Sometimes nothing comes while you're sitting at your desk, and then an idea suddenly pops up in the shower, on a walk, on an exercise bike, or right before you fall asleep.
"Instead of building the CSS from scratch, just borrow the layout of a popular design." "The article list should look like Google search results." "If I can send a passing thought to AI in three taps, it becomes a usable asset."
Ideas like these tend to show up when I'm moving a little or drifting in that hazy stretch just before sleep, more often than when I'm frowning at a screen and trying hard.
That's not just your imagination.
Creativity research links walking, mind wandering, the light first stage of sleep (called N1 sleep), and "dream incubation" to ideas and insight.
In this article, I'll go through why ideas come in the shower, on a walk, on an exercise bike, and at sleep onset, based on that research.
Why You Get Stuck at Your Desk
When you work at a desk, your brain is in a heavy "processing mode."
Say you're improving a website. You're juggling things like these at the same time:
- Is this article list easy to read?
- Is the CSS (the code that controls how a page looks) broken anywhere?
- Can people read it on a phone?
- Is the title right?
- Are the related articles getting in the way?
- How do I explain this to Codex (an AI coding assistant)?
- Can I actually build it?
- Is there any problem for SEO (search engine rankings)?
That's a lot to carry.
In other words, at your desk, evaluating, comparing, fixing, building, and checking all kick in before any real idea-making happens.
In that state, your inner critic is too strong.
Even when the seed of an idea shows up, you shoot it down right away:
- Can you actually build that?
- Is it really correct?
- Will it break the design?
- Does it fit with the other articles?
- Shouldn't you think it through more carefully?
If the judging starts too early, a rough idea gets crushed before it has a chance to grow.
Creativity needs both a stretch of free association and a later stretch of sorting things out. If you keep thinking at your desk, the sorting side gets too strong and the free-association side has trouble getting going.
What's Happening in the Shower, on a Walk, and on an Exercise Bike
Showering, walking, and riding an exercise bike have something in common.
Your body is busy, but the front of your mind is a little bit free.
- Shower: you wash up and feel the water temperature
- Walk: you step along and look at the scenery
- Exercise bike: you pedal and keep a rhythm
None of these is a complete blank.
But none is a hard decision or a complicated task either.
This "moderate amount of attention" is the key.
If something is too boring, your mind goes foggy. If it's too hard, the task in front of you swallows all your attention.
Showers, walks, and exercise bikes sit in between.
So your brain loosens up a bit, and past memories, nagging feelings that something's off, designs you've seen, articles you've read, and the problem you've been chewing on can recombine on their own.
The "Shower Effect" Has Been Studied
The familiar experience of getting ideas in the shower has been studied in creativity research too.
A 2022 study called "The shower effect" reported that mind wandering helped creative incubation (letting a problem simmer in the background) not during completely boring tasks but during activities that take a moderate amount of attention.
In other words, a slightly engaging activity may lead to more creative ideas than doing nothing at all.
That fits showers, walks, and exercise bikes very well.
Reference:
- The shower effect: Mind wandering facilitates creative incubation during moderately engaging activities
https://experts.umn.edu/en/publications/the-shower-effect-mind-wandering-facilitates-creative-incubation-
There's Research Showing Walking Boosts Creativity
On walking and creativity, the best-known study is the 2014 one by Oppezzo & Schwartz.
In that study, people did better on divergent thinking when walking than when sitting.
Divergent thinking is the ability to come up with many ideas or uses, rather than hunting for a single right answer.
It suits tasks like these:
- Coming up with several article titles
- Brainstorming improvements for a website
- Putting into words what feels off about a piece of CSS
- Turning one experience into several article topics
- Turning a weird dream into material for a story
On the other hand, walking isn't necessarily good for tasks where you have to pin down one exact answer.
So walking is better for "coming up with ideas" than for "double-checking answers."
