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Mednick’s research also implies that napping may improve performance on certain tasks more than caffeine. Testing all of the groups the next day-after a night’s sleep-still resulted in “nappers” doing better than “non-nappers,” suggesting that naps augment the positive effects of sleep. Those who hadn’t napped performed worse in the evening, while those who’d napped either performed the same or dramatically better. Everyone was then re-tested in the evening. In one study, Sara Mednick and colleagues tested participants on perception tasks-similar to what you do to get your peripheral vision checked-then divided them into three groups: one that didn’t nap at all, and two that napped either for an hour or ninety minutes. Even a short nap of around 20 minutes boosts your ability to concentrate by giving your brain a chance to restore depleted energy. The most obvious benefit of napping is that it increases alertness and decreases fatigue.

Sleep scientists have found that even a short nap can be effective in recharging your mental batteries. If you do imaginative, creative work over long hours or in a demanding environment, afternoon naps can have restorative power for you. For naturalist Charles Darwin, for example, walking was so valuable a creative stimulus that he built a “ thinking path” near his house, and would retreat to it while working on difficult problems. Walking may not be as beneficial for focused, analytical thinking but there’s good reason to believe that it stimulates creativity and may aid you in solving problems encountered on the job, particularly if you walk when problems are still fresh in your mind. Moreover, in one experiment, the researchers showed that the benefits of walking on creativity did not fade immediately, but carried over into performance on future tests. Their results showed that walking and being outside each separately led to better performance on the test. The researchers compared participants’ performance under four conditions: while walking on a treadmill, while seated inside, while walking outside, or while being wheeled outside in a wheelchair.

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Researchers at Stanford did a series of experiments looking at the effects of walking on creativity, as measured by a test of divergent thinking-which asks people to come up with novel ways of using an everyday item, like a brick or a doorstop. Not only is it a form of exercise (which brings blood to the brain), it can also help our brains engage in a light kind of focus, which encourages more mind-wandering and aids later creativity. Walking can be a simple way to facilitate creative thinking. They found that employees whose work had a large measure of routine were more likely to submit ideas those who had more control over their work did even better. Then, they looked at how many creative ideas these workers submitted to managers. In one study, researchers surveyed hundreds of workers at a high-tech company about how much routine they had in their everyday work, how much opportunity they had to be creative on the job, and how much initiative they could exercise in trying out new ideas.

We may think of routine as the opposite of creativity but in reality, research suggests that routines can enhance it. They also tend to set up routines, so that they don’t waste brainpower recreating the wheel every day and taking up valuable creative energy.

They start work earlier, sometimes before dawn, and concentrate on their most challenging work first when their creative energy is bound to be at its peak. While some writers and artists burn the midnight oil, depend on a looming deadline to help them focus, or wait for inspiration to strike before getting down to business, many of history’s most creative and prolific figures take a different approach.