That’s what one of our Ideasicle X freelancers once said she appreciated about the virtual platform. Her ideas where happening while she was busy with other things. And it’s an incredibly important point about the virtual creative work we do, but also about any creative work anyone does for anything. Let me explain.

It’s like a parallel universe.

Your mind is an amazing thing. You’re conscious of the heat from the sun on your shoulders, yet at the same time your mind is incubating a creative problem underneath your consciousness. At any point in the day—when you’re in the shower, taking a walk, in aisle 3 of the grocery store, wherever—an idea may break through that mental membrane between conscious and subconscious and be worthy of writing down.

That’s how ideas often happen. It’s like you’re living in two existences in any given moment. One in front of you, the conscious one telling you the sunshine is on your shoulders. The other inside of you, the subconscious one batting the creative brief around your mind like a balloon you don’t want to hit the ground, always incubating.

The key, and bear with me here, is being conscious of the power of your subconscious. It’s easy to do. Instead of forcing ideas to happen right now, simply acknowledge, and have confidence, that ideas will hit you in the in-between times of your day. These ideas will not be accidents or coincidences, they will be part of your daily plan.

Virtual idea generation is designed for the in-between times

The Ideasicle X platform is really just a highly efficient way to not only capture those breakthrough ideas when they occur but to organize the ideas from the team of four in such a way as to inspire each other and provoke even better ideas.

Just this morning I was on my daily walk when an idea for a proXy client hit me out of the blue. I wasn’t even working on it, or didn’t think that I was, and boom it hit me. I was miles from my computer, but millimeters from my phone. I pulled it out, leaned against a bridge railing, opened the Ideasicle X app to the Idea Stream, and dictated the idea right then and there. Probably took thirty seconds from the second I came up with the idea to it being posted for the rest of my team to see. And then I went on with my walk.

John Lennon once said in his song Beautiful Boy, “Life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans.”

The same is true for ideas. They happen in the in-between.

Will Burns is the founder and CEO of Ideasicle X. Follow him on Twitter @WillOBurns.