It’s been said that genius is 99 percent perspiration and 1 percent inspiration, but that 1 percent, which is infinitely more valuable than its corresponding bucket of sweat, can be frustratingly hard to come by. According to Northwestern University business professor Adam Galinsky, the best way to rev up your insight quotient is by jumping a time zone or twelve and bidding au revoir to the daily grind.
Galinsky, along with INSEAD business school professor William Maddux, conducted a study in 2009 to determine whether time spent living in a foreign country enhanced creative thinking skills. They developed five tests to measure adaptability, associational thinking, and insight skills, and found that subjects who’d lived abroad consistently scored higher than those who’d traveled abroad for shorter periods or those who stuck close to home. The reason for the globetrotters’ creative prowess, according to Galinsky, as reported on CNN.com, was they’d been immersed and actively engaged in new, otherwise unavailable perspectives, which challenged and enriched the way they viewed themselves and their lives back home.
But you don’t necessarily have to travel across the globe to get a fresh perspective. Getting your creative juices flowing might be as simple as giving your brain some much-needed downtime in a stimulus-saturated world.
Turn off the cell phone, go for walk and visit someone you like. We have wonderful trails and state facilities around us and a few minutes with just you and the Lord can reap big dividends.