Research aimed at dis­cov­er­ing how ‘Eureka moments’ are trig­gered and how these moments of clar­ity and insight dif­fer from typ­i­cal method­i­cal rea­son­ing has found that not only are epipha­nies more likely when we’re day­dream­ing, but our state of mind before we tackle a prob­lem is also crucial.

They mate­ri­al­ize with­out warn­ing, often through an uncon­scious shift in men­tal per­spec­tive that can abruptly alter how we per­ceive a prob­lem. […] In fact, our brain may be most actively engaged when our mind is wan­der­ing and we’ve actu­ally lost track of our thoughts, a new brain-scanning study sug­gests. “Solv­ing a prob­lem with insight is fun­da­men­tally dif­fer­ent from solv­ing a prob­lem analytically”.

[…] Even before we are pre­sented with a prob­lem, our state of mind can affect whether or not we will likely resort to insight­ful think­ing. Peo­ple in a pos­i­tive mood were more likely to expe­ri­ence an insight.

Another find­ing that fas­ci­nated me was that by mon­i­tor­ing the brain waves of the par­tic­i­pants, researchers could pre­dict who would solve a prob­lem through insight up to eight sec­onds before the answer actu­ally mate­ri­alised consciously.

One les­son to remem­ber from the research: the wan­der­ing, day­dream­ing mind is a cru­cial and impor­tant men­tal state where our brains are unusu­ally active.