Ideas are like stupid children, you need to give them a chance to grow up before you’d actually want to be seen in public with them. Of course, I’m not a father, so perhaps I’m wrong. 

Incubation is about giving your ideas time to mature. When you incubate a problem, you’re allowing your subconscious mind to weigh in. Have you ever struggled with a problem, decided to go to bed, and then woke up in the morning with the perfect solution? It happens all the time. You can thank your subconscious brain. 

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Your subconscious brain lies below the surface level of your conscious thought. You never become aware of the vast majority of the thoughts you have because they’re edited out by your conscious brain. Your conscious brain is a serial processor, it’s like a computer that has to deal with only one thing at a time. To your conscious brain, first you think about A, then you think about B, then you think about C. You can only focus on one thing at a time. Any time you switch topics, you must drop the old one. The reason your conscious brain is a serial, linear processor is because its job is to focus on one thing at a time. Everything that is outside of your conscious awareness is given over to the subconscious brain.

Your subconscious brain is different. Because the conscious brain is focused on the important problem, your subconscious is free to work on everything else. It keeps your heart beating and your food digesting. But it also serves a supportive role to the conscious brain. Any time you make a snap decision based on your gut instinct, your subconscious brain is the source. There simply wasn’t enough time for your conscious brain to think through everything in a linear fashion. Any time you make an assumption, whether it’s good or bad, it comes from your subconscious. 

Your subconscious brain is incredibly important to creativity because it’s far more powerful than your conscious brain. There’s a reason why eureka moments pop up out of thin air. When you have a sudden insight into a problem, it comes from your subconscious. If you look back at the types of solutions that came from a eureka moment like this, you’ll notice that they’re almost always elegant solutions to a problem. 

Your conscious brain typically pieces solutions together. This is all it can really do since it must process things linearly. The end result is that your ideas tend to feel like Frankenstein solutions, a lot of different ideas sewn together. 

Subconscious solutions are different. Since the subconscious isn’t under the same time pressures as the conscious brain, it can work at its own pace, there’s no need for the subconscious to rush. Since it’s a parallel processor, it doesn’t need to create Frankenstein solutions to problems. It’s like an insect that has 1000 eyes. It can look at everything at the same time. It doesn’t need to drop one idea to focus on another. It can do both at the same time. This is why the subconscious brain creates such amazing, creative solutions.

So how do we tap into this process more as creative people? How do we get the most from our subconscious? First, slow down your thinking. The conscious brain always wants to rush. When you incubate an idea, you allow your subconscious time to catch up. Your conscious and subconscious brain are not independent of each other. Your subconscious brain is more like an annoying little brother, constantly peering over your shoulder and saying “Whatcha’ doin? Can I play too?” Whenever you consciously work on a problem, you’re teaching your subconscious brain that the problem is important. 

Lastly, make sure you find time to listen to your subconscious. Your subconscious brain can solve a problem a long time before you become consciously aware of the problem. MRI scans have even shown that we can predict when a person has solved a problem up to 8 seconds before the person actually becomes aware of the problem.

The problem is that your subconscious brain isn’t connected to the area of your brain responsible for speech, so your subconscious is physically unable to “tell” you what the solution is. As silly as it might sound, you have to listen to your emotions. Your emotions are purely within the domain of your subconscious. It’s your subconscious’ favorite way to communicate. 

As you create today, give yourself time to take a step back and listen to your gut feelings. Your gut feelings won’t always be correct. Just like you, your subconscious is working with whatever information that it has. It’s just as susceptible to faulty thinking as the conscious. When an idea bubbles up to the surface, don’t attack it. Accept that this is your subconscious brain’s best guess at a solution. And most importantly, spend some time each day in a quiet, low stimulus environment. This frees your subconscious from the task of taking in new information and allows it to work more on the information you already have. The more you embrace a quiet environment, the more help you’re subconscious is going to give you.

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