more often than Europeans. Perhaps this explains why more tech innovation tends to happen in America these days?

I suspect a major cause of the shower gap is energy price gap, leading one to conclude that cheap energy increases innovation!

Source required.

Recent visit to my in-laws in Germany.

Ah so elderly couple in Germany allows you to conclude that the whole of Europe showers less than your household, a household which is also representative of the whole American continent, did I get that right?

Ahem… whoossshhh

I'm sure like everything else, times have changed and Western Europe and the US are now more similar (if not the same) in their shower habits.

But I'd like to provide another anecdote just for fun, from 6 years of living in Spain beginning 20 years ago. It was, at that time, certainly considered unique to shower every day, in a mid-sized northern Spain city. Unless every other friend in my residencia was weird in this regard, which is unlikely.

Interestingly, they also had a communal pool. Swimming to them rendered a shower that day unnecessary. Note -- I didn't notice any notable signs of bad hygiene, though.

Anyway I'm sure there are studies that show we're all converging on similar routines!

Curious. I'm from a mid-sized northern Spanish city, always shower once a day, most of my family and friends do as well. People I know from the south of Spain even shower more than once a day (it's hot down there). And in Spain there is the meme that French and British people shower much less than the Spanish. No idea if there is truth to it (although when I lived in the UK, I was shocked at how seldom the British people I was sharing house with showered, but that's a sample size of two).

Maybe something to do with electricity suddenly being 5-10x more expensive than usual.

Skyrocketing energy prices projected to cause unprecedented drop in already dangerously low rate of European innovation!

European innovation is doing quite well. As usual it's the part where we actually make money off the innovations where we suck. Good trolling effort though! ;)

It fails to explain why Japanese people who shower literally everyday don't lead innovations...

Don't they? In consumer electronics they certainly did for a good chunk of the past 50-60 years.

In Brazil two showers a day are pretty common.

So access to R&D funding is probably far more relevant for innovation indexes than people's hygiene.

Japanese people are very creative in my perception. I'm in Thailand where if you aren't taking shower 2 times a day, you are considerably "bad hygiene". In winter, at least 1 time in the morning. You will feel "I'm dirty" outside if you don't.

The Global War on Terror (GWOT) revealed remote places where the Toyota Hilux refused to break

Japanese people are very innovative, but aren’t motivated enough to create export-oriented products so you don’t get the end results. It mostly seems to come out in “unproductive” areas like unreasonably good amateur twitter artists.

Hmm... Japan has the most complex economy in the world though?

Can you explain the energy price gap portion of your hypothesis?

From my personal experience showers take less energy than a bath. For my usage, if I block the drain, take a shower, there will only be about a foot of water in the tub, maybe a 1/3 of what I would need to take a bath. Are you assuming other forms of washing or that Americans shower more frequently? Just curious!

You have a three foot deep bathtub? I'm jealous.

Standard American bathtubs are 60" long, 30" wide, and 18" tall -- external dimensions. That's what you'll see in 90+% of apartments and homes.

Maybe they mean ankle deep. A foot turned sideways is only ankle-high, you see... (Metric ain't got nothin' on this kind of versatility, baby!)

You're correct, its actually considerably less than a foot of depth from one shower. It's probably 1-3 inches from my usage, but I take quick showers.

More to my point, a bath's water and energy usage is multiple showers from my experience.

As they say, once you have eliminated all which is impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth!

But perhaps there are still a few more probable hypotheses to test before we settle on your shower theory… Would you agree with that, my friend?

> I suspect a major cause of the shower gap is energy price gap

What a funny assertion. Russia, Iran, Venezuela, Gulf states etc have bottomless supply of cheap energy, where are their innovations?

Stifled by oppressive regimes? Directed away from technology?

Just because you produce energy doesn’t mean you can afford buying your own products. One of your customer countries can have lower energy costs simply because their weather is more mild.

Ahh funny my country is very hot, in summer I'd shower 3 times (I wish for 4 sometimes). It's too hot to come up with any idea. It's only thankful to have water run through.

Can I ask, in places where showering that often is the norm, does one change into a new set of clean clothes each time? And does this basically triple the laundry chore burden?

I'm in Thailand. Same should be applied with "tropical climate" countries. Basically it's hot and humid. Cloths are usually not thick as it's hot, so 2-3 days per laundry for 2 people is ok. It's only annoying when there's not enough favorite cloths.

Smell of sweat / odor happens very soon than those who live in cold+dry area.

I feel like that has to be cultural rather than price based. The French shower more often than Americans for example and we have higher energy prices.

My breakthrough idea come mostly when I'm exercising (read: running). It's one of the reasons I don't run with music / audio. Instead, it's just me and the road.

Initially, I thought it was a personal quirk. Then I read the book "Your Brain at Work" by David Rock. At this point, I'm due for a re-read.

https://www.amazon.com/Your-Brain-Work-Revised-Updated/dp/00...

I still have not read anything on this topic (models of human thought, creativity and emotional affect) so clear and interesting as David Gelernter’s “The Muse in the Machine” (1994).

On my official reading list now, thanks to you.

I'll bite. What's on your unofficial reading list?

If you think your shower ideas are good, you should try meditation!

I’m more of a brisk walk kind of guy, day or night. I’ve always had the best ideas pop up during walking rather than from showering or meditating. It’s the increased cerebral blood flow to the brain that works like a charm.

I see this concept often cited when mathematicians talk about how they had a breakthrough on a proof, but I have to say, I don't think I've ever noticed it in myself, sadly.

