Creative editing, something you've talked about at length, and for me, I've always believed that I'm at least creative in the office. I've always thought I'm more creative in the gym and in the shower than I am when I'm sat in a boardroom with a bunch of people. I know this is something you've spoken about, so I wanted to get your take on where we're most creative, what kills and causes creativity. Let me tell you what I've discovered, that neuroscientists are really intriguing.
The most compelling thing about neuroscientists is when you look into it, neuroscientists are used to work on experimenting on animals. I'm not keen on that. I was like, I was in a protest group about animal experimentation when I was younger, and they used to look at brain injury. It was the main way that neuroscience worked, and it's only the last 20 years that brain scans have had any degree of sophistication.
But what they've discovered in the time that they've had brain scanners is some of the things that they presumed about the way our brain works aren't necessarily right. So let me give you one example. They used to put people in these brand new brain scanners, and they would watch what they did. They'd give them a puzzle, they'd give them a Rubik's Cube, their brains would light up in these different places, and then they'd notice what happened when people stopped playing on the puzzle, and their brains would light up in loads of places as well.
And so it was baffling what's going on right now that they'd say to these people, they'd say, oh right, sorry, I was a million miles away, I was daydreaming. So okay, right, that's interesting. Your brain's lightened up when you're not thinking about something when you switch off. And so the way that neuroscientists categorize this, broadly they say, these three systems of cognition.
First one is like when you're doing that Rubik's Cube, or when you're typing an email, it's called the executive attention network. So it's the main thing you're focusing on. And then you'll know while your executive attention network is watching Netflix or while you're writing an email, you can also be aware of the room you're in. That's called the salience network.
And the third one, the third, so these three of these systems, the third one is that one when you're daydreaming, the one where you're a million miles away, the one when you're in the shower, which is called the default network. But what we discover is that people generally report having their best creative ideas, not when they're frowning into their laptop screen, but when they're in these default mode situations. So you might have it in the old days, if you want to train somewhere or on a plane somewhere, loads of people I've got friends who says she has all her best ideas staring out the windows of planes. And so if that was you, then this year has been an uncreative year.
But my favorite example of it, is a really famous screenwriter called Aaron Sorkin. He's written the West Wing. He wrote, there was a film he had on Netflix just for Christmas called The Chicago Seven. He's written all these big things, very famous for Zingy Dialogues.
He wrote the social network film, things like that. Really, what's better than a million a billion? He's written all these Zingy lines. And he's realized that he has all his best ideas, exactly like you in the shower.
He said he had, he told Hollywood report magazine, he had a shower installed in the corner of his office and he has eight showers a day. And he was asked by them, he was asked by them, hang on. Is this like some weird OCD thing? He said, not at all.
I find that when I start proceeding there thinking of something, trying to come up with an idea, which only when I disengage my brain, something comes to me. An idea comes to me. And so what you describe is exactly what a lot of these people whose job it is to be creative have recognized. And as soon as you know that, you start thinking, wow, okay, I need to think differently about being creative because creativity can then be, well, I'm sitting at my desk, I'm sort of taking all these inspiration in, stimulation ideas, but then it's about disengaging, going for a walk, going for a cycle ride, going to do a workout, might be the moment where the idea hits you.
And I don't think necessarily we think about that enough. If you go back to this idea that your brain is a bit like your phone battery, then some of those moments that effectively can recharge your battery can be the moments where creativity hits you and inspiration hits you. So I think sort of rethinking the way that we treat a productive week of work of at least blocks of work, but then moments where, you know, it might be your personal routine, you go for a walk every lunchtime. That can be far more creative and productive than you might imagine.
How do we make our work environments more conducive with creativity then? Is there a way or do we just resign to the fact that that's not going to be the best place for our creativity? And if we're going to reach our potential, it's probably going to be away from the office. I think it's about recognizing that's a yin yang.
There's a balance of work and imagination. So I always love the example of Charles Dickens. Charles Dickens, obviously, like incredibly productive. I think he wrote 15 novels, 200 short stories.
He edited a weekly magazine about a mile from here. You know, it's incredibly productive. We didn't work afternoons. And so Charles Dickens would sit down at his desk at eight in the morning.
He'd write for about four or five hours and then he'd go and walk 10 miles every afternoon. And that was like him lost in his thoughts, you know, striding through East London, probably sort of imagination popping when he sat down the next day, he had loads of ideas. And I think some of us have eliminated that sort of the brain fermenting ideas. We've eliminated that bit.
So, you know, it might be that your way to do this yourself is to make sure you've just got some downtime or you've just got some time where, you know, you put music on, but you turn podcasts off or you just you try and get a bit more balance in how you're using your energy. So let's continue this point about work and creativity. Say that I today made you the CEO of a company that had had employees and you could design from scratch the working environment, how often people work and some of the sort of key sort of principles.