Here is a brief excerpt from an article by Stephanie Vozza for Fast Company magazine. She explains how and why “Aha!” moments aren’t magic. They come to peopled who have cultivated daily habits of approaching life. To read the complete article, check out others, and sign up to receive email alerts, please click here.

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Eureka moments are rare. The backstory behind great ideas is often more complex and winding than having an apple fall on your head. But the best part is that creative ideas aren’t reserved for a special group of people; they can come to anyone if you change your mind-set.

“The fact is, almost all of the research in this field shows that anyone with normal intelligence is capable of doing some degree of creative work,” Teresa Amabile, professor of business administration at Harvard Business School and author of The Progress Principle: Using Small Wins to Ignite Joy, Engagement, and Creativity at Work, told Fast Company in 2004. “Creativity depends on a number of things: experience, including knowledge and technical skills; talent; an ability to think in new ways; and the capacity to push through uncreative dry spells.”

Whether they’re coming up with an innovative new product to launch, finding a solution to a universal problem, or picking a cool new place to grab lunch, people who consistently have great ideas have formed habits that help them think. Here are eight simple things those “creative geniuses” do that you can do, too.

[Here are the first three of eight.]

1. They Look for Inspiration in Unexpected Places: Instead of staying focused within their industries, people who have great ideas look elsewhere, says Sooshin Choi, provost at the College for Creative Studies in Detroit.

“Many professionals go after information in their industry, but once you get that information, it’s too late—everyone has it,” he says. “Even if you get that information faster than others, what kind of real difference can you make?”

Instead, Choi suggests looking outside your field. “Car designers might look at furniture designers for inspiration,” he says. “There are endless examples of different areas where you can find inspiration.”

2. They Make Slow Decisions: In his book Hare Brain, Tortoise Mind, author Guy Claxton says intelligence increases when you think less: “There’s an expanding idea of what it means to be intelligent,” he told the London Business Forum in 2014. “The narrow idea is all built around cleverness, which is the ability to argue, marshal facts, and interpret a spreadsheet. That it’s all done through reason; it’s all done consciously.”

Give Your Mind Time to Work in Margins — When You Are Thinking of Something Else. Research, however, has found that thoughts are going on in the margins of the mind in areas Claxton calls hazy, poetic, or uncontrolled. Calling this the “tortoise mind,”

Claxton says great ideas bubble up when you slow down decisions: “Whenever there’s a decision that needs to be made, the first thing you ask yourself is, ‘When does this decision need to be made?’” he says. “And you don’t make it until then.”

Deciding prematurely stunts your ability to find great ideas. Give your mind time to work in the margins—when you’re thinking of something else. This allows time to collect more information, listen to hunches, and experience bursts of creativity.

3. They Find Internal Motivation: People who have great ideas are motivated to work on something because it is interesting, involving, exciting, satisfying, or personally challenging, says Amabile.

Research has found that people are most creative when they’re intrinsically motivated, rather than pushed by evaluation, surveillance, competition with peers, dictates from superiors, or the promise of rewards.

“You should do what you love, and you should love what you do,” Amabile writes. “The first is a matter of finding work that matches well with your expertise, your creative thinking skills, and your strongest intrinsic motivations. The second is a matter of finding a work environment that will allow you to retain that intrinsic motivational focus, while supporting your exploration of new ideas.”

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Here is a direct link to the complete article.

Stephanie Vozza writes about business, productivity and really cool people for magazines, websites and companies. She is the author of The Five-Minute Mom’s Club: 105 Tips to Make a Mom’s Life Easier, and the founder of TheOrganizedParent.com, an ecommerce platform she later sold to FranklinCovey Products. Stephanie lives in Michigan with her husband, two sons and their crazy Jack Russell terriers.