Some
of us think of ourselves as ‘morning people’ while others would choose ‘night
owls’ as their descriptor for when their creative juices are flowing at their
peak. Nevertheless, we still have to sleep.
Sometimes that helps to improve our ideas, sometimes it doesn’t.
Assuming
that our problem isn’t going to prevent us from sleeping, wouldn’t it be nice
if we could use that sleep time to good effect. Instead of allowing our brains
free rein to wander at will, keeping it on track to gather odd thoughts or half
forgotten facts that are relevant to our problem would allow us to hit the
track at full speed when we wake up.
Now
a team from Radboud University with some input from the Harvard Business School
has devised a way to make our sleep time more productive (1). Their solution?
Get on the scent of a creative solution to being creative.
They
split their participating people into three groups. Everybody was handed a
problem that required a creative solution and, in the time honored fashion for
knotty problems, were told to go away and sleep on it. But there was a twist.
The
first group was set up with their problem with a scent diffuser wafting a
particular scent through the room. When sent off to bed, the same scent accompanied
their sleep. A second group had a different scent to go to bed with, while the
control group was scentless all the way through.
It
turned out that the first group, those with the same scent throughout, were not
only more creative, but also better able to choose the most creative solution –
a striking result compared to the other groups that just put in an average
performance.
So
it appears that to maximize our creativity, we have to choose our aromatherapy
wisely and keep it going all night. The next step will be to home in on which
scent is the best smell of success.
- S. M. Ritter,M. Strick, M. W. Bos, R.C.Van Baarten & A. Dijksterhuis, J. Sleep Res. (2012), DOI:10.1111/j.1365-2869.2012.01006.x
