18 – How to go on autopilot so you get creative ideas from Default Mode Network

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In the previous episode, I was talking about how getting bored helps you come up with ideas. In this episode, we're going to talk about how you can do that in a really intentional way. And this activity can help you come up with both ideas for your episodes or maybe even certain solutions for your business.

Although we're talking about creative ideas in this episode, these ideas are not all that creative.

Essentially, the gist is to find things to do that don't have much of a cognitive load attach and also make sure that you don't have anything distracting happening.

And this is so your brain can just go into that autopilot mode so you can focus on just doing that boring repetitive task.

And that task doesn't need that much focus at all. So you're finding the right task and you're making space for your brain to do this autopilot, which is it going into what's called the default mode network. That's what I talked about in the previous episode. So here are a few examples of things that work really well for me that can maybe inspire some ideas for you. The first one that works really well for me is just walking on

an elliptical with music I know really, really well. And that's so my brain doesn't focus on listening to new music that I really like. I know it really well. I've heard it a million times. So it lets my brain go into that autopilot mode. And if you don't have an elliptical, of course, just walking can work. However, you need to make sure that your walk is in an area that you know really well. It's also really safe. If you have your dog, your dog,

is not all that distracting. Basically, other things can't command a lot of attention and that will let your brain go on autopilot. Now this next approach might just work for me. It might be a me thing, but I'm going to share it anyways in case maybe something like this will work for you. So in this one, I just sit in a really comfortable chair in a space with no distractions at all. And then I just let my brain go. Now if you have

some sort of problem or thing that you kind of want to solve or think about, you can opt to put your brain in a loop on that problem. You're just going to kind of think through it over and over again in a repetitive way. And in that activity, you're going to eventually kind of release focus on it because you're telling that same story or that same problem over and over again.

It's kind of like a rumination. And in that process, your brain will kind of go into autopilot on telling that story or repeating the problem. And through that process, I find sometimes new ideas will pop in there. And you might even solve a problem if you're problem solving. It's worked for me to kind of, I think, sort of conjure up the default mode network.

And of course, back to normal people ideas, you can just try things like folding laundry or those sort of mindful coloring apps can be helpful. All of these things are kind of just mildly satisfying. They let you do that background processing of the default mode network. Now, these boring activities, they aren't a waste of your time. You're basically doing your work. It's just through this other activity.

Your subconscious mind is going to be more active because that's what happens while the default mode network is engaged. One of the hard things to do when you start doing this practice is to not like fill up these boring activities with other things like a podcast or your phone notifications. And because of this, because we're so used to doing that, it can take a while for your brain to kind of adjust to the

this new way of working or maybe a way of working that you haven't engaged for quite a long time. But after a while I find it sort of gets easier and you start getting more ideas on a more frequent basis. They just pop out of nowhere and that's what makes this great. I'm Jen deHaan. This is the Credibility Minute. You can find more episodes and get in touch with me at stereoforest.com slash minute.