“Creativity involves breaking out of established patterns in order to look at things in a different way.” — Edward de Bono
Notice where de Bono puts the creative act. Not in pushing harder along the same track. In breaking out of the pattern — stepping outside the established way of looking, so the thing itself can look different when you return to it.
That is exactly what a short break does. And it is why Tip 2 of my book 42 Ways To Be More Creative & Brilliant sounds almost too simple to include: take a short break from creative work.
Simple is not the same as small. If you have ever stared at a paragraph, a design, or a problem for an hour while it got worse — not better — you already know the pain point this tip answers. The work is not stuck because you lack ability. It is stuck because you have been looking at it in exactly one way, for too long.
The Forty-Minute Wall
Here is the idea, as I put it in the book: attention fades after about 40 minutes of intense brain activity, and from there you enter the realm of diminishing creative returns.
You know this wall when you hit it. The sentences resist. Every idea sounds like the last idea. You re-read the same line five times. The temptation, especially if you care about the work, is to grip tighter — more coffee, more effort, more hours at the desk.
But grip is the problem, not the cure. A mind that has locked onto the obvious answers will keep serving you the obvious answers, only more slowly and with more frustration attached. What it needs is not more pressure. It needs a pattern break — de Bono’s move, made physical.
A short break — stretch, walk to the coffee machine, chat with someone for a minute — can reset your focus. And, as the book says, it occasionally delivers the game-changing idea you were straining for. Occasionally is honest. But notice: the idea rarely arrives while you are straining for it.
In Real Life: Two Brief Breaks That Held Focus for an Hour
Does stepping away really protect focus, or does it just feel nicer? Researchers at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign tested this directly. In a study by Atsunori Ariga and Alejandro Lleras, published in the journal Cognition in 2011 under the title “Brief and rare mental ‘breaks’ keep you focused,” 84 participants worked at a repetitive computer task for about 50 minutes.
Most groups faded, exactly as you would expect. Their performance declined significantly over the task. But one group — the “switch” group, who were briefly diverted from the main task just twice, to respond to memorised digits when they appeared — showed no drop in performance at all.
Two brief diversions. That was enough to hold focus for the full session.
The researchers’ explanation matches the book’s instinct: the brain habituates to constant stimulation and begins to treat it as unimportant. Momentarily deactivating a goal and then reactivating it keeps it alive. As Lleras put it, brief mental breaks will actually help you stay focused on your task.
Two honest qualifications matter here. First, the study’s breaks were brief task switches inside a lab task, not a long afternoon off — the lesson is about brief breaks, which is precisely the tip. Second, a break that is just a smaller screen is not the same move. The book is clear on this, and it is where most modern breaks fail.
Going Deeper: A Break Is Half the Work
This is the line from the chapter I most want you to keep: breaks are not the opposite of creative work; they are half of it.
When you step away, your brain keeps processing in the background. It loosens its grip on the obvious answers and lets weaker, more original associations surface. That background processing is not idleness. It is the other half of how ideas form — the half you cannot schedule at the desk, but can absolutely make room for away from it.
The key is a real break: moving your body and changing your view, not swapping one screen for a smaller one. Scrolling a feed is not a pattern break. It is the same posture, the same eyes, the same mental furniture — with somebody else’s thoughts poured in. A real break changes the inputs: different light, different distance, a body in motion, a face instead of a screen.
Here is a small reframe worth trying, and it is the one I use myself. Stop calling it “stopping.” Call it what the research suggests it is: switching the work from the foreground mind to the background mind, on purpose, for five minutes. You are not abandoning the problem. You are handing it to the part of you that solves problems in the shower, on walks, and in the last minute before sleep.
If you would like all 42 tips — each with the idea behind it and a Try This Today action you can do in under an hour — you can find the book here: 42 Ways To Be More Creative & Brilliant.
Try This Today
From the book, exactly as written there — because it works as written:
Set a timer for 40 minutes of focused work, then take 5 minutes completely away from your desk — no phone. Stretch, look out of a window, get water. Notice what idea is waiting for you when you sit back down.
Three small additions make the book’s exercise easier to keep. First, decide the break before the timer starts, so willpower is not negotiating with you at minute thirty-nine. Second, leave a blank line — on paper, not on a screen — at the top of your desk for whatever surfaces while you are away. Third, when you return, write the returning thought down before you check anything else. The first idea back is often the loosened one. Capture it before the old pattern re-forms around it.
Done it? Tick the box, note the date in your journal, and notice what changed. Small reps, daily, are how creative people are made.
Get the Book
42 Ways To Be More Creative & Brilliant is the expanded edition of one of my most-loved essays: 42 tips, each pairing a great creative voice with the idea behind it and a bold Try This Today action. It is available as an instant-download ebook at its launch price of $4.00 (reg. $8.00):
👉 Get 42 Ways To Be More Creative & Brilliant on Etsy
New to Launch Your Genius? Start with my free book, 12 Amazing Life Lessons From Rumi — twelve timeless quotes and the lessons I found inside them, free to download at launchyourgenius.com. 🌿
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