At least six days a week for the past year, I have gone for a morning walk in my neighborhood. I never deviate from the route, and 95% of the time, I take bouncy music along via my iPod. I can do this walk almost completely on autopilot. There are a couple of street crossings where I have to check for traffic, and the pavement has a few dangerous lips I’ve stubbed my toes on. But I’ve since trained myself to walk heel-toe to lessen the risk of tripping.
Because my conscious attention isn’t focused on what I’m doing, my mind is free to wander. And wander it does! I get my best ideas during my morning walk. Solutions to puzzles or problems bubble up to the surface. Patterns get detected. Connections get made. It’s rare that I don’t have at least one “Aha!” moment while I’m walking.
That’s no surprise, since the conditions are perfect for generating creative insight. I’m not trying to take credit for this, since I didn’t set this situation up intentionally. In fact, I started this particular walking routine primarily for health reasons. Initially, the usual mind chatter occupied my thoughts throughout most of my walk. But over time and with increased repetition, that began to change.
Now, even if there’s something mundane or annoying on my mind when I start out, my brain quickly lets it go and kicks into a different gear. I don’t have to do anything to make this happen. That’s the beauty and wonder of a routine like this. I don’t need to exert any effort to get my brain to come up with ideas or “be creative.” All I have to do is clip the iPod to my belt, put on my jacket, head out the door, and take the same walk I’ve been taking nearly every day for the past year.
Check out poetdonald’s comment on my previous post to get someone else’s experience of routine opening the door to creativity. (And thanks again, Don.)
Joycelyn,an interesting update on my comment in your previous post. My new tattoo was finished last night…..picture soon 🙂
This morning, I had to clean and wrap the tattoo, which not only took the time I usually use for meditation, but I had a to make a lot of decisions on how to wrap my upper right arm using my left hand (I’m right-handed).It was a struggle.
When I sat down to write my daily haiku, my mind wasn’t interested. My mindset was very different. I wrote haiku, but I didn’t feel at all inspired, and didn’t enjoy the writing.
Hopefully my tattoo heals soon!
Yes, hopefully it heals VERY soon. 🙂 All those decisions use (and use up) conscious attention. That’s the beauty of habits and routines, which are unconscious. All the experts say that if we had to start making conscious decisions about every little thing we did from the time we woke up, we would run out of conscious attention before we ran out of morning.
And you need to get back to writing haiku!
Just to clarify, I did write haiku that morning, its just my mind wasn’t in it at all. I had to force some out.