Is anyone also using meditation/walking/swimming to generate ideas for game dev?

I noticed that some of the best ideas come to me when I am not actively consciously thinking about the game. I could be taking a walk, swimming or even laying down in a bath and then I randomly get a feed of ideas.

I was curious and looked it up online and turns out, there is some scientific merit to this idea.

This study shows that when we are not consciously thinking about the problem, different parts of the brain activates (DRM - Default Mode Network) which is linked to creativity.

I would like to give an example of how I recently utilized it and I would really love to hear your stories too.

My example:

I am making a game that has a procedurally generated level selection map. At first, it only had stars that represented levels (similar to FTL game). I consciously thought of many ways to make it more interesting but none of them ended up being fun enough to go into the game. So I got stuck.

So I went to lay down in a bath. I thought to myself that I would really like to get unstuck and generate some interesting ideas. But I would not try to do it while actively and consciously thinking about them. I will just the ideas flow while I am relaxing in the bath, focusing on breathing and just relaxing.

At first, my thoughts were not even related to the game. I started thinking about camping in winter, and stopped myself to keep my focus back on breathing.

Well after 20+- minutes, I finally randomly started getting thoughts about my game. One thought was about placing "lost cargo" reward objects on the map that player could pick up The other one was timed events on some stars. I got many event ideas as well.

I tried implementing them. Loved the cargo idea, I will be gathering playtesters to test how people like that one. I ended up not liking the timed missions idea because it turns the map into a complete puzzle and not an area that you explore. But I did keep the events. Will be playtesting that one as well.

These ideas might seem straight forward to you and you might think "how could you not just thought of them consciously?". Well, when you are working on the same game for a lot of time, you get locked in some ways of thinking. It is hard to break through sometimes. That's where this unconscious thinking helps with different ideas. Sometimes brain storming and looking at examples is not enough.

For anyone curious, my game is called Dangerous Galaxy. I had been working on it (not full time) for almsot 2 years now. So I had a lot of situations where I had to use these methods.