Creativity and unconciousness

A last couple of days, we were trying to come up on some innovative and creative solutions to a problem at work. Being distracted by myriad of things, I wanted to pause and take help from some of my favorites self help books. I have said before that I am a big fan of self help book like 59 Seconds by Dr. Richard Wiseman. He claims through various studies done in the past that when it comes to innovative ways to look at the world, there goes a lot more to your unconscious mind than you can imagine. When it comes to getting solution to the challenging problems, he suggests taking a break and let your conscious mind fully occupied by some word puzzles or Sudoku game. Before starting to play word puzzles or sudoku, just jot down the problems you are trying to solve. Once occupied by the game, simply without thinking too much, jot down possible thoughts and solutions to the problem.
Dr. Wiseman also provides some tips from his another book about creativity Did you spot the gorilla?
The three techniques he described are as follows:

1. Prime your mind: He suggests that after working feverishly on a problem or a project , give yourself a release of effort by doing something totally different such as visiting an art gallery, taking a train journey, or simply randomly browsing the internet without pushing yourself. Simply immerse yourself into novel ideas and experiences and leave your brain to find connections and create fortunate discoveries.
2. Change Perspective: According to Dr. Wiseman changing perspective helps find novel solutions. For example, thinking how a child, stupid, friend, artist or an accountant will approach the problem. He also suggests to apply analogous situations to your own problem by applying the "is like" rule. So, finding a bug in this code is like spotting deficiencies in a high performer employee. Thinking about how the problem will be solved in those situations and can this idea be applied to your situations.
3. Perceive: He suggests to switch your brain from auto-pilot mode to manual mode. When things become routine, brain turns to autopilot mode. Bring it to manual mode by bringing your curiousity towards life. Why do people laugh or why banana is yellow

See, if you can get in touch with your inner gorilla by practicing these. I am going to try and let you know if it worked for me :-)