Can Wasting Time Boost Your Creativity? Surprising Research Insights

Since Frederick Winslow Taylor measured the exact seconds workers spent inserting and withdrawing shovels at Bethlehem Steel, maximizing time efficiency has been treated as the holy grail of American workplaces. Psychologists and neuroscientists now argue that wasting time can actually enhance creativity.

Even seemingly meaningless activities like watching cat videos on YouTube may help solve arithmetic problems. Brent Coker of the University of Melbourne found that people who relaxed by browsing the web during work were 9% more efficient than those who did not. Jonathan Skuler, a psychology professor at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and his PhD student Benjamin Berd published a study titled “Inspiration from Day‑Dreaming,” concluding that completing simple, unrelated tasks can trigger mind‑wandering that aids creative problem solving.

Skuler gave participants a set of “Unusual Use Tasks” (UUTs), asking them to generate as many different uses as possible for a common object. After a baseline test, participants were divided into four groups for a 12‑minute “innovation incubation” period: a difficult memory task, an easy memory task with allowed mind‑wandering, a completely relaxed break, and a group with no incubation time. The group assigned the easy memory task showed the greatest increase in UUT scores.

“People who relaxed by browsing the web during work were 9% more efficient than those who didn’t.”

Skuler noted that the most surprising result was that completing a moderately easy task was better than doing nothing. He likened it to stirring food in a wok so that you don’t focus on a single spot for too long, allowing many idea sparks to emerge.

This conclusion aligns with earlier findings by Dutch psychologist Aep Dijktheys (2006), who discovered that a short period of mind‑wandering before making a complex decision leads to better judgments. Participants evaluated a list of car features; those who spent four minutes on a “mind‑wandering task” made superior assessments compared to those who simply recalled information.

Years later, Carnegie Mellon students James Borsley, psychology professor David Crewswell, and Northwestern researcher Ajay Saput replicated Dijktheys’s experiment using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). Their research confirmed that during unconscious thinking, neural activity occurs in regions distinct from those used in conscious thought, allowing the brain to continue processing previously recorded information and hand over decisions to conscious processing. In lay terms, this means you can watch a cat video while simultaneously solving a complex math problem.

A 2013 article in *Progress in Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience* concluded that short periods of unconscious thought aid decision‑making.

To maximize the benefits of “wasted” time, Skuler advises watching random baby videos on YouTube rather than your friends’ baby photos on Facebook.

Which type of distraction is optimal? The activity should be completely unrelated to the task you want your unconscious mind to handle. For example, if you need your brain to solve a math problem unconsciously, engage in a wholly different activity like playing tennis, not a similar puzzle.

Entrepreneur Jacques Habra is taking this research further with his startup SelfEcho, which is developing an app called UpJoy. UpJoy recommends uplifting images and short videos based on user‑selected interests (sports, animals, nature, humor, etc.). Over time, the app learns which content elicits the best responses and filters future recommendations accordingly. According to Skuler, this intervention improves mood—a proven boost to creativity—and provides low‑stress micro‑breaks.

Habra emphasizes that the images should be “unrelated to self” and must not involve personal life details. Otherwise, scrolling Facebook during breaks can lead to self‑comparison (“Why isn’t that me on vacation?”). Random baby videos on YouTube are preferable to friends’ baby photos for maximizing productive “wasted” time.

SelfEcho is also researching the ideal number and timing of breaks to prevent hedonic adaptation, where repeated exposure reduces emotional impact. In productivity‑focused settings, the daily usage of UpJoy will be limited.

Frederick Winslow Taylor would likely approve: break time—the uncontrolled segment at the end of the workday—is finally recognized as valuable rather than wasted.