Writers’ block? Go take a nap.
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Composer Erik Satie walked roughly 10 kilometers from Arcueil to Paris every morning. Saul Bellow rode his mountain bike. Novelist Haruki Murakami keeps a famously intense running schedule, which he described in the Paris Review:
When I'm in writing mode for a novel, I get up at four a.m. and work for five to six hours. In the afternoon, I run for ten kilometers or swim for fifteen hundred meters (or do both), then I read a bit and listen to some music. I go to bed at nine p.m. I keep to this routine every day without variation. The repetition itself becomes the important thing; it's a form of mesmerism. I mesmerize myself to reach a deeper state of mind.
Whether it lets the mind wander, improves mood, or functions as an important part of daily ritual, regular physical activity has been linked to improved creative thinking. In this 2013 study, athletes outperformed non-athletes in tests of both divergent thinking (coming up with many possible solutions to a problem) and convergent thinking (coming up with one solution to a problem).
OK, so it doesn't necessarily have to be a nap, but most creative people carve out time for relaxation. Take Vladimir Nabokov, who described to the New York Times a schedule that included a daily two-hour nap and 20-minute soak in a hot bath, or artist Joan Miró, who allowed himself just a five-minute nap after lunch. Naps have been shown to improve alertness and enhance right brain function (which is closely associated with creative activity), but if that's not your thing, meditation also works to increase creativity. This 2012 study found that people who practiced open-monitoring meditation (which avoids focus on any particular concept or object, and instead is receptive to all immediate thoughts and sensations) were better at generating new ideas. Think of it as a brain refresher.
A key component of making work you're proud of is knowing when to walk away from it. A lot of times, the best ideas come seemingly out of nowhere, when you've welcomed distraction and let your mind wander. Harvard University researcher and psychologist Shelley Carson writes about this all-important "incubation period" in her book The Creative Brain:
Often one potential but unhelpful solution may block your ability to think up other solutions while the unhelpful one is still fresh in your mind. The incubation period, however, allows you time to forget inappropriate solutions upon which you may have become fixated.
But you don't have to necessarily step away from a project to loosen up your mind, either. This 2012 study from University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign suggests that moderate background noise (think the bustle of a coffee shop) offers enough of a distraction to trigger abstract thinking and the development of creative ideas. So, while you may be used to holing up in the quiet corner of your apartment, it's worth changing up the environment.
