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Need to Solve a Problem? Neuroscience Says Try the Jack Reacher Method
Jeff Haden
5–6 minutes

There’s a point in Lee Child’s book Make Me (the 20th in his Jack Reacher series, for those keeping score) where Reacher is trying to solve a problem and decides to back-burner it: instead of actively working the problem, he sets it aside, trusting his subconscious to eventually make the right connections.

Which it does.

Sound kinda hokey?

Actually, no. Neuroscience shows you tend to be at your most creative when you’re not trying to be creative. Actually, you’re at your most creative when you’re not trying to do anything at all.

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Researchers at Washington University in St. Louis used PET scans to determine which parts of the brain lit up during different types of activity. To establish baselines, some participants were put in the scanner and told to do nothing, what the researchers called “resting state.” Surprisingly, resting state resulted in mental energy spikes across various brain regions. their surprise, though, mental energy spiked in various regions of the brain.

In fact, mental energy turned out to be higher in resting state than active state, where participants were given mental tasks.

A few years later, neuroscientist Nancy Andreasen made resting-state activity (she called it “free floating periods of thought”) her focus. No tasks. No inputs. No intentional creativity. No nothing; just vegging.

As Andreasen writes in The Creating Brain: the Neuroscience of Genius

Most investigators made the convenient assumption that the brain would be blank or neutral during “rest.” From introspection I knew that my own brain is often at its most active when I stretch out on a bed or sofa and close my eyes.

We found activations in multiple regions of the association cortex. We were not (seeing) a passive silent brain during the resting state, but rather a brain that was actively connecting thoughts and experiences.

Andreasen termed that activity REST: Random Episodic Silent Thinking. During REST, Andreasen says your brain “uses its most human and complex parts, areas known to gather information and link it all together, in potentially novel ways.”

That’s why you sometimes have while taking a walk. Or taking a shower. Or doing dishes. Or driving. When you let your mind wander, when you don’t actively focus on anything specific, your brain makes all sorts of seemingly unconnected associations.

You think about the future. You think about the past. You speculate. You synthesize. You test and discard.

As Andreasen writes, “When the brain/mind thinks in a free and unencumbered fashion, it uses its most human and complex parts.”

In simple terms, if you want to be creative, stop trying to be creative. Stop actively trying to work the problem. Do something relatively mindless, and let your mind do some work in the background.

As Steven Johnson wrote in The New York Times:

The seemingly trivial activity of mind-wandering is now believed to play a central role in the brain’s “deep learning,” the mind’s sifting through past experiences, imagining future prospects and assessing them with emotional judgments: that flash of shame or pride or anxiety that each scenario elicits.

Granted, REST, or mind-wandering, or whatever you want to call it, is easier said than done.

For one thing, stimulation and “focus” are always within easy reach. Plus, it can feel unproductive, and even oddly uncomfortable, not to fill time with some sort of activity. How many people sit in a waiting room and just wait? How many people sit on a plane and just stare at the seat back in front of them? How many people take a walk without listening to something? How many people don’t listen to something while they’re driving? How many people work out without earbuds? (While it’s just one data point, the other day I went to the gym and counted 18 of 20 people wearing headphones. One of the two not wearing headphones was me.)

Sitting and thinking in a “free and unencumbered fashion”? Sounds boring.

And it is boring, at least at first. It’s also tough to stick with, especially if you decide to sit in a chair and just stare out the window.

So try this instead. Take a walk. (Then you’ll be double-dipping: A study published in the Journal of Experimental Psychology found that your creative output increases by as much as 60 percent when you’re walking.)

Just walk. Don’t think about thinking. Don’t think about what you should be doing, should be listening to, should be focused on. Let your mind wander.

In all likelihood, your thoughts will soon drift to a problem you have. Or a challenge you’re working through. Your thoughts will shift forward and backward in time. You’ll sift through hypothetical possibilities and outcomes.

You’ll actively, without trying, connect ideas, thoughts, and experiences.

When you’re REST-ing, you won’t have to come up with ideas. Ideas will come to you, because that’s how your brain is wired.

The opinions expressed here by Inc.com columnists are their own, not those of Inc.com.

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