What Is Incubation—and Why It Matters
Incubating ideas is often a crucial stage in the creative process. It enables you to do your best work. Allowing for incubation means giving ideas time to “churn” below the threshold of consciousness, working in the background of your mind while you aren’t focused directly on the problem.
First, immerse yourself in preparation and learning. Then, give it time before taking subsequent steps to develop the idea.
By stepping away and allowing space for unstructured musing and open attention, you invite your muse, your intuitive creative self, to make connections you wouldn’t achieve through conscious effort alone. As writing expert Anne Janzer has written, “One secret of productivity is learning how to use not writing time to advance the work. Remember that incubation is a critical precursor to creative insight.” The Writer’s Process: Getting Your Brain in Gear (The Writer’s Process Series).
What I Learned About Incubation 50 Years Ago
The awareness of the value of incubation is not a new concept. I was taught this in ministry classes over 50 years ago.
In a preaching class, this was the technique we were taught to use in preparing sermons. You pick a topic, do the research, then back off and intentionally give it to your “sub” (subconscious) to work on it.
When you come back to it a day or two later, your mind will already, somewhat magically, have a basic sermon outline to work from. I did this for 30-plus years in ministry, and it always worked.
The Benefits of Letting Ideas Incubate
There are many benefits to incubation:
• Incubation improves the quality and efficiency of your creative output, often leading to more original and profound ideas. “Incubate the research to improve the quality and efficiency of your writing.” Anne Janzer, The Writer’s Process.
• Strategic incubation, such as letting a project bake while you seek new experiences, can be a productive form of procrastination. It lets creative intuition mature, sometimes evolving an initial idea into something bigger and better.
As Todd Henry wrote, “There is also a good kind of procrastination. This is when you allow an idea to incubate for a season, even though you could easily act on it now. You intentionally wait to see how the idea develops and if there are any environmental sparks that evolve it into something better.” Daily Creative.
• Incubation often allows disparate stimuli and ideas to connect in unexpected ways. The process involves creating new connections between existing ideas rather than inventing in a vacuum. Incubation facilitates these connections by letting your brain continue working on problems in the background.
How to Build Incubation into Your Process
Practical ways to practice incubation:
• Plan backward and plan time for incubation. Anne Janzer suggests, “Once you have the ending date, work backward through the seven steps to set up interim deadlines. Leave adequate time for incubation and rest between key phases.”
There are no hard and fast rules to determine how long a project should incubate. It’s entirely subjective—it’s ready for further work when you feel it is.
• Prepare the soil with research. Your subconscious won’t have anything to process if you don’t first provide it with some raw material to work on. Research your topic and then move on to something entirely different. While you’re not consciously working on the material, your mind will continue to process it.
During incubation, your mind will do some of the heavy lifting for you. When you return to the project, you’ll likely find that you already have some ideas for organizing your topic and have some insights about how your research materials fit together.
• Work on two or more projects at the same time. Author David Kadavy uses what he calls the alternating incubation method. With this method, you can complete two projects in parallel while harnessing the power of incubation. Mind Management, Not Time Management: Productivity When Creativity Matters.
By alternating your work on two projects, you allow one project to incubate while you consciously work on the other. Even though you focus on one project, your subconscious mind continues to work on the other. Using an alternating method allows you to produce more and higher-quality creative work in less time.
My Personal Incubation Workflow
I regularly incorporate incubation into my creative process. I get ideas as I read, think, or review Readwise highlights from my reading. I write them down, but I don’t have to act on them immediately. I find that ideas typically benefit from some incubation time.
I have a shortcut that I use to preserve a blog idea, and I write some initial thoughts and a very brief outline. I also save the Readwise quote that sparked it. They sit in a list in Craft, and sometimes I start to develop them immediately. Other times, they sit for months or even years until I decide to do more work on them. I read something and maybe add a note or a quote.
When I decide to write a blog post, I review my list of ideas and pick one that resonates with me. I start a mind map in the MindNode app. The mind map is typically developed over time, with me returning multiple times to add material and rearrange my thinking.
When I think the mind map is ready, I dictate and edit a first draft in Ulysses. I typically let it sit in the Ulysses editing folder until I decide to publish it. I’ll edit it one more time and sometimes add material or rearrange it before publishing it.
I don’t always allow time for incubation. If a topic is timely, I sometimes feel the need to publish it quickly. Or, if it’s a topic I’ve been thinking about for some time, it’s already been through an incubation period.
When Waiting Is Working
You don’t always need to push harder. Sometimes you need to pause smarter. Letting ideas incubate allows creativity to unfold in surprising and natural ways.
Here’s a rhythm that works:
1. Feed your brain: Do the reading, research, or brainstorming.
2. Step away: Let go of the idea. Focus on something else.
3. Return fresh: Re-engage when you feel some energy or insight bubbling up.
Experiment with this on your next project. Let go of the urgency to finish and make space for insight to arise. You might be surprised by what your mind can do while you’re not looking.
AI Note: I wrote this blog post myself, using my own words for the initial draft. I used AI only to suggest headlines, section headings, and improvements to the text.
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