If you really want to solve a problem, try doing nothing about it. Fold some laundry. Stir a risotto. Go for a run, watch a film, try to entertain someone else’s baby: anything that involves pottering about in an undemanding yet still vaguely engaged way, which absolutely couldn’t be classed as work but isn’t totally vegetative either. It may not be the productivity hack any go-getter wants to hear, but it’s surprising how often a spell of aimless noodling around frees an otherwise overworked human brain to make the kind of lateral mental leap that helps everything fall into place. And I’m not just saying that to justify a New Year’s Day spent lying hungover on the sofa, ploughing through the last of the Christmas cheese.
For the eminent cancer surgeon Michael Baum, it was a night off with his wife at the theatre that allowed him to suddenly join the dots. After watching a scene in Tom Stoppard’s play Arcadia where one character explains chaos theory to another, Baum had his own personal eureka moment: what if this mathematical concept, used to describe complex systems that may seem haphazard but have a hidden underlying pattern to them, could also explain the otherwise puzzling way in which cancer grows and spreads? The result of that one stray thought as the interval curtain rose was an innovation in chemotherapy, and a gratifying rise in survival rates.
