Novelist Agatha Christie believed that the best time to write was while washing the dishes.

Author Harper Lee did much of her creative thinking while golfing. And artist Grant Wood said, “All of the really good ideas I ever had came to me while I was milking a cow.”

Welcome to the wonderful world of incubation. That’s the third step of the 5-step creative process — the one where you take your eye off the ball and let the back of your mind work on your project for awhile. Then comes the miraculous moment when your brain presents a brilliant idea fully formed — aka the eureka or aha! moment.

Where did that brilliant idea come from? I don’t know. It’s all part of the magical and mysterious juju of the creative process.

Incubation works.

For decades, creative personalities have reported that their thought processes include … doing nothing.

Richard Feynman, the Nobel Prize-winning physicist, preferred the relaxed atmosphere of … ahem … a topless bar. There, he would drink 7 Up, enjoy the entertainment and, if inspiration struck, doodle equations on cocktail napkins.

The French call it l’esprit de l’escalier — the wit of the staircase. That’s when you think of a great idea on your way out of the brainstorming meeting or the perfect retort the day after someone makes a snarky remark.

Want to bring your creative ideas to life? Take a tip from creativity research: Unlock your creative potential by putting away the conscious work and opening your mind to the aha! moment.

1. Time it right.

That’s forage, analyze, then take a break. Incubation is the third step of the creative process.

My writing time is much more effective if I research and organize information the day before I write. The next day, I’m itching to get started. The reason: 16 hours of down time have really been 16 hours of incubation.

Kenneth Atchity, author of A Writer’s Time, calls this phenomenon “creative pressure.” You put off that first draft until you can hardly stand it any more, until you can’t wait to get to the keyboard and let off some of that creative steam.

But incubate before you’ve foraged and analyzed (preparation incubation), and you don’t have anything to incubate on. Don’t let incubation become procrastination. (My brother, the famous comic book artist, substitutes a rhyming word for procrastination here.)

2. Sleep on it.

Russian chemist Dmitri Mendeleev reportedly established the periodic table of elements after waking from a dream one afternoon. British poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge claimed that “Kubla Khan” came to him in a dream.

You might come up with better ideas if you got more sleep, too.

German scientists have demonstrated that our brains continue to work on problems while we sleep. After eight hours of rest, they’re more likely to come up with the right solution.

Other research shows that the best way to keep your brain working is to get outside and move.

However you accomplish it, the incubation effect requires not working on the project at hand.

3. Multitask your way to incubation.

Don’t have time to sleep — let alone hit a topless bar — while a deadline is looming?

Instead of taking a break, move on to a new project. Forage and analyze Project A, for example, then forage and analyze Project B. While your conscious mind tackles Project B, your subconscious will be problem-solving on Project A.

Stuck? Don’t plow through. The best approach may well be to move on.

Learn more about why multitasking works, in this TedTalk.

Incubation insights.

Incubation may be the most misunderstood — and, therefore, the most frustrating — part of the creative process. That’s because it seems as if you aren’t really doing anything.

To Western eyes (and Western bosses) that can look a little … well … lazy. But the cost of going full bore on a project without a break can actually be creativity — even productivity itself.

So take a tip from creative individuals, and don’t skip this important stage of idea generation. Take a walk, take a nap, take a break — or just switch projects.

“Break,” says creativity expert Matthew May, “is the most important part of breakthrough.”

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Sources: Jonah Lehrer, “The Eureka Hunt,” The New Yorker, July 28, 2008

William McCall, “Learn While Dreaming: Sleep Essential for Creative Thinking, Sharper Memories,” Associated Press, Jan. 21, 2004

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The first of the five stages of the creative process is to forage, or stuff your brain with information and inspiration.

The better the information and inspiration, the more creative the result.

1. To be interesting, be interested.

So get out there and learn something.

“Every really good creative person … has always had two noticeable characteristics,” writes James Webb Young, the pre-Mad Men-era ad executive who invented the 5-step creative process and put it down in a book called A Technique for Producing Ideas.

“For it is with the advertising man as with the cow: no browsing, no milk.”

