Why Doing Your Laundry is Good For Your Creativity
“The ways of creation are wrapt in mystery. We may only marvel and bow our head.”
- Albert Einstein
Why is it that our best creative ideas hit us while we’re shaving, showering, walking, or doing laundry? Seriously, what’s happening there? There’s something wonderfully mysterious about the way ideas pop into our heads while we’re sorting socks or doing the dishes. Like a golden leaf falling into a still gray pond, there it is - the solution we’ve been searching for.
Eddie Van Halen once built a recording studio in his bathroom because he kept getting song ideas while sitting on the can. Clearly there’s some sort of cosmic joke happening with this phenomenon, and I have my theories.
Here’s why doing laundry (and other boring stuff) is great for your creativity:
1. You’ve ‘let go’. When your rational mind works overtime to fix a pesky problem and it can’t, it burns out. You feel frustrated, tired and hungry. So what do you do? You get up and go to lunch. In that moment you’ve let go. Something about the act of letting go of the struggle is akin to opening a clenched fist - now the raindrops can hit your palm. When my friend Spencer and I get stuck on ideas for our comic strip, he says, “I’m going out for a cigarette.” Five minutes later he comes back with great gag.
2. Your rational mind considers mundane activities to be irrelevant, stupid time wasters. Ah, but to the subconscious creative mind, this is prime time! A drive to Walgreens is just as important to the creative process as painting your picture or rehearsing your lines.
Let’s take another example: taking out the garbage. Not exactly considered a creative activity, right? Not so fast!
As you toss your trash into the barrel, you notice an old man walking by your house. It suddenly hits you; ‘Hm. Maybe instead of starting chapter 4 with a waitress witnessing the robbery, I’ll make her an old man - a former mob boss in the witness protection program - yes, of course! It’s Jezebel’s father!’
See? You just figured out the plot for your future best-seller while standing on a curb holding 2 Hefty bags. Happens all the time. J.K. Rowling was sitting on a train when she dreamed up Harry Potter.
I’ve created enough stuff to know that I’m collaborating with the Big Creator in the Sky, or The Muses as Steven Pressfield calls them in The War of Art. I wish The Muses could separate my lights from my darks, but I’ll happily endure the drudgery of laundry if it means a million-dollar idea might come out in the wash.
(Groan…I know…But I couldn’t resist!)
Your thoughts? Leave a comment…
Hi Mark,
I like this post. It truly describes how creativity hits. Often on the weekends, when I’m not blogging, but doing household chores, the ideas come flooding in. Fortunately I leave my computer on so I can at least take time to jot down a title and a few words as a reminder for a future post.
I also get a lot of ideas just as I am winding down before bed. Often that creativity has kept me up past 2 a.m.
Mark, I think you’re on to something here. I get lots of ideas when doing mundane activities, so I just write them down and come back to them later. We should make sure we keep our subconscious mind turned on all the time.
Hi Mark - I found you through Barbara’s NBOTW. Thes are great points and so true. I had some pretty mundane jobs in the past, that required little thinking at all, but I always came up with some great ideas while I was doing them.
Also, I think just getting those boring tasks out of the way clears your mind somehow and makes you more creative. I did some spring cleaning at the weekend - I hate doing it, but I love the effects afterwards.
I love it. My best solutions come to me when I’ve completely let go of the subject. Ideas pop in when I’m in the shower, falling asleep, or after a workout.
Mark,
Creativity? While doing mundane things?
You’re so right. Just tonight, I was cleaning the inside of the microwave with a toothbrush, removing the exploded pasta from a tinned minestrone soup that had exploded in mid-preparation.
The minestrone was delicious - a trifle hot at first though. But it did give me the energy to use an old toothbrush to deal with the aftermath.
While I was doing it, I came up with an amazing idea to end world poverty, a renewable energy source which can convert a single toe-nail clipping into 7.8 days of power for an entire city the size of New York, and a neat gadget which can make people say, regardless of their political beliefs, “Hilary Clinton for the Whitehouse!” with a deft flick of a switch.
Mischievousness aside, this is a fantastically well-written article. It makes us all recall those moments when creativity struck us at the most inappropriate and unexpected moment.
And the godess of creativity and guidance to wisdom, Barbara, has led me again to another great article. This week I’m a day late due to unforeseen circumstances (that microwave took an age to clean). But Barabara’s weekly foray inroducing great blogs and articles like yours Mark is a day late.
I adore the article. Subscribe to its wisdom. I laughed at the taking the trash out scene. And generall experienced a sense of fun and joy as I read it.
I wish you success, but more inmportantly alot of fun on your blogging journey.
I totally agree with this! My best thinking time is in the shower and one of my favorite pictures I’ve ever seen was a National Geographic image (the Brain issue, with the buddhist monk’s head all wired up). The image was of a doctor who kept a grease pencil in the shower and wrote all of her ideas on the walls.
@Ian - Wow! Thank you! I’ve learned 2 things from your post:
1. The combination of microwave radiation and floride from your toothbrush somehow creates an opening in the space-time continuum, giving you access to the Wisdom of the Ages.
And…
2. Never underestimate the explosive power of
minestrone.
@Lisa Beth - welcome! You raise a good question; if one keeps a grease pencil in the shower, does that keep ideas at bay? I wonder if Eddie Van Halen stopped getting song ideas after he built his bathroom studio. Hm…
Mark,
I’m amazed you actually gained two things from my comment. I thought it was a complete waste of electricity. I’m inspired now to carry on.
Perhaps a further experiment with Mexican Chilli Beef and Bean soup, and mouthwash to clear up with afterwards.
@Ian - by God man, Mexican Chilli Beef and Bean Soup? Are you mad? Talk about explosive. You could destroy the universe with an experiment like that. Or at least make the rest of us want to leave the room. Don’t do it!