Sam Parr breaks down how passive thinking during showers or walks sparks creative breakthroughs. His four-step process: write a rough draft fast, step away to let ideas incubate for days or weeks, edit ruthlessly, then ship. Most people skip incubation and editing, which is where the real work happens.
Have you ever heard of the phrase shower thoughts where you like think of silly things in the shower? There's some science behind this. When you're out riding a bike and you're out going for a walk where you're just sitting, it's called passive thinking. You actually get great breakthroughs. What I like to do is I draft my first thing and I know that it's bad. I don't show anyone. Then I go for a walk or I'll just sit. Sometimes that will take 48 hours. Sometimes that will take 1 hour, sometimes 10 minutes, sometimes a week. Here's where the last part and the most important part is. Ogilvy, one of my favorite writers, he's got this great line. He goes, I'm a lousy writer, but I'm a good editor. And this is where greatness happens. Stephen King calls it killing your darlings. The editing phase is where all the great stuff happens. And this is actually where the gold happens. And a lot of people don't do this process. What they do is they write their draft thinking that's the final bit and they get afraid and nervous and they never write it. And they don't actually incubate and they don't actually edit.
