4. Relax and have fun

Relaxation may not only sustain your productivity through recovery and recharging your mental energy (see week 3), but may also improve your work because it allows the brain to find creative solutions and have innovative ideas. Two experts in this field are cognitive neuroscientists Mark Beeman and John Kounios. According to Beeman and Kounios there are two ways in which the brain can solve a problem. The first is through analysis, which requires focus, and logical and methodical thinking. If you solve a problem analytically, you basically work out a problem by logically and consistently testing all potential solutions until your brain finds the right one. The second way to solve a problem is through insight, when the answer seems to suddenly arise out of nothing, and you simply ‘know’ the answer. These are the famous Aha! moments.

Beeman and Kounios wanted to know more about how problem solving using insight works and devised a series of experiments to analyse what happens in the brain when problems are solved using insight as opposed to analysis. To do so they created word puzzles that could be solved either way: by systematically testing for answers, or by insight.

The subject was given a set of three words, such as ‘pine’, ‘crab’ and ‘sauce’ – and was asked to come up with a fourth word that could be combined with all three (the solution to this one: ‘apple’). While solving the puzzle, the subject’s brain activity was monitored. Beeman and Kounios found that insight was a thinking process far different from analytical problem solving. It involves the brain making broad, unprecedented connections, and a small part of the right brain hemisphere: the anterior superior temporal gyrus (aSTG) is activated during this process. This part of the brain is not activated when using analytical thought.

The insight process has three phases: in the first phase the subjects are actively focusing on solving the problem and their brain is searching for answers in ‘obvious’ places (because this was a word puzzle- it involved brain activity in areas related to speech and language). In the second phase the subjects become frustrated and ‘give up’ – they can’t find an answer. Those subjects who eventually did find an answer using insight advanced to a third stage which was a relaxation of the brain, detected using EEG. The brain switched to alpha frequencies, associated with relaxation. Then, several seconds later –Aha!- the insight occurred. The EEG registered a spike of gamma frequency less than a second before the insight occurred, and the MRI showed the lighting up of the aSTG in the right hemisphere of the brain.

This process matches with anecdotal stories of scientists having Aha! or Eureka! moments. They are grappling with a difficult problem, get stuck, ‘give up’, do something random and ‘Aha!’ – they find it! The classic story is of course that of Archimedes, who is said to have exclaimed ‘Eureka!’, ‘I’ve found it!’ when he got a key insight while taking a bath at a local bath-house, and ran the streets of Syracuse naked in his excitement to get home and elaborate on his solution. (Whether this actually happened is an altogether different matter, but let’s not spoil the story).

The question is: would Archimedes have gotten that insight if he hadn’t had that bubble bath? Beeman and Kounios’ research suggests probably not. The relaxation phase is crucial for the brain to produce new insights and it’s no coincidence that ‘good ideas often happen during warm showers’ (quoted in the New Yorker, 28-07-2008, p43).

Other research corroborates this finding. Joy Bhattacharaya, a psychologist at UCL, found that he could predict which people would successfully solve insight puzzles by looking at their brain waves. A relaxed mind, producing alpha waves, was able to find the solution, while a focused mind, operating in beta frequencies, was not. Actively trying to get new insights prevented new insights from occurring, while ‘giving up’, ‘letting go’ and relaxing was the key to success in solving the puzzles.

But it gets better: Beeman’s most recent research suggests that being in a good mood significantly adds to the likelihood of new ideas popping up (see today’s video from the 29 minute mark onwards). When subjects were in a good mood, a state that was induced by having them watch funny videos, they managed to successfully solve more puzzles, as opposed to when they were in a neutral or anxious state. They were also more likely to use insight as opposed to analysis to come up with the solutions. In a happier state, subjects solved around 20% more problems than in a neutral or negative state, and the difference could be explained by a marked increase in the number of solutions solved using insight.

These findings shed a whole new light on what it means to ‘work hard’. The implication of Beeman’s and Kounios’ research isn’t that we should give up on ‘working hard’ in the traditional sense altogether. If we did, we would lose the benefits of analysis, which thrives on focus and paying narrow attention. Rather, the implication of their work is that we should expand our idea of ‘working hard’ by acknowledging the importance of mental relaxation for the brain to solve complex problems. New, imaginative ideas do not pop up during periods of focused analytical thought. They pop up once you have ‘given up’ searching for a solution. Being serious and grinding away at a problem gets you far. But the real breakthroughs occur afterwards: once you let go of the problem, relax and enjoy yourself. Have the bubble bath!

How to do it

The good news: you are already practicing the number one technique for mental relaxation: meditation. When you meditate the brain moves from focused beta frequencies to relaxed alpha-frequencies needed for using insight to solve problems as well as theta frequencies associated with deep relaxation (see for example: Lagopoulos et al. 2009). Alpha waves are more abundant during meditation than they are during ‘normal’ relaxation. Meditation also helps you control your state of mind: it becomes easier to alternate between focused, analytical beta activity to relaxed and broad-minded insight alpha activity. When an expert Zen meditator participated in Beeman and Kounios’ research the results were remarkable. In the beginning, the zen meditator couldn’t solve a single puzzle – his mind was consistently highly focused which prevented him from coming up with correct answers to the first thirty or so insight puzzles. Then he switched to a consistently relaxed state of mind, and started solving puzzles at warp speed: he solved them all without missing a single one. This was highly unusual, as people normally didn’t improve at all during the course of the experiment. Kounios recalls: ‘the man became an insight machine.’ (quoted in the New Yorker, 28-07-2008, p.44). The Zen meditator had conscious control of his mental state, which allowed him to access and sustain the relaxed state of mind necessary for producing insight answers.

Apart from meditation, it all depends on you. What do you enjoy doing? What do you find relaxing? The possibilities are endless. Don’t feel bad for letting your hair down and relaxing – it’s when the real work gets done.