steady

Focus and work · Getting started

Stuck? Do something dull

When a problem won't move, leave it and do a boring physical job for twenty minutes. Dishes, a walk, the garage.

20 minEvidence: decent

Staring harder at a problem rarely solves it. A simple task that keeps your hands busy and your head loose lets the problem keep working in the background, and the answer often turns up on its own. Psychologists call it incubation, and it shows up reliably in creative-problem studies. Evidence: decent

Undemanding beats demanding: a walk works, a film doesn't.

Source: Daniel Dennett, Tufts University, via Sainsbury Wellcome Centre, "21 brain hacks"

Same theme: Getting started

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