Ideas in the Shower...

For years I've noted something that was to me quite mysterious: I would find solutions to difficult problems (either design or debugging) while taking a shower.  Having observed this, I have, on more than a few occasions, taken a shower for the specific purpose of coming up with an idea to solve a problem – and it has worked.  I've never had a satisfactory explanation of why this might be so, however.

This morning I read a blog post that purports to explain the phenomenon (which many others have also noted).  Some of the links from this post are also interesting.  Essentially the notion is that while you're taking a shower, you're not getting a lot of input from other sources, so your subconcious can surface things its thinking about.  I'm not sure about the science behind this, but it is the first plausible explanation I've heard yet.  The blog post is actually about a product that lets you take notes in the shower, so you won't forget your ideas.  That's never been an issue for me – when I come up with an idea in the shower, it's generally for something I've been working on for hours or even days.  There's zero chance that I'm going to forget a solution for a problem like that!

What is it About a Shower?

For years now, I've noticed a pattern when I'm working on tough engineering problems: I'll work on it for some time (usually several hours) without finding an answer.  Then I'll go to sleep, wake, take a shower – and in the shower the answer will suddenly come to me, often without consciously thinking about the problem at all.

I'm not the only one who finds showers are a good place to solve problems, so you can't pin this on my (uncontested) oddness...

It happened to me again this morning.  Each time it happens, it feels quite odd, as though the answer just came to me out of the blue.  I'm guessing that what's really happening is that my brain is working on the problem somehow in the background while I'm sleeping, and then in the shower (which serves to wake me up each morning) the answer my sleeping brain came up with bubbles up to consciousness.  But that's just a guess...

These small, ultra low power computers we carry around between our ears are pretty amazing things...