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Incubation is letting your subconscious come up with ideas and solutions

• Graham Wallas, in his 1922 book ‘The Art of Thought’ describse four stages of creativity: preparation, incubation, illumination and verification. Incubation means giving your thinking so far to your subconscious and then sitting back and waiting (or better, giving the conscious mind something useful to do.) Maria Popova
• Ideas,  Creative thinking,  Inventiveness,  Innovation,   Solitude,   The subconscious

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In most great ideas, there is a moment of conception and a moment of birth, but between them there is a long period of gestation

• No great thing is created suddenly, any more than a bunch of grapes or a fig. If you tell me that you desire a fig, I answer you that there must be time. Let it first blossom, then bear fruit, then ripen. Epictetus
• You cannot go into the womb to form the child; it is there and makes itself and comes forth whole–and there it is and you have made it and have felt it, but it has come itself. Gertrude Stein
• There is a moment of conception and a moment of birth, but between them there is a long period of gestation. Jonas Salk
• Investigation may be likened to the long months of pregnancy, and solving a problem to the day of birth. Mao-Tse Tung

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Ideas dropped into the subconscious emerge later more fully grown

• The casual phrase dropped by a friend in conversation, the paragraph in a book, the incident observed by the roadside, has some special quality and is accorded a special welcome. But having been welcomed, it is forgotten or at least ignored. It sinks into the horrid depths of my subconscious like a waterlogged timber into the slime at the bottom of a harbour where it lies alongside others which have preceded it. Then, periodically–but by no means systematically–it is hauled up for examination along with its fellows and, sooner or later, some timber is found with barnacles growing on it. Some morning when I am shaving, some evening when I am wondering whether my dinner calls for white or red, the original immature idea reappears in my mind, and it has grown… C. S. Forester
• The subconscious

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In allowing ideas to emerge, effort is counter-productive

• The mystery of creation works this way: We work and plan and break our backs for it. And then, in the ashes of our struggle, it appears like a gentle wind rustling through blades of grass. To find it seems impossible and yet, once here, it is as if it has always been this way. Michael Jones
• The worst is that the very hardest thinking will not bring thoughts. They must come like good children of God and cry, “Here we are.” You expend effort and energy thinking hard. Then, after you have given up, they come sauntering in with their hands in their pockets. If the effort had not been made to open the door, however, who knows when they could have come. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
• Ideas, I find, come most readily when you are doing something that keeps the mind alert without putting too much strain on it. Lenox Riley Lohr
• Effort,  Effortlessness

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Think deeply, then turn it over to the subconscious and return later

• I have found, for example, that if I have to write upon some rather difficult topic, the best plan is to think about it with very great intensity–the greatest intensity of which I am capable–for a few hours or days, and at the end of that time give orders, so to speak (to my subconscious mind) that the work is to proceed underground. After some months I return consciously to the topic and find that the work has been done. Bertrand Russell

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Know what you want, then forget about it and the ideas will come

• The air is full of ideas. They are knocking you in the head all the time. You only have to know what you want, then forget it and go about your business. Suddenly the idea will come through. It was there all the time. Henry Ford

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Wait patiently for ideas without forcing them

• The poet is at the disposal of the night. His role is humble, he must clean house and await its due visitation. Jean Cocteau
• Patience is a necessary ingredient of genius. Benjamin Disraeli
• If you happen to be one of the fretful minority who can do creative work, never force an idea; you’ll abort it if you do. Be patient and you’ll give birth to it when the time is ripe. Learn to wait. Robert Heinlein
• Patience

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Allow ideas to flow and grow without constantly checking on them

• Reverie is when ideas float in our mind without reflection or regard of the understanding. John Locke
• A young man must let his ideas grow, not be continually rooting them up to see yow they are getting on. William McFee

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Allow ideas to ferment

• Ideas, like young wine, should be put in storage and taken up again only after they have been allowed to ferment and to ripen. Richard Strauss
• I waited for the idea to consolidate, for the grouping and composition of themes to settle themselves in my brain. Claude Monet

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Allow ideas and solutions to be revealed through your dreams

• I was doing a campaign once for a manufacturer, and I couldn’t think of an ideas, and I was kind of desperate about it. The night before I had to show something to my client I had a dream, an interesting dream. I woke up and for once in my life I wrote it down and went back to sleep Next morning I went to the office and had that dream out into a TV commercial which is still running thirty years after and which has made that particular product the leader in its field. David Ogilvy
• Dreams

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To generate new ideas, get away from your desk and relax …

• Good ideas and creativity usually do not appear under stress. When you are relaxed and rejuvenated, creative ideas usually come rather naturally. Take a walk on the beach, take a nap, go and play some sport or do whatever it is that relaxes you so that your brain can be more creative when you get back to work. Diann Daniel
• How many of you do your best thinking and get your most creative ideas at work? When we ask people in our groups this question, no one ever raises their hand. Robert
• No one has ever had an idea in a dress suit. Sir Frederick G. Banting

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… for the best ideas come when we do something else

• All the really good ideas I ever had came to me while I was milking a cow. Grant Wood
• When I am travelling in a carriage, or walking after a good meal, or during the night when I cannot sleep; it is on such occasions that ideas flow best and most abundantly. Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
• I often joke with my audiences that I make most of my income on a ski pole. People smile but they get my point. You need to make time for your genius to flow. We get our creative bursts, those idea torrents that take our business and personal lives to the next level, while we are skiing or drinking coffee in a Starbucks or walking in the woods or meditation with a sunrise. Those pursuits are not a waste of time. Creativity comes when you are relaxed, happy and enjoying the moment. And when it comes, it brings ideas that rock your world. Robin Sharma
• When inspiration does not come, I go for a walk, go to the movie, talk to a friend, let go… The muse is bound to return again, especially if I turn my back. Judy Collins

