Divert Your Attention

Ever wonder how Einstein courted the muse? Here’s a fascinating insight from Walter Isaacson’s Einstein: His Life and Universe:

“‘He would often play his violin in his kitchen late at night, improvising melodies while he pondered complicated problems,’ a friend recalled. ‘Then, suddenly, in the middle of playing, he would announce excitedly, “I've got it!” As if by inspiration, the answer to the problem would have come to him in the midst of music.’” …

Isaacson explains, “Music was no mere diversion. On the contrary, it helped him think. ‘Whenever he felt that he had come to the end of the road or faced a difficult challenge in his work,’ said his son Hans Albert, ‘he would take refuge in music and that would solve all his difficulties.’”

Not all problems yield to brute force. The power of a strategically-deployed diversion is hard to overstate, especially when the answers seem elusive. Creativity-technique pioneer James Webb Young suggests that diversion-seeking-despair is an essential step in the creative process:

“After a while you will reach the hopeless stage. Everything is a jumble in your mind, with no clear insight anywhere... It is important to realize that this is just as definite and just as necessary a stage in the process as the preceding ones…”

What do we do when we arrive here?

“…You make absolutely no effort of a direct nature. You drop the whole subject and put the problem out of your mind as completely as you can... You remember how Sherlock Holmes used to stop right in the middle of a case, and drag Watson off to a concert? That was a very irritating procedure to the practical and literal-minded Watson. But Conan Doyle was a creator and knew the creative process.”

Conan Doyle and James Webb Young knew what Einstein did — a diversion is often just the trick to break through.

What’s your go-to diversion?

Related: Hopelessness in the Creative Process
Related: Tune Out

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