Banking Hours?
Do you have certain hours of the day when you are most creative? People always say they get ideas while showering, exercising, or commuting. If these are indicators for creativity, I wonder which countries have the great environment for generating ideas?
I don’t know who takes the longest showers, and does the most exercising but there are numbers available for longest commute. According to Worldmapper The world average commute is an hours and twenty minutes each day and the nation with the greatest commute time is Thailand with over 2 hours. In fact, Southeast Asia, on averaged commutes almost twice as long as workers in North America. Bad for fuel consumption, pollution, and productivity but is it good for generating ideas?
Do you think urban or suburban commuting makes a difference and which is more conducent for generating new ideas: Mindless driving? Or being a passenger in a taxi and letting your mind wander?
Here is an innovation: for Fashion Week, A fleet of 50 taxis in New York City are providing free rides to test a new service. The already equipped in-taxi TV screens will be used for this experiment to allow passengers to view advertisements and make direct purchases of items, like lipstick, by scanning a code with their mobile phones.
Apparently, a supermarket has tested this idea in Seoul allowing passengers to buy groceries (for delivery) directly from billboards in their wifi enabled subways. This could certainly revolutionized and expand the concept of what is a store, if anything printed with a barcode becomes an opportunity to buy and sell. But will it give us more to do during our commute and take away our precision time to daydream?
I am from Philippines and i make commute as an exercise because after reaching head to my office, i am so tired of seating down with long hours.
Good multitasking Mika, I hope your commute gives you time to come up with great ideas – thanks for commenting
David Goldstein recently posted..Save the Economy with More Exercise, More Showers, Longer Commutes
Thanks David! I also would like to share that commuting alone is a great help to be focus and to think on your won ways. That’s what i do. Spending time to commute alone.
The New York free taxi ride is a good test for your subject of “which is conducive for generating new ideas driving or commuting?” Personally, I believe commuting is the best factor for this. There is no pressure since you are just a passenger and you can rest and as you say, allow your mind to wander.
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Werner Erhard had his philosophical breakthrough about the meaning of life and self responsibility that lead to his creation of EST, and a dramatic shift in our culture in the 1970s – one day in March 1971 while commuting over the Golden Gate bridge.
Thanks for a good example Rich!
For me it’s better to drive.. All my life I’ve experience commuting and love to try out driving.. 😀 But for your question “which is conducive for generating new ideas driving or commuting?”.. I think commuting is the right for this.. You can still have time to think and wander..
I actually do some biking. No pollution, much better exercise.
For me, it’s mostly to do with how much I’ve overworked myself and the time I take off afterwards – it’s the quiet time afterwards that mostly spurs on my creativity, and I have to be alone. So commuting wouldn’t be a trigger for my creativity at all nor is there a certain time of day – rather it’s the state of mind I’m in determined by a sort of ‘cut off’ point in my own psyche.
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Yes, I know the feeling Val! Some of my best ideas come after I’ve stepped away for a break from something I’ve worked long on! Thanks for commenting and I hope things are going well with you and that you have been creating your beautiful artwork.
David Goldstein recently posted..Save the Economy with More Exercise, More Showers, Longer Commutes
As I get though on my daily routine, I do love commutes that refresh my minds on what should I write when I came into the office and face my computer… 😉
Driving alone in the car, ideas come to me. Music, something I see along the way, a conversation on the radio, or just having that quiet space in my head means that ideas come. Commuting, however, is when I put some of those ideas into action… I am the one on the London underground, stitching my art or drawing what’s in my head on my way into the city.
Apoplectic Now! describes my suburban commuting experience in which I spent 90 minutes getting to a job 7 miles away, fascinated in my own frustration. I lasted 4 months. Four months of having to drive in order to cross the street. And although I loved zooming my bike to work in the city for years, its traffic requires intense concentration or traumatic brain injury.
Now, I read a book during the bus part of my commute, then walk to the subway and ride until a final half mile walk at the other end. No swaddling head phones while walking, though, because I find that mine too effectively override thinking. The stimulation available on the train inspired me creatively only twice, but it’s blur and clatter perfectly ferment my reservoir of sensory input into an inchoate alloy for casting later at my job in digital arts.