Boring Tasks Spur Creative Thinking

So I've spent the last few days setting up some new computer labs for a school.  It was a fairly monotonous job that involved running through the same sets of tasks over and over on all the computers.  Kinda boring to begin with but eventually I flipped over to autopilot and it became mostly subconscious.  That's when the fun began as the creative side of me began to ponder and wonder.

Often I find that repetitive tasks like this where I can mentally switch off do wonders for my creative thinking.  In the last few days, for instance, I've had quite a few funky ideas relating to projects I'm currently working on.

I think the potent mix is to ideally have something that I'm doing physically, and something to distract my subconscious.  Doing something physical helps because then it's working parts of your mind in a ways that it likes.  After a few million years existing in the real world, our minds are quite tuned to physical tasks.  Then you need to get your subconscious on task.  To me, the trick is that the tasks should be simple enough that not all of my subconscious is involved in the task,  just a little of it.  This way there are other parts available for your creative side to take advantage of while it wonders.

The fact that I know I'll have a few hours of reasonably uninterrupted thinking time is also a bonus.  It's as if my mind knows that it doesn't have to rush and can take it's time exploring ideas.

So what do you find to be the ideal way to get your mind in prime creative thinking mode?

You're on your way to becoming a Highly Creative Person.