The Best Inventions

2026-03-08

“Why does my mind have the best ideas at 3am”

I’ve said it and I’ve heard it.

Sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night with my mind racing with crazily good ideas. And then, because the idea is just so good, I’m certain I’ll remember it in the morning. And I happily go back to sleep (after all that’s what I’m supposed to be doing). Then I wake up, and no idea what that idea was about.

It was really good (obviously), but that’s all the clues I have.

It’s not even just at night when ideas pop up. Isn’t it so that the best ideas at the most inconvenient times? You’re doing a completely unrelated task, sitting in a meeting, shopping for groceries…

But ‘inconvenient’ isn’t necessarily the common denominator, now is it?

It might actually be boredom.

Science has shown that our brains go into creative overdrive when we’re bored. After all, when you’re idle or what you’re doing isn’t engaging the mind… Well, it will start thinking about other, more interesting things.

I experienced this in full force last year when I took a break from digital distractions.

Putting the phone down and keeping the TV off really did make me have a lot more ideas.

And while it might sound counterintuitive, I’ve started to ‘plan’ for what I call thinking time.

The trick here is that I don’t schedule a time to think about ‘The One Thing’. I simply leave room in my schedule to think or to mind-wander. In other words, I daydream.

And I recently discovered that there’s longstanding scientific validity to back this practise. Now, daydreaming has been linked to the creativity and innovation of Nobel prize-winning scientists and world-renowned artists quite a bit.

More recent studies revealed a few other interesting things.

First, it’s exactly the kind of ‘freely moving’ thought patterns that are behind the boost to your creativity. This supports the idea that you shouldn’t spend this mind-wondering time on a single, particular topic. Rather, you must allow your thoughts to move freely, without forcing or containing them.

So, you let your mind move from thinking how they used to pile bricks in front of windows to avoid a window tax in England to planning your next holiday in Italy.

What the studies show is that these moments of freely flowing thoughts could enhance convergent thinking. And the better this is, the better you may become in finding the best ideas to execute during brainstorming.

Daydreaming isn’t wasting time but rather exercising it.

Now, another interesting point in the research concerns the positive benefits of this type of intentional mind-wandering.

It’s not just our creativity but also our mood.

For instance, a study from 2017 suggested that mind wandering that is more self-reflective could actually help you feel better. Focusing on the future possibilities based on past results is the key. You’re not just ruminating but actively considering the future and scenarios of what could be.

And so, we should all allow our brains to switch off at times. Instead of going for the phone or putting on a YouTube video, next time you should just look out the window and let your mind wander. And to truly let it wander from your upcoming tasks to a dream holiday or a scientific novel about cheese made of moons.

While it might not mean you stop those 3am thoughts (in fact, it might invite more of them), you will be activating your brain and nurturing it towards more creativity.

You’ll start cultivating more of those a-ha moments and, just maybe, feel a bit better while doing it.

In an age where many of us simply turn to LLMs to prompt an ‘idea’, I believe there’s a lot of novelty and power in being able to wake up in the middle of the night to a random thought.

To the best idea you’ve had, so far.