Distraction gives you time to breathe

When you’re stuck in a hole, the first thing to do is to stop digging.

Harvard University researcher and psychologist Shelley H. Carson, author of “Your Creative Brain,” says distraction isn’t always a bad thing.

If you are stuck on a problem, an interruption can force an “incubation period,” she says. “In other words, a distraction may provide the break you need to disengage from a fixation on the ineffective solution.”
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Carson’s studies show that not only are creative people more susceptible to “novelty,” and thus distraction, but that mind wandering itself is associated with highly creative people.

Jan Brogan in the Boston Globe.