The importance of idle time...

I'm enjoying reading Creativity, Flow and the Psychology of Discovery and Invention by Mihaly Csikszentmihailyi while I'm here. It's a book I've had for some time but haven't got round to reading properly before, partly because I didn't want to cram it in. I have been cramming too many things in recently. One of the things I'll take back from here though is the importance of doing nothing. Here's what Mihaly says about idle time (I'll be informal because, boy, what a surname...)

Something similar to parallel processing may be taking place when the elements of a problem are said to be incubating. When we think consciously about an issue, our previous training and the effort to arrive at a solution push our ideas in a linear direction, usually along predictable or familiar lines. But intentionality does not work in the subconscious. Free from rational direction, ideas can combine and pursue each other every which way. Because of this freedom, original connections that would be at first rejected by the rational mind have a chance to become established.