Having a creative mind in a mundane world is often difficult to reconcile. But I would say that it’s 10,000 times easier to have an idea than it is to implement it. Hence you have to find a linkage between what you conceive and its relevance to anyone else – so that they might help you make it happen or at least buy it from you.

Why do we seem to have the best ideas whilst we’re in a shower and nowhere near our pen and paper?

Well, science has explained this phenomenon and once again it’s really straightforward. When the body feels a rush of warmth on the skin from the water, it sends a signal of relaxation to the brain, which increases our Dopamine Stores. The more dopamine; the more creative we tend to be.

Another reason for the sudden onset of creativity is that of distraction, especially if you have thought long and hard all day about a problem, jumping into the shower can turn into what scientists call the “incubation period” for your ideas. The subconscious mind that has been working hard to solve these problems now lets your mind wander, allowing it to plant those ideas into your conscious mind.

Sadly there aren’t many books or resources to help make this happen – there are a few management tomes about organizing creative people in business but not much on how to live a meaningful life in a world run by bureaucrats. It’s a paradox that the more left wing a government is the more centralized the decision making the more accountants and administrators we have to have to implement the explosion of rules and regulation they impose.

Art and culture flourished most under capitalist patronage in the Renaissance and was corrupted and suppressed most under the totalitarian Nazi and communist states. There’s a lovely line in the movie “The Third Man” written by Graham Greene. “In Italy under the Borgias – they had warfare, terror, murder and bloodshed and what did that produce? Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci and the Renaissance. Meanwhile in Switzerland they had 500 years of democracy and peace and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock.”

Maybe were suffering from too much peace and we need a jolly good war to sort out what’s really important in life. Meanwhile the accountants and government departments = people with talentless drones get all the resources and occupy the tallest buildings.