I have good ideas, and sometimes I need a break before my idea generation is back to a good state. Perhaps this is because I spend most of my time coding on complicated but not groundbreaking stuff.

But a little bit of jealousy certainly at seeing this described as a "universal human experience."

I wake up with the solutions to whatever I uploaded as a problem during the day, it only works if I think the problem is important so it isn't really often.

during a cold shower my best idea is "I THINK I'M CLEAN ENOUGH!"

At what point in the shower? Maybe there could be a drain based sensor that would tell you you're clean enough -- like how some dishwashers work?

Ever think there could be one spot on your body you've never actively cleaned, it has a unique bacterial signature from that time as a child you sat on a recently crushed meteorite, it's the sole remaining life from an alien World! No, just me then.

That spot might be your navel.

https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2012/12/1-458-bac...

Hmm, it's a mixed quality of ideas. Sometimes it sounds very revolutionary, but then given a full thought around it starts to be just alright. Sometimes I think I finally solve a way of doing thing in code, turns out it's good, for now. Some realization are incredible though like .. why you were so dumb in front of computer.

I wasn't too surprised to find r/showerthoughts a few years ago, still going strong:

https://www.reddit.com/r/Showerthoughts/

This is a remarkable example of annoying reddit moderation; it has something like a 50-step workflow you’re supposed to go through before posting so you can feel bad about how your thought isn’t exactly the right kind of shower thought to deserve posting.

Haha, no doubt! But fun to read no less.

Visualizing being the shower can also sometimes work. I got stuck on a problem a while back, and tried leaning back, closing my eyes, and imaging being in a warm shower with a head full of shampoo. Voila!

I have a theory that it’s also related to heat. Try drinking a pot of coffee in a hot tub if you can find one, set to a high temp. It’s quite the creative experience.

I’m going to try this

I’m convinced that it’s the hot water on the back of my neck opening up blood vessels and increasing oxygen to my brain.

This sounds like it's more related to heart attacks. I don't think this is healthy.

I've always enjoyed drinking hot coffee / tea on hot days, and found out this is a sort of tradition for some people (e.g. kopi in Singapore). Supposedly, it cools you down by kickstarting your sweat, but for me it also makes me feel instantly clearheaded (whereas the caffeine high takes 30ish minutes).

Maybe some of us need that kind of stimulation just to feel fully awake. I'm a generally lethargic person, and in that state I can't really think clearly. A little shock to the central (or sympathetic?) nervous system helps counteract that and get the ideas or work flowing.

Have you tried a sauna?

neuroscience major unmet milestone will be when folk can hit replay to review adjacent past thoughts and perceptions... Monster catalyst to reward those fleeting ahaaas streams which spark off the best thoughts

I never have shower ideas, but I do have walking and driving ideas.

What about grocery store ideas?

Subset of walking I guess!

Going to keep up those daily walks and perhaps extend them!

isn't it just diffuse learning? I also get amazing ideas when I am bored and my mind is wandering.

“If you’ve ever emerged from the shower or returned from walking your dog with a clever idea or a solution to a problem you’d been struggling with, it may not be a fluke.”

Did we really need someone to tell us this? Do people just assume everything is a fluke until some higher authority tells you otherwise?

Until one has at least some systematic data on the "flukes", I think it seems the safest to use "coincidence" as the default

It’s clearly not flukes. It’s not random. It happens often enough to make a clear pattern. No one would even write an article like this if it weren’t common experience.

if you read the article you would find that most of it is focused on why this is the case, instead of whether this is the case.

That’s just the introduction to frame the topic. The article explains how we now understand the biological mechanics of why. That’s what they pay journalism students to do, otherwise they would be on welfare.

They are still on welfare.

I think you're taking one bit of science journalism boilerplate too broadly. Obviously it's not a "fluke" if it happens a lot, to a lot of people, but saying that is just a stock (hackneyed, if you prefer) expression to build up to the explanation.

fluke as in chance/luck. Which is pretty much everything without a scientific basis.

Occasionally I read something where I don’t really learn anything new, but the way the author succinctly describes a concept or idea clicks with me. It might be giving something a name. It might be describing a vague notion in a way that reaffirms something. I’ve been thinking about. In any case, it’s helpful and insightful and helps me organize my thoughts and build upon that.

Each person is different. We all learn different things at different times. Everything in this article may be 100% obvious to you right now. But if you read this a number of years ago, you may have found it insightful. Others are at different parts of their journey. What is obvious to you, is obvious only to you.

You may also be surprised to know that scientists aren’t nearly as “surprised” as journalists suggest. Science journalism often seems to use any means necessary to avoid the word “probability”.

It’s a “fluke” in that you don’t always get this effect. But sometimes you do. And some people never do. How strong is the correlation? What’s the mechanism of causation? That’s where the science comes in.

Of all the banal turns of phrase to be offended by...

It's fascinating. Some random content creator writes a banal article and it offends someone and kicks off a thread of discussion. Accidental short virality at its best.

When I was in college, I made some bucks writing stuff like the OP article. Mostly content-free, just words for the sake of words that were not particularly complex (That job is probably AI automated by now).

I wonder how many people went to war in comment threads over the stuff I wrote with no particular knowledge or interest, with my only interest being able to take my girlfriend on a date. Amusing.

If you're on a train or a bus and staring at your phone rather than the window then you're cheating yourself out of zero effort free ideas.

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