Reference:
- Give Your Ideas Some Legs: The Positive Effect of Walking on Creative Thinking
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/24749966/
Sleep Onset Is a Creative Sweet Spot
Right before bed, there's a stretch when you're not fully asleep yet but your awareness is starting to loosen.
In research, this light stage of sleep right after you drift off is called N1 sleep.
N1 sleep has drawn attention as a creative "sweet spot."
A 2021 study in Science Advances reported that people who briefly entered N1 sleep were more likely to solve an insight problem than people who stayed awake or went on to deeper N2 sleep.
There's a well-known story that Edison and Dalí would doze off holding a key or a steel ball, then wake up when it clattered to the floor and grab whatever idea they had. You could see that as a trick for catching the moment of sleep onset before you fall too deep.
Reference:
- Sleep onset is a creative sweet spot
https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.abj5866 - Scientific American: Thomas Edison's Naps Inspire a Way to Spark Your Own Creativity
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/thomas-edisons-naps-inspire-a-way-to-spark-your-own-creativity/
Dreams Make Strange Combinations
What's fun about sleep onset and dreams is that things that don't connect in real life connect on their own.
Say you had a dream like this:
I turn into a female elf and ask a foreign tourist, "Can you see the spirits of each element?" The tourist answers, "Nope, can't see 'em lol."
It makes no sense.
But structurally, it's quite creative.
Several elements are mixed together in this dream:
- Fantasy
- Elves
- Elemental spirits
- A foreign tourist
- Tourist guidance
- A language gag
- A comedy sketch
When you're awake, you might just think, "What was that about?" and move on.
In a dream, though, it all connects without any fuss.
As raw material for a story, that's pretty useful.
For example, you could build it out like this:
- A tourist information center in another world
- An elf who guides people on the assumption that they can see spirits
- But the tourists can't see them
- Gags about cultural gaps, perception gaps, and differences in belief
- A mysterious service called a "spirit visibility check"
Dreams are sloppy when it comes to logic.
But they're very good at the thing creativity needs: connecting things that are far apart.
There's Research on Using Dreams on Purpose
There's a method for using dreams to boost creativity called Targeted Dream Incubation.
You present a specific theme at sleep onset and try to get that theme into your dream.
A 2023 study in Scientific Reports reported that creative performance went up after N1 sleep, and went up even more when dream incubation of a specific theme succeeded.
In other words, dreams aren't entirely random. By planting a question or a theme, you may be able to turn them into material you can work with, at least to some degree.
Reference:
- Targeted dream incubation at sleep onset increases post-sleep creative performance
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-023-31361-w https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10185495/
The Usual Obstacle Is Judging Too Early
When ideas won't come, it's not because you lack ability.
Often it's the opposite: you get stuck because your processing is too fast.
Evaluating, fixing, building, and comparing all start before the idea has even shown up.
Say you're stuck on a site design. At your desk, it goes like this:
- How do I fix this CSS?
- How do I make this card easier to read?
- Is this spacing okay?
- Is this color scheme okay?
But on the exercise bike, higher-level ideas come out:
- Why not drop the cards altogether?
- Why not make it look like Google search results?
- Why not move toward a plain blog like Cocoon (a popular free WordPress theme in Japan)?
- Why not just borrow the layout of a popular design for the CSS?
These come up because you've stepped back from the details right in front of you.
At your desk, it's easy to get trapped in a local optimum, polishing a small detail while missing the bigger picture. When your body is moving, it's easier to get back to the overall direction.
That difference is big.
Daily Routines That Bring Out Ideas
If you want to build ideas into your life, use each situation for what it does best.
Shower
Good for:
- Sorting out what felt off today
- Cooling down emotionally
- Turning things into article topics
- Putting into words the "something's weird" feeling about a site or a piece of writing
How to use it:
- Set one question before you get in
- Don't force yourself to think in the shower
- Jot down just the words that came up after you're out
Examples:
"What makes this article list hard to read?" "What label fits this anger?" "How many articles could I get out of this story?"
