Eureka

I had a great idea while I was in the shower this morning (all great ideas come while bathing, at least in my experience), and it proved to work famously. [Robert McLaws]

I’ve joked in the past that if I took more showers I’d be filthy rich. Apparently, I’m not the only one who does their best thinking while bathing. It’s a rich tradition, dating back to Archimedes who figured out in the bath that you can measure the volume of an irregular object (in his case, a crown) by measuring the volume of the water it displaced.

Actually, I don’t think it’s the bathing – it’s the disconnection. In my office I have a phone, two laptops connected to the Internet, four virtual PCs, twelve books, about a ream of various papers plus a pretty nice view of outside. In the shower, I have nothing but soap (not SOAP) and my thoughts.

This entry was posted by DevHawk on February 3, 2004.

Comments:

Hi Haryy, Your "twelve books" link seem have a similar problem as http://devhawk.net/CommentView.aspx?guid=dd06efd1-cf51-4eed-927a-c82a01273b47 :)
This comment was posted by Colt on February 03, 2004 at 7:25 PM.
Chip Anderson, my former boss at stockcharts.com, used to come in many mornings with some new idea or project for us to work on, the germ of which came to him in the shower. I'd joke that we needed a spray bottle of water on his desk for developing new inspirations during the workday!
This comment was posted by Anita Rowland on February 03, 2004 at 11:37 PM.
One of my best friends in college used this technique religiously. If he ever got stuck on a problem, he would go take a shower - and emerge 10 minutes later with an answer. In fact, his only problem was that once he figured things out, he never actually wanted to DO them. To him, the "challenging" part was already done. :)
This comment was posted by Tim Marman on February 06, 2004 at 7:37 PM.

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