— James Webb Young, author of A Technique for Producing Ideas

“First, there was no subject under the sun in which he could not easily get interested — from, say, Egyptian burial customs to modern art. Every facet of life had fascination for him. Second, he was an extensive browser in all sorts of fields of information. For it is with the advertising man as with the cow: no browsing, no milk.”

So whether you’re creating an advertising campaign or a blog post, start with market research, interviews — even Google the details you’ll need for your project.

2. Don’t skip this step.

Maybe you hate research. Do it anyway.

“Gathering raw material … is such a terrible chore that we are constantly trying to dodge it,” Young wrote. “Instead of working systematically at the job of gathering raw material we sit around hoping for inspiration to strike us.”

That’s not the creative process. That’s procrastination.

You won’t come out of the incubation stage with an aha moment unless you go through this, the insight stage.

3. Get out of your own backyard.

The farther afield you seek inspiration, the bigger your ideas will be.

“Avoid creative incest. As with actual incest, the product of creative incest just keeps getting dumber and dumber and dumber with each generation.”

— Dan Kennedy, author of “No B.S.” marketing books

Beware the “but-that’s-not-like-our-project/company/style/industry/specialty” reflex. If you’re only willing to steal ideas from communications that are just like yours — say, the websites of Iowa insurance companies that specialize in agricultural coverage — your ideas will be as limited as your foraging.

Marketing guru Dan Kennedy calls that approach “creative incest.”

“As with actual incest,” he says, “the product of creative incest just keeps getting dumber and dumber and dumber with each generation.”

Forage widely.

“Creativity is an import-export game,” writes Ronald S. Burt, a sociologist with the University of Chicago. “It is not a creation game.”

And the better material you import, the more creative your idea will be.

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I don’t believe in writer’s block. Never had time for it. Blank page? I’ll take two, please. I’ve never met the muse. She sounds delightful, but she’s never knocked on my door.

“There is a muse,” writes novelist Stephen King. “But he’s not going to come fluttering down into your writing room and scatter creative fairy-dust all over your typewriter or computer station.

“He lives in the ground. He’s a basement guy. You have to descend to his level, and once you get down there, you have to furnish an apartment for him to live in. You have to do all the grunt labor, in other words, while the muse sits and smokes cigars and admires his bowling trophies and pretends to ignore you.”

Amen, Brother!

Still, every writer struggles with times when you’d rather be reading a book than writing one — or heading to the coffee shop instead of the office. So how can you put words on paper when you can’t think of what to write? Here are some writing strategies that work.

Use the creative process.

What passes for writer’s block is usually a process problem. The more you understand how your brain works, the more likely you are to come up with a good method for writing.

I use the five-step creative process, for instance, every day. It looks like this:

1. Forage, or gather information. This is the “feed your brain” step of the process. Here’s where you interview subject matter experts and turn to Google for the raw material that will become your story.
2. Analyze that information. Focus, sift and organize it to see how the pieces fit together. (Bonus: During this step, you are also uploading this information to your brain.)
3. Incubate, or let the information simmer. Let your subconscious mind mull over the message.
4. Break through, or get to the “Aha!” Here, you’ll answer questions like “What should I use for my lead?” and “How am I going to organize this thing?”
5. Knuckle down, or take Ernest Hemingway’s advice and “apply the seat of your pants to the seat of the chair.” In other words, start writing. (In the three-step writing process, this step is called free writing.)

Skip any of these steps or carry them out in the wrong order, and you may have trouble figuring out what to write.

Before you sit down to write …

The biggest contributor to writer’s block is when you skip incubation — that is, you try to force a solution without relaxing and letting your subconscious mind work on your project.

“I’d like to remind you again, Winfield, that daydreaming is only a part of the creative process.”

— Boss to employee in a New Yorker cartoon by Charles Barsotti

That’s easy to do.

Incubation is the most misunderstood — and therefore, the most frustrating — of all writing tools. That’s because it seems as if you aren’t really doing anything.

That can frustrates us — and irritate our bosses. But skip incubation, and you can look forward to some long days staring at a blank page.