Walking
Good for:
- Article titles
- Splitting an article into several
- Putting a label on work or relationship situations
- Big-picture decisions
How to use it:
- Walk with one question in mind
- Don't push too hard for an answer
- When something comes, say a quick note into voice input
Examples:
"Why is this article's title built the way it is?" "What label fits how this workplace is structured?" "How many articles should this be split into?"
Exercise Bike
Good for:
- Improving CSS
- Site navigation
- App navigation
- Turning thoughts into assets in three taps
- Designing a cluster of related articles
How to use it:
- Pedal at low to moderate intensity
- Get your phone ready for voice input
- Catch the words for what feels off, not conclusions
Examples:
"Not a card UI, but something like Google search results" "Move toward the Cocoon style" "Keep the UI ordinary and make the content the sharp part" "Borrow the layout of a popular design"
Sleep Onset
Good for:
- Metaphors
- Labels
- The one-line conclusion of an article
- Story ideas
- Strange dream combinations
How to use it:
- Set just one question before bed
- Don't keep staring at your phone
- If something comes, jot down just one phrase
- Dig deeper the next day
Examples:
"What label fits this feeling that something's off?" "What's the one-line conclusion of this article?" "What could this dream become material for?"
Dream Log Right After Waking
Good for:
- Fiction and creative work
- Metaphors
- Social media posts
- Understanding yourself
- Article openings
How to use it:
- Jot down just words right after you wake up
- Don't try to write it out in full
- Send it to AI in the afternoon or later
Example:
Female elf Foreign tourist Elemental spirits "Can't see 'em lol" Tourist information center in another world
That much is enough.
A dream fades within a few minutes of waking. So the trick is to keep "tags," not the whole thing.
A Daily Loop That Works as an Idea Machine
In the end, this flow works best:
Input
↓
Leave it alone
↓
A flash of an idea
↓
Get it out of your head
↓
Turn it into an asset
In concrete terms, it looks like this:
Look at the site
Read an article
Feel that something's off
Look at a popular design
↓
Hand it over to the shower, a walk, the exercise bike, or sleep onset
↓
"Wouldn't Google style work for this?"
"Wouldn't it be better to make it more like Cocoon?"
"That dream setting would make a good article"
↓
Send it to AI by voice input
↓
Turn it into an article, a Markdown note, instructions for Codex, or a CSS fix
This isn't just a random flash of inspiration.
It means putting an idea-catching system into your daily life.
A Caution: Don't Work Too Hard Right Before Sleep
Sleep onset is useful for ideas.
But if you do serious work right before bed, you'll wreck your sleep.
So before bed, just setting a question is enough.
Fine to do:
- Set one question
- Jot down only words
- Keep only fragments of a dream
Better not to do:
- Try to finish an article
- Try to fix the CSS
- Write long instructions for Codex
- Wake your brain up with social media or videos
Sleep onset isn't work time. It's time to hand your ideas over to your dreams.
Summary
Ideas come in the shower, on a walk, on an exercise bike, and at sleep onset for more than just random reasons.
At your desk, evaluating, fixing, building, and comparing get too strong.
On the other hand, during light physical activity or at sleep onset, your attention loosens, and memories and nagging feelings are more likely to recombine on their own.
So when you're stuck, rather than beating your head against the desk, it's better to build an idea machine into your daily life.
When stuck, don't grind it out at your desk.
Hand it over to the shower, a walk, the exercise bike, or sleep onset.
Send whatever comes up to AI by voice input.
That turns your daily life itself into a machine for collecting article ideas.
The female elf, the foreign tourist, and the elemental spirits from my dream aren't just random nonsense images.
They're a "tourist information center in another world" comedy sketch that my brain put together on its own.
If something's usable, pick it up.
Ideas don't only fall onto the desk. They also drop in the shower stall, on the paths between rice fields, on the exercise bike, and in the gap between awake and asleep on your futon.
