Elliot's recent article and the comments about inspiration had a lot of um... information and I thought I'd post some of the more concrete scientific findings.

If you're interested in being creative, if you're stuck on a problem and are looking for inspiration, the following background information and specific advice might help.

Your brain has a filter

Our lives are awash in sensory input, but only the valuable parts are presented to our conscious mind. If something is not relevant to one of our goals, the brain filters it out and considers it irrelevant.

Most people don't realize how powerful this filter is. If you haven't already done so, check out the monkey business illusion. Pause reading this post, check out the video, and continue below:

The illusion works because your brain is given a goal. While you are focused on the goal, your brain filters everything that doesn't apply to that goal.

Your brain is a goal seeking mechanism

Your brain is essentially a goal seeking mechanism. We're born with a few innate goals, but we also get to set new goals over the course of our life.

You set your goals by explicitly identifying them. The best way to do this (people have found) is to write them out longhand. Doing this activates several sensory pathways in the brain at the same time: while writing you are simultaneously controlling your hand to make the letters, reading the letters, sounding them out in your mind, and thinking about the concepts.

Inspiration advice #1: Set a clear goal

The biggest reason people don't get inspiration is that they don't set clear goals. If you want to start a new project using Neopixels on a costume for an upcoming convention - that's fairly explicit and your goal setting mechanism can latch onto it pretty easily. There are clear design pathways and choices to make, a time limit, and physical and probably budget limitations. The brain works well with specific goals.

On the other hand, if you're just casting about for something new to do, you'll have tremendous difficulty. Your brain doesn't know what to do and you'll wander around in a fog. You might even try a few things, but you'll find it very difficult to follow through with the process: without a clear goal at the start, your brain will eventually give up saying effectively "why bother"?

So if you want inspiration, the first thing you want to do is to set a goal that has value to you.

Inspiration advice #2: Enter the open mode

Having set a goal, for actual inspiration, you need to turn your brain's filter completely off. You need to get into the open mode.

The best introduction to the open mode I've found is this video by John Cleese. It's fairly long (40 minutes) and you can watch it at your leisure, but to summarize: you get into the open mode by avoiding external stimulation for longer than 30 minutes.

The best way to do this that I've found is to go for a walk where there are no people. Find a nice path in the woods, or a back residential street with no pedestrians and no traffic, or the track around the football field when no one else is there.

For this to work you need to have no distractions. Turn off your phone, don't listen to podcasts or music, and don't go where you're constantly passing people or being interrupted by traffic. Just a nice, leisurely walk for about an hour.

Your brain is constantly being primed by interruptions in your environment, and each priming sets off a little subroutine that makes your brain focus on the primed subject for a short while. You need time for these subjects to die down so that your brain isn't primed. This becomes the open mode that John Cleese talks about.

Radio Shack

The original article talks about Radio Shack providing inspiration for hackers, but I don't think this is quite the whole story.

I think what really happened is that people set some goals and had project requirements, then went to Radio Shack, and found components that fit the requirements.

Another pathway is that people went to Radio Shack and saw what was available, and then later entered the open mode and saw what those components could be used for. The inspiration came from Radio Shack, but only much later.

The people who claim that they get their best ideas in the shower are using the open mode for inspiration.

Inspiration advice #3: Practical advice

The open mode - a state of high creativity - has been identified and studied for awhile. The earliest mention that I'm aware of is a book by a Dominican monk in 1948.

But to summarize the book and a bunch of other research: to enter the open mode and be highly creative:

1) Have a set of clearly defined goals

2) Look over the resources you have

3) Have a notebook and pen/pencil available

4) Turn off distractions for at least 1 hour

The "look over the resources" part is where Radio Shack comes in: it shows you what is available, what pieces you can put together to meet your goals.

Do this part first. It might involve going to the lab in school to see what's available, looking over your stockpile of lumber, or flipping through GitHub libraries on a related subject.

Whatever it might be, put the available resources into the "recent memory" section of your brain.

As mentioned above, I find that going for a walk in the woods is the best way to enter the open mode. If you can manage to hike while doing this, then the session can have a dual use: you get some exercise while in the open mode.

You can also enter the open mode while driving. Short hops with a lot of distractions - stop lights, turns, and traffic - are too distracting to keep the mode going, but a long road trip on interstate highways works well.

Some people manage the open mode in the gym on a stationary bike or treadmill. You need something to blot out the background noise, but that also doesn't prime your brain while you are exercising. Music with no lyrics can do this, especially repetitive pieces with little dynamic range. Things like Bolero or search for "ultimate relaxation music" on youtube. Music your brain doesn't have to think about.

Some people (examples: John Cleese, Donald Knuth) can do it by sitting quietly and thinking. I've never gotten this method work, but a lot of people swear by it. The same requirements apply: you need to do it for more than 30 minutes and you need to have no distractions during that time.

Entering the open mode can be tremendously difficult! The urge to check E-mail is very strong, and the urge to start working on the first idea you get is also strong. Stopping the process and working on the first idea will rob you of all the better ideas you will get by letting the process continue!

Epilogue: This actually works

I can say with authority that this method actually works, both from personal experience and from having others do it. Several times I've told one of my students about it, and they always report back that they were successful. Stuck on a project, don't know how to proceed, and it all becomes suddenly clear about 45 minutes into a walk.

So if you're into building things (and on Hackaday who isn't?) and need inspiration, or simply want to be more creative in your daily life. try some of the suggestions listed above.