One of the many paradoxical aspects of creativity is the following: In order to gain breakthrough results, you either need multiple hundreds of ideas — or just one. The former case describes the normal situation that you assemble a collection of brains to hold a brainstorming session or to conduct a more comprehensive ideation event. The latter leads us to the topic of today’s article: The mysterious process of incubation.

Incubation is a cognitive process wherein you consciously work on your challenge for an often-prolonged period of time, and then completely set it aside. In that way, you give your unconscious mind time to recombine thoughts and stimuli and to deliver you the solution all of a sudden. Many geniuses have described this process as key to their breakthrough idea:

• The Greek mathematician Archimedes had pondered on a tough problem posed to him by the king of Syracuse (How to find out if the new laurel crown of the king is completely made from gold?). When he decided to take a bath to relax from hard thinking, he conceived the solution to his challenge (objects of different density displace different volumes of water).

• Sir Isaac Newton worked for years on the problem of gravitation. He conceived the breakthrough idea behind his law of gravitation while resting under an apple tree and observing an apple falling down.

• Friedrich August Kekulé conceived his breakthrough insights of the ring structure of benzene when dreaming of a snake biting its tail.

• Albert Einstein described the process of incubation that led to his special theory of relativity as follows: “Hard? It took me ten years to get from my first questions about light to my theory of relativity. I went through all sorts of nervous conflicts. And after all that, it came to me suddenly. It was a beautiful day, my friend Besso and I were out walking. I was doing most of the talking, I told him that I had been struggling with a question and needed his help. But as I spoke, the answer came to me. I stopped in mid-sentence and ran home. The next morning I went to him again. ‘Thank you,’ I said, ‘I have completely solved the problem.’”

Have you noticed that most interestingly, all those breakthrough moments occurred when the thinkers were taking some time off from working on their problem and were engaged in relaxing activities? This is an important point. Remember that incubation requires three things to work: Firstly, extensive mental preparation in an initial phase of deep immersion with your problem. Secondly, courage to completely let go of your problem. And last but not least —in order to gain the necessary courage— faith and belief that the right solution will be delivered to you.

Do you currently face a tough and important problem? Consider activating the process of incubation by following these steps:

1. Deeply explore your challenge over a period of time. Thereby recall Thomas Jefferson’s advice: “The more I do, the luckier I get.”

2. Collect possible ideas and solutions to your problem or challenge, and keep on adding more.

3. Once you feel that you won’t get any closer to the solution, stop your mental effort. Completely let go of the problem, and do something else. Maintain an open mind and a spirit of inquiry, and pay attention to any stimuli in your environment. Acknowledge that you don’t know if you are going to get the right solution or not. Have the courage to surrender and let go. Have faith that the right idea will appear.

4. After you have completely forgotten about your challenge — if you’re lucky and have faith—, the breakthrough solution might appear “out of the blue”. This sudden moment of creative insight, when your unconscious mind delivers you the right solution, is also known as illumination. It feels as if you are hit by a flash of intensely bright energy. You get extremely fired-up and energized as you immediately know “That’s it!” Archimedes got so excited by his discovery that he even forgot to dress, running naked into the streets shouting “Eureka!” (“I have found it!”).

Conclusion: Incubation does not only work for geniuses — I have experienced its magical powers myself twice in my life. The first time, I was under immense pressure to solve a tough measurement problem in my doctoral thesis within a week of time. I had already worked on my thesis for two years and had intensely thought about how to solve this particular problem, but to no avail. Fortunately, I was courageous enough to completely let go in spite of the deadline — and conceived the golden solution on my third day of relaxation while running alone in a forest.

My second kiss of genius happened over Chinese New Year 2003. After one year of intense exploration of what I should really do with my life instead of working as a well-performing but dispassionate banker in Hong Kong, I was reading beside a pool when out of nowhere, an energetic flash of insight struck me: I suddenly gained total clarity of who I am and what I should do with my life. That moment was the birth of THINKERGY and Dr. D, and it happened in Bangkok. Since then, I have been on my mission to create business creators.

© Dr. Detlef Reis 2009. This article was published in parallel in the Bangkok Post under the same title on 4 June 2009.