Something strange I've noticed. When I get bright ideas, they always come in the most unusual ways. I usually get good ideas while:

1. Before going to sleep at night.

2. When sitting on the toilet.

3. When taking a shower.

4. And when I have the cold/flu.

Anyone else experience this?

Sounds like you do your best thinking when you're the most bored/incapable of doing anything. Not particularly unusual (unless I'm strange too...)

I find that I come up with a list of things I should've done or should do the following day. At one point it got so bad that I kept a pad of paper and a pencil around to write things down on... Proved very useful.

Something strange I've noticed. When I get bright ideas, they always come in the most unusual ways. I usually get good ideas while:

1. Before going to sleep at night.

2. When sitting on the toilet.

3. When taking a shower.

4. And when I have the cold/flu.

Anyone else experience