How To Unlock the "Shower Effect"

Feb 25, 2024

Written by Andrew Lucas

Sparking Creativity with Everyday Moments

Ever noticed how a simple shower can turn into a cascade of breakthrough ideas? It's called the "shower effect" – a moment when relaxation meets revelation, proving creativity doesn't just clock in during office hours.

A 2019 study spotlighting 98 writers and 87 physicists unveiled that while the workplace sparked most ideas, a significant 20% of creative lightning struck during mundane moments like showers or dishwashing.

These off-the-clock ideas weren't just filler; they matched the brilliance of work-time inspirations, often breaking through creative blocks with those coveted "aha" moments.

Why Showers Spark Genius

It boils down to mind-wandering – letting your thoughts drift freely, untethered from the task at hand. Contrary to its bad rap for tanking focus, directed daydreaming, or "mind-wondering," fosters happiness and, you guessed it, creativity.

The magic happens in the brain's "default mode network" (DMN), our internal brainstorming room, humming to life when we're lost in thought. Direct evidence links the DMN to our eureka eruptions, painting mind-wandering not as a flaw, but a feature of our creativity.

Making the Most of Your Mind's Meanderings

Take Breaks: A stroll or a shower isn't just a stress-buster; it's a secret passage to fresh thinking.
Change Your Scene: New environments stimulate new ideas. But, the key is moderation; too engaging, and your creative incubation is interrupted.
Exercise Your Creativity: Like any muscle, your creative prowess strengthens with practice.
Reflect on Your Creative State: Notice when and where your mind tends to wander into creative territories. Use these insights to cultivate conditions that nurture your creativity.

In essence, embracing the "shower effect" means recognizing and nurturing the incredible potential of our minds to wander into realms of creativity during the most ordinary moments.

So next time you're lathering up, remember: great ideas don't always strike at a desk. Sometimes, they emerge amid the mist and suds.

The Habituals: Taking Care of Your Skin Beyond Nutrition and Products

May 29, 2022

Written by Andrew Lucas

The Habituals: Taking Care of Your Skin Beyond Nutrition and Products

Healthy skin doesn’t start (or end) with a tailor-made topical routine or a flawless diet. Your day-to-day habits play an important role. So, too, do your lifestyle choices, behaviours and common practices. As always, it's the cumulative effect of doing a lot of little things right that makes the biggest difference. And doing them as often as possible.

Drink Plenty Of Water

Will having an adequate amount of water transform your skin? No. But proper hydration is vital to your overall health. Everything is connected. And water is crucial to our entire body’s proper function. Its health and wellbeing.

Proper hydration helps to keep your skin moist. To maintain its elasticity. It stops it from cracking. It deters it from sagging. It slows down the formation of wrinkles. It reduces itchiness and flaking. It improves circulation and the evenness of complexion and skin tone. It speeds up the healing process if your skin is damaged.

It aids in digestion and the dispelling of toxins. It helps regulate proper oil production - resulting in fewer breakouts. It balances pH levels - making your skin more resilient to irritants. It keeps the skin tight and helps it to avoid the puffiness associated with dehydration. It regulates temperature and prevents heat related flare ups like boils and rashes.

Avoid Prolonged Periods in Air Conditioning

Air conditioning systems remove moisture from indoor environments to reduce humidity. They draw moisture from the air, and in turn, your skin - drastically drying it out. Dry skin affects skin function and opens up a host of other problems. Itching, flaking, reduced elasticity, cracking, imbalanced oil production, poor circulation, premature signs of aging, psoriasis, eczema, and good bacteria growth.

Change your filters. Run a humidifier. Take a break from the A/C. Drink water. Moisturize regularly.

Shower under lukewarm water

Hot showers sure do feel nice, but the toll they take on your skin can’t be ignored. The hot water dries out and irritates your skin, damaging it at a cellular level. Your skin’s keratin cells - located directly beneath its first layer - become disrupted and prevented from retaining moisture.

Any skin condition characterized by a compromised lipid barrier is immediately worsened by hot water. It further strips your skin of its natural oils - the oils necessary to help retain hydration and ward off unwanted bacteria. It intensifies the feelings associated with dry or dehydrated skin. It increases your blood pressure and inhibits good circulation.

Wash your sheets.

You spend roughly a third of your life in bed. While you sleep you sweat, you breathe, shed dead skin cells, and transfer bacteria from the surface of your skin to the folds of your bed sheets. A nice, warm and generally quite moist environment. See where this is going? Bacteria is a normal and necessary part of our lives, however it needs to be kept in check. As time goes on, the bacteria levels on your sheets will lead to a handful of problems. Skin related and beyond.

Keep your sheets clean. There’s really no point in keeping yourself clean if you’re hopping into a petri dish every night.

Disinfect your phone.

Consider all the things you touch on any given day. Think about how many times you or other people are handling your phone. The surfaces you place it on. The places you use it - hello bathroom. Then what? You either bring it directly up to your face, or you type away on it. Either way whatever bacteria is on that phone is finding its way onto you.

Disinfect your phone. Wash your hands. Don’t Touch your face.

Exercise.

Anything that promotes circulation directly benefits your skin. And exercise does just that. Increasing blood flow helps to nourish your skin - delivering oxygen, vitamins and other vital nutrients to it - and carries away waste products like free radicals. While exercise, and more specifically sweating, doesn’t detoxify your skin - thats your liver’s job - it does promote improved cell turnover.

Caveat - you may notice, after a particularly sweaty workout, a flare-up of acne. A new pimple. A sweat pimple. This isn’t unusual. The combination of sweat, heat and friction can lead to a clogging of your pores, and if left unattended, bacteria simply sits there.

In order to combat this, gently pat excess sweat off during your workout, shower immediately after, and cleanse your face and body. Be sure to reapply your moisturizer thereafter.

Get plenty of sleep.

Beauty sleeps. Handsome naps. The value here is in your skin’s regeneration process. Sleep gives your skin time to rebuild itself. All day, your skin’s active role as a barrier to light, pollution, germs, dryness, wetness etc is put to the test. At night it gets a bit of break - just as you do.

Cutting back on sleep cuts back on the time your skin has to regenerate itself for the day. It’s during your skin’s regeneration process that collagen - the protein responsible for your skin’s volume and elasticity - is produced.

Blood flow is also an important role of sleep. Your blood is allowed to naturally flow to the parts of your body that aren’t in constant use. Delivering much needed oxygen and nutrients.

Sleep smarter. Sleep on silk.

Do yourself a favour and get some silk pillow cases. One, you’ll feel like a 70’s porn star, and two, you’ll start to look like one. Is that a good thing? Who knows. Sounds fun, though. Silk’s texture is...silkier than cotton’s. It causes less friction. Therefore less irritating. Less inflammatory. Cotton also absorbs and holds onto the natural oils, sweat and bacteria you release while you sleep. The grime doesn’t just build up, it embeds itself. Silk absorbs substantially less moisture.

Maintain a healthy diet.

We’ve gone over this in full in the blog about nutrition but it bears repeating. What you put into your body, eventually works its way out. Your skin is the outer manifestation of everything going on inside your body - good and bad. It doesn’t matter if you check 9/10 healthy skin routine boxes if your diet is poor. If you eat fast food every day, your skin will look like a cheese burger.

Take your vitamins.

Chances are, if you consistently maintain a healthy diet, you’re getting all your nutrients. But what’s the harm in making sure? A good safeguard — an insurance policy — is to have a well balanced regiment of supplements. Start with a multi. Work your way out from there.