To be clear, this post is not about the personal hygiene habits of some creative folks. We’ll save that for another day. This is a followup to my previous thoughts about the creative benefits of walking and other less-cerebral activities. And I wanted to share a real-world example that happened to me last evening.

We have a flower bed from hell. And it is towards the front of our yard, at the edge closest to the street. Where everyone driving by can see it. Nice. Seriously, our soil must be inert because our tulips are barely surviving while our weeds and crab grass shoots are thriving with vigor.

So last night Jill and I decided to wage a frontal assault with the hopes that we can tame this unruly beast and set ourselves up for a long summer of easy weed maintenance.

I think we succeeded.

The added benefit was that while engaged in this near-mindless activity, I had an idea (completely unrelated to gardening) for a fun children’s app game. Now whether I follow through with development is beside the point. This post is about harnessing non-creative activities for our good.

Now let’s follow the daisy chain that led to this post.

It starts with our crappy dishwasher. It sucks. It is not so much a washer, as a hot water rinsing machine. We have to pre-scrub everything and that kind of goes against the whole point of having a dishwasher. Then if that wasn’t enough, the powers-that-be decided to remove certain chemicals from the dish washing detergents. All our glassware looks like poo.

So lately we’ve been hand washing our dishes. Do see where this is going? If you correctly guessed that the idea for this post came while my hands were covered in suds, give yourself a gold star.

Weeding = creative insight. Washing dishes = blog post. Ah, the circle of life. It’s a beautiful thing.

The next time you get stuck creatively, “Hit the showers!”