And yet, even with so much being gained, halfway through last year I begun to sense that I was losing something as well.

In between Twittering on the bus into work, catching up on blogs and news at lunch, as well as playing a range of insanely addictive iPhone games (Drawrace, Flight Control etc), I realised that I had sacrificed something. In a word; downtime.

I had reached the point where I had filled up all the ‘dead time’ in my life with brilliant, stimulatory and fascinating snippets of goodness delivered to me in real-time by mind-blowingly powerful mobile digital devices and applications.

Obviously this approach (of my making) wasn’t all bad. But the potential folly of such fundamentalism was driven home to me shortly thereafter when I was wrestling with a particular thorny client problem. The breakthrough came to me in a flash of inspiration… while I was in the shower.

Everyone has had these moments. In the shower. Driving a car. Singing a song. Gazing out the window. And BOOM!, an idea just suddenly materialises in your mind.Everyone has had these moments. In the shower. Driving a car. Singing a song. Gazing out the window. And BOOM!, an idea just suddenly materialises in your mind.

So I started thinking. Why do great ideas strike at such mundane times (like in the shower)? Clearly these types of moments are not merely ‘deadtime’. They’re golden opportunities for subconscious inspiration. Actually, crucial and valuable ‘dreamtime.’

However a much more interesting question quickly emerges. That is, in a world that increasingly demands such constant attention, can our lives be better ‘designed’ to foster radically more creative spirits?

In my mind the short answer to this last question is undoubtedly yes. And I think that one of the secrets to this is ensuring and/or designing opportunities for subconscious reflection.

Years ago I read a book on creativity by Edward de Bono (this one I think) which proposed that when our minds are occupied by more thoughtless or ‘mechanical’ tasks, other parts of our brain are allowed to roam free. This struck me as amazing because it appeared to be a recipe for ‘managed daydreaming’ (you know, that type when you don’t happen to be lying in a lush, green field looking up at clouds drift by in clear sunny, blue skies). Of course perhaps it is not as easy as that. And while de Bono makes this point well, he then pursues the avenue of ‘stimulated’ inspiration with his brilliant variety of innovation techniques.

I suspect however that there is a more subtle ground to be discovered. One where ‘unstimulated’ creativity can be encouraged and indeed fostered. And not simply in the shower. But in our everyday lives, workplaces and environments.

Which makes this more than a misguided lament for simpler times. It’s a challenge to myself to balance the stimulation of the always fascinating digital world with time spent reflecting, letting my mind wander…. daydreaming.

On a quick delve into some literature, I came across this paper reviewing the evolution of creativity models. It notes:

Older models tend to imply that creative ideas result from subconscious processes, largely outside the control of the thinker. Modern models tend to imply purposeful generation of new ideas, under the direct control of the thinker.

So even academic models are increasingly discounting the significance of the subconscious. But all these ideas keep striking me in the shower, so it would seem there’s a mismatch between current science and anecdotal experience.

I know I’m not the only one to ponder the real trade-offs of our current age. The inimitable and inspiring master of digital storytelling Jonathan Harris released a compelling albeit slightly dark series of ruminations about the web in 2009.

Is crisis an overstatement? (Credit: Jonathan Harris 2009)

In ‘Our Digital Crisis‘, Harris writes:

“Our online tools do a great job at breadth (hundreds of friends, thousands of tweets), but a bad job at depth. We live increasingly superficial lives, reducing our relationships to caricatures and our personalities to billboards, as we speed along at 1,000 miles an hour. We trade self-reflection for busyness, gorging ourselves on it and drowning in it, without recognizing the violence of that busyness, which we perpetrate against ourselves and at our peril. For the last 100 years—from letters, to phones, to faxes, to emails, to chats, to texts, to tweets—communication has been getting shorter and faster, but we are approaching a terminal velocity. I doubt there is a shorter means of communication than the tweet, unless we start to make monosyllabic grunts at each other or communicate silently, brain to brain. Brief gestures of communication can be beautiful, but can also be shallow. So what will happen next? Will we stop at the tweet, or will we bounce back in the other direction, suddenly craving more depth? I’d bet on the latter.”

(On a related note Harris’ reflections on “city ideas” versus “natural ideas” is an equally provocative vignette)

I have far greater enthusiasm and indeed optimism than Harris (“crisis” is slightly OTT!) for the democratising power of digital to bring about brilliant, revolutionary change. It’s for this reason I do what I do and choose not to move to a remote mountain cabin retreat like Harris. And yet, I still believe that this wonderful web world we have spun should continue to serve us humans and not the other way around. What’s clear is that there is a balance to be had.

In this case, it’s about ensuring that my thinking, creativity and inspiration is as rich and diverse as possible. More *is* better. But not if if it becomes *all*.

So these days, you’ll still finding me loving my work in the world of digital strategy, but if you happen to see me on the bus to work, it’s less likely I’ll be peering at a 3.5 inch LED screen in my lap and more likely I’ll be reading a (hardcopy) book or looking out the window as London rolls by. And while I’ll continue to dive into the wonderfully maddening digital crowd, I will also be keeping an eye on distant, hazy, analogue horizons.