Have you ever noticed that you get some of your best thinking done in the shower? I certainly do. Some of my best and worst (i.e most creative) ideas have come to me in the shower. Often I will come up with a solution to a problem I spent the pervious day struggling with while taking my morning shower.
What is it about the shower that brings me to such a level of clarity? Is it the all the steam? It it the water? the soap? Perhaps, but I don’t think so. It occured to me that when I’m in the shower, I am not consuming any outside information. In the shower I have no TV, radio, books, podcasts, web sites, etc. It’s just me and my thoughts. The only other time when this is true is when I’m in bed trying to fall asleep. When I’m in the shower, Im trying to wake my mind up, and with nothing to fill it, it begins processing the information it already has.
Maybe the magic of the shower is simply the fact that I can’t bring anything else into it with me. It’s just me and my thoughts. I wonder what it would do to my life to take more time out of the day to just think. No reading, watching or listening. Just thinking, and maybe some writing. How big of a difference could this make? I guess I’ll have to think about it.
Do you set aside any time each day just for thinking?
BTW: The idea for this post came to me this morning in the shower.
