Archimedes figured out how to determine how much gold there was in a crown while lying in the bath tub. While dozing by the fire, Friedrich August Kekule had a dream of snakes that allowed him to understand the structure of benzene. For both of these scientists, the answer came when they stopped thinking about the question and did something else. They put their problem on the back burner and suddenly the answer popped into their minds.
Has something like this ever happened to you? You arent sure about something. Rather than thinking about it over and over, you get up and take a shower. Or go for a run. Or listen to music. Or watch TV. Suddenly the solution pops into your headthat day or the next, or maybe a week later.
Brain scientists now know why this happens. Its because when we focus on something, there is a part of our brain that is trying to help us concentrate by cutting off access to the rest of our brain. When we give up, that part turns off and we are in touch with all of our resources. Isnt that ironic? By trying to help us, it actually hinders!
The problem is that, because weve never been issued the drivers manual to our minds, most of us believe that we need to focus even more. And that can actually prevent us from finding a solution. According to Robert Cooper and Ayman Sawaf in Executive EQ, for instance, working too long at mental tasks can cause your problem solving time to increase by up to 500 percent. In other words, the more we try to stay focused on a task, the worse we get at doing it.
