“It’s hard to do a really good job on anything you don’t think about in the shower.”
—writes Paul Graham, whose essay The Top Idea in Your Mind argues that thinking in the shower isn’t just fucking around. In fact, it’s the key to doing your most creative work.
What I think resonated so strongly about Steve Jobs’ quote on creativity, which made huge waves on the internet a few weeks ago, was that he directly mentioned the word “guilt” in connection with creative thinking:
When you ask a creative person how they did something, they may feel a little guilty because they didn’t really do it, they just saw something. It seemed obvious to them after awhile.
That’s literally how it works, but getting there sometimes takes unprecedented amounts of non-work. Paul calls it “working ambiently.” Caterina Fake calls it “working on the right thing (as opposed to freaking out).” I’ve always thought of it as being consumed by an idea, and then not knowing what to do besides filter everything around me through that particular lens.
The scary part about this way of working is that A) you can only control it indirectly at best, B) that working on the right things doesn’t always feel like working, and C) that tangible results are not guaranteed.
Pulling your nose off of the grindstone for a second is, for me at least, the hardest part—but also the only place to start being open to possibilities. I find over-and-over again that letting go is the only way I solve my toughest problems.
Paul’s essay is a good reminder not to lose hope in the process and that if you lose sight of your top idea or find yourself freaking out about the wrong things, the solution is simple: take a shower.
(via caseyagollan)
