Wang Yunya, Class 2, Senior 1, Shenzhen Foreign Languages School Instructed by Li Furong

Known as something mysterious and valuable, creativity often comes when we are least expecting it. Agatha Christie, the famous British female detective novelist, reported that ideas for her crime stories often came while she was washing up or having a bath. “Invention, in my opinion, arises directly from idleness, possibly also from laziness,” she wrote in her autobiography.

Psychologists seem to agree, for creative thoughts are more likely to occur after “incubation” — a period of time that allows us to get a psychological distance from our task, and then come back to the task energetically. Also, being concentrated on one task for a long time may lead to us being fixated on one certain problem, while incubation allows us the chance to widen our mental focus so that we can make connections between various possibilities and return to the problem from a different perspective.

Intriguingly, incubation can work best when our minds are “distracted” from an engaging but relatively easy task so that our minds are given time to wander freely.

In 2012, an experiment was conducted to demonstrate this idea. The participants were first asked to finish a task called “Unusual Uses Task,” of which the aim was to come up with as many surprising uses of common objects as possible.

After a period time of brainstorming, participants were divided into three groups to take part in different kinds of incubations. In the first group, participants were given 12 minutes to have a rest.

The second group was shown a string of numbers and had to distinguish whether the numbers were even or odd. This task was akin to taking a walk or doing house chores, which didn’t demand much effort and left much free space for their minds.

The third group, however, was asked to do a rather hard task — to remember some numbers within a limited time before the answers were given. It is what we often do — always concentrating on the work, and leaving almost no mental space for the mind to wander. After the incubation, participants continued with some demanding tasks. Participants of the second group improved, as was expected, and showed a 40 percent rise in their creativity.

This is also true with our studies. According to some straight-A students, they usually shift to some relaxing academic activities if they feel exhausted with one difficult subject.

For example, they would learn some English words when they are bored with math problems, or listen to music or read novels or stories to allow their minds a chance to “go out” for a while so that they can relax.

As a matter of fact, letting our minds become distracted from hard tasks and keeping them actively involved in easy work will increase our study efficiency. Walking, painting, and doing sports can all give us time to unwind and shake up our brain cells. Through these kinds of relaxation, not only can we release ourselves from the hard work but we can also fuel our creativity.

As we all know, innovation is playing an indispensable role in the development of society, which gives us teenagers more opportunities to express ourselves and at the same time requires more creative ideas and actions.

Therefore, to adapt to such competition, what we need to do is not work hard all the time without taking a break, but find proper ways to free our minds from time to time.