Go to an empty conference room or, even better, leave the office and take a walk outside. People in the study made smarter decisions after just 15 minutes of undisturbed time spent meditating because it made them more resistant to their own biases.Īha! tip: No matter how busy you are, do your best to take breaks between meetings and find some alone time. And the ultra-quiet state of meditation has been linked to better decision making, suggest findings published in Psychological Science. Researchers have recently begun to pay more attention to the benefits of quiet for insight. Insights themselves can be thought of as quiet - below the din of everyday thought. You and Your Team Series Decision Makingīut silence and solitude are crucial for nurturing precious eureka moments. As a result, you end up spending a lot of time surrounded by people, without a chance to enjoy some peace and quiet. Whether you are a business owner, an executive or an employee, your calendar is likely packed with meetings. Each of these steps helps you to notice new activations in your brain, which are the source of these creative moments. For years, we’ve been noticing that the research supports four specific steps to take to help you have more insights. The good news is that these flashes of insight are not as random as they seem, and can be fostered by specific conditions. These aha moments are often the only way to solve truly complex problems that are too big for our conscious mind to process.

This is because ‘aha!’ moments that spark brilliant, unexpected solutions tend to crop up when our minds are quiet and our consciousness is at rest.

People commonly report that they make the best decisions not while actively trying to make a choice but, say, taking a shower, knitting or working out. But both anecdotal evidence and published research suggest that taking a moment of inaction may be just as, if not more, important. Your problem-solving instincts may tell you that she’d better start brainstorming and making a detailed spreadsheet with a step-by-step plan. What should she do? And how exactly should she go about deciding what’s best for her business? Even a seemingly bulletproof marketing plan that worked in the past is now yielding crickets.

The owner of a graphic design firm worries that her clients have dried up despite her best efforts.

Those A-Ha Moments by Lynnette Goldy