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To generate ideas, go for a walk

• All truly great thoughts are conceived by walking. Friedrich Nietzsche
• If you are seeking creative ideas, go out walking. Angels whisper to a man when he goes for a walk. Raymond Inmon
• To solve a problem, walk around. Gregory McNamee
• Thoughts come clearly while one walks. Thomas Mann
• The most potent tool for contacting inner guidance and creativity is walking. Julia Cameron
• Solvitur ambulando. It is all solved by walking. Latin Proverb
• Perhaps the truth depends on a walk around the lake. Wallace Stevens
• Solvitur ambulando. It is all solved by walking. Latin Proverb
• Walking is good for solving problems — it’s like the feet are little psychiatrists. Terri Guillemets
• Solvitur ambulando, St. Jerome was fond of saying. To solve a problem, walk around.  Gregory McNamee
• Great ideas originate in the muscles. Thomas A. Edison
• Walking,  Hiking

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Allow the mind to rest and have breaks

• The mind ought to sometimes be diverted that it may return the better to thinking. Phaedrus
• Often when works at a hard question, nothing good is accomplished at the first attack. Then one takes a rest, long or short, and sits down anew to the work. During the first half-hour, as before, nothing is found, and then all of a sudden, the decisive idea presents itself to the mind. Henri Poincaré
• Rest and renewal

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To generate new ideas, slow down

• If you’re having difficulty coming up with new ideas, then slow down. For me, slowing down has been a tremendous source of creativity.  It has allowed me to open up — to know that there’s life under the earth and that I have to let it come through me in a new way. Creativity exists in the present moment. You can’t find it anywhere else.  Natalie Goldberg
• Slow down

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To generate ideas, be still

• To create you must quiet your mind. You need a quiet mind so that ideas will have a chance of connecting. Eric Maisel
• Whenever an answer, a solution, or a creative idea is needed, stop thinking for a moment by focusing attention on your inner energy field. … When you resume thinking, it will be fresh and creative. Eckhart Tolle
• Solutions come easily from a calm mind.
• Inner silence promotes clarity of mind. It makes us value the inner world. It trains us to go inside to the source of peace and inspiration when we are faced with problems and challenges. Deepak Chopra
• Stillness

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Spend quiet time doing nothing for this allows ideas to incubate

• Learn to pause, or nothing worthwhile will catch you up. Doug King
• Muddy water is best cleared by leaving it alone. Alan Watts
• It takes a lot of time to be a genius. You have to sit around so much doing nothing, really doing nothing. Gertrude Stein
• ‘Alas! I do not believe that inspiration falls from heaven. I think it rather the result of a profound indolence.  Jean Cocteau
• Idleness,  Solitude

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When you have a problem, investigate it…

• Investigation may be likened to the long months of pregnancy and solving a problem to the day of birth. Mao-Tse Tung
• It is looking at things for a long time that ripens you and gives you a deeper understanding. Vincent van Gogh
• One should never impose one’s views on a problem; one should rather study it, and in time a solution will reveal itself. Albert Einstein
• Problem solving

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… then turn it over to the subconscious mind …

• I back away from conscious thought and turn the problem over to my unconscious mind. It will scan a broader array of patterns and find some new close fits from other information stored in my brain. Art Fry
• In order to receive an ‘inspiration ‘or a ‘hunch’ the person must first of all be intensely interested in solving a particular problem or securing a particular answer. He must think about it consciously, gather all the information he can on the subject, consider all the possible courses of action. And above all, he must have a burning desire to solve the problem. But, after he has defined the problem, sees in his imagination the desired end result, secured all the information and facts that he can, then additional struggling, fretting and worrying over it do not help, but seem to hinder the solution. Maxwell Maltz
• Use your back burner. Gently hold the problem in your mind without actively analysing it. This simple technique will help you solve many problems and will greatly reduce the stress and effort in your life. Richard Carlson
• The research showed that when trying to solve a complex task, people who were distracted after first tackling the problem did better than people who put in conscious effort. David Rock
• The subconscious

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… allowing the solution to reveal itself in its own time

• Problems, however, are rarely solved on the spur of the moment. They must be organized and dissected, then key issues isolated and defined. A period of gestation then sets in, during which these issues are mulled over. You put them in your mind and consciously or unconsciously work at them at odd hours of the day or night — even at work. It is somewhat analogous to trying to place a name on the face of someone you’ve met before. Often the solution to a problem comes to you in much the same way you eventually recall the name. Bill Hewlett
• You’ve been thinking about something without willing to for a long time…Then, all of a sudden, the problem is opened to you in a flash and you suddenly see the answer. Rita Levi-Montalcini

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Sleep on your problems

• Identify a particular problem or question for which you need clarity. Write the problem down just before retiring for the night, and then go to sleep, possessing full trust that you will come up with a solution to the problem. Confidently assign the problem to your subconscious mind and expect to receive the answer during the night or upon waking in the morning. Place a pad of paper and a pen next to your bed. Maxwell Maltz
• It is a common experience that a problem difficult at night is resolved in the morning after the committee of sleep has worked on it. John Steinbeck
• Sleep

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