Successful writers incubate. Period. Here are three ways to perform this essential writing exercise:

1. Work on more than one project at a time. That’s right, multitasking can actually work in your favor when it comes to overcoming writer’s block. Blocked on that blog post? Switch to social media status updates. While your conscious mind tackles the Project B, your subconscious mind keeps toiling away on Project A.
2. Time it right. My best case scenario: Finish foraging and analyzing one day, then head out for happy hour. When I return to the office the next day, I’m itching to write. The reason: 16 hours of down time have really been 16 hours of incubation. Call it “creative pressure.” Put off that first draft until you need to let off some creative steam.
3. Incubate in tiny doses. No time to put the project away for even one night? Try a fast-food method of incubation: Put your notes in a file. Put the file in a drawer. Then take a few minutes to answer your email, walk to the vending machine or organize your files. Even a tiny change of scenery can be more productive than staring vacantly at your notes for 20 minutes.

Creative works.

Gordon MacKenzie, the late, great Hallmark creative guru, told a story in his book Orbiting the Giant Hairball (edited by yours truly!) about a businessman watching a herd of dairy cows.

The guy watches and watches, but all he sees is a bunch of cows leisurely hanging out under shade trees, roaming around a pond or quietly eating grass. Finally, the businessman shakes a fist at the cows and shouts: “You *&%@# cows get to work, or I’ll have you butchered!”

“The man wants to see the cows creating 24 hours a day,” MacKenzie wrote. “What he doesn’t understand is that only a portion of the creative act is visible. As they stand idly in the pasture, those cows are performing the miracle of turning grass and water into milk right before his eyes.”

When you incubate, you are performing the miracle of transforming words and ideas into stories. Don’t skip this step. There is magic in it.

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Have you ever come up with a brilliant idea — on the way home from the brainstorming meeting? Developed a creative theme for the annual report while pulling weeds? Written the perfect headline in the shower?

Welcome to the wonderful world of the creative process, where working sometimes doesn’t look like working, and where sticking with it is often the worst thing you can do to move ahead.

I’ve used the five-step creative process every day since I learned it at Hallmark Cards a million years ago. But I’ve recently learned that it was the creation of a pre-Mad Men-era ad executive named James Webb Young, who put it down in a book called A Technique for Producing Ideas.

Forget the idea that genius is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration. Success for a creative person is at least 51% process. This process can help you develop ideas in minutes that might otherwise take days or weeks or months to develop.

Here are the five stages of the creative process that you can use to come up with a good idea:

1. Forage, or gather information.

This is the “feed your brain,” or preparation stage, of the process. Here’s where you conduct market research and interview sources — or hit the mall, museum and movies — for the raw material that will become your idea or story.

The key thing here is: Get out of your own backyard. The farther afield you seek inspiration, the bigger your ideas will be.

Beware the “but-that’s-not-like-our-project/company/style/industry/specialty” reflex. If you’re only willing to steal ideas from communications that are just like yours — say, the websites of Iowa insurance companies that specialize in agricultural coverage — your ideas will be as limited as your foraging.

Marketing guru Dan Kennedy calls that approach “creative incest.”

“As with actual incest,” he says, “the product of creative incest just keeps getting dumber and dumber and dumber with each generation.”

2.Analyze that information.

Now that you have your raw materials, focus, sift through and organize them to see how the pieces fit together. Look for themes, holes, relationships and structure.

You might call this outlining, writing a walk-away sentence or developing a theme. That’s part of this process, sure. But the real goal is to upload the information to your brain so it can take over while you’re doing something more interesting.

3. Incubate.

During the incubation stage, let the information simmer. This is where you take your eye off the ball and let the back of your mind work on your project for a while. As Agatha Christie used to say, “The best time to write is when you’re doing the dishes.” That’s when the incubation insight shows up.

Don’t have time to do the dishes while a deadline is looming? Instead of taking a break, move on to a new project. Forage and analyze project A, for example, then forage and analyze project B. While you work on project B, you’re marinating project A.

Stuck? Don’t plow through. The best approach may well be to move on.

4. Break through.

This is the aha moment or eureka moment, aka as the insight stage. This is the magical step  where your brain presents a brilliant idea fully formed. This is where you come up with answers to questions like “What should I use for my lead?” and “How am I going to organize this thing?”

The French call it “l’esprit de l’escalier” — the wit of the staircase. That’s when you think of a great idea on your way out of the brainstorming meeting or come up with a snappy retort the day after someone makes a snarky remark.

5. Knuckle down.

Take Ernest Hemingway’s advice and “apply the seat of your pants to the seat of the chair.” In other words, turn your great idea into a great story.

Structure creativity.

Many obstacles to good writing actually stem from a bad writing process:

• Suffering from writer’s block? You might not be incubating enough. Trying to force yourself to write before you’re ready is a common cause of blank-page syndrome.
• Dealing with procrastination? You’re probably incubating for too long or at the wrong time — before you forage and analyze, maybe.
• Having trouble coming up with fresh story ideas? You may need to spend more time foraging or forage more widely.

People ask me which is the most important stage. It’s the process, people: Finish the previous stage before you start the next one. You’ll find that you’re able to come up with more ideas — and more that are worth pursuing.

___

Sources: “A 5-Step Technique for Producing Ideas circa 1939,” Brain Pickings, May 4, 2012

James Webb Young, A Technique for Producing Ideas, 1939

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What’s the best way to come up with great ideas? What are the thought processes that drive the world’s most creative individuals?

For many, the secret is the 5-step creative process. The five stages of the creative process include the preparation stage, illumination stage, insight stage and evaluation stage.

In addition, there’s Step 2 of the process: analyzing your information. Once you’ve foraged the raw materials for your idea, focus, sift through and organize them to see how the pieces fit together.

This process helps creative people develop creative solutions to a problem in minutes that might otherwise take weeks or months to come up with.

So how do you get from market research to the aha moment? Here’s how to turn your raw data into creative ideas:

1. Seek connections.

While you’re sorting, look for themes, holes, relationships and structure.

“An idea is nothing more nor less than a new combination of old elements,” wrote James Webb Young, the pre-Mad Men-era ad executive who invented the 5-step creative process and put it down in a book called A Technique for Producing Ideas.

“Innovation most of the time is simply taking A, B, C, and D, which already exist, and putting them together in a form called E.”

— Wolfgang Schmitt, chairman of Rubbermaid Corp.

“The capacity to bring old elements into new combinations depends largely on the ability to see relationships.”

Poet Robert Frost agreed. “An idea is a feat of association,” he wrote.

So did South African author William Plomer: “Creativity — the power to connect the seemingly unconnected.”

As did Wolfgang Schmitt, chairman of Rubbermaid Corp.: “Innovation most of the time is simply taking A, B, C, and D, which already exist, and putting them together in a form called E.”

2. Turn the kaleidoscope.

Those who develop the habit of seeing relationships between facts, Young wrote, will produce more and better ideas.

“The process is something like that which takes place in the kaleidoscope,” he wrote. “Every turn of its crank shifts these bits of glass into a new relationship and reveals a new pattern. The … greater the number of pieces of glass in it the greater become the possibilities for new and striking combinations.”

3. Develop your story angle.

To find your focus, start with a single idea.

Think of it this way: Like a tree, your piece might branch out in several directions. But you need to build the story on a single idea or trunk. If you find a sapling — a detail or message that doesn’t contribute to that single theme — pull it out.

A topic, obviously, isn’t an idea. “Kansas City” is a topic, not a theme. “PRSA Digital Media Conference” doesn’t make a good brochure headline, because it lacks an angle. Your product name is not an idea.

Build your story on a firmer foundation. What about Kansas City, your conference or your product?

4. Organize your information.

Save time — and hit your word count the first time, every time — by organizing your piece before you write it.

Upload your brain for Step 3.

You might call this step outlining, writing a walkaway sentence or developing a theme. That’s part of this process, sure.

But the real goal is to upload the information to your brain so it can take over working on this project while you’re doing something more interesting.

That’s Step 3 in the creative process: the incubation stage. It’s one of the most important stages for achieving your creative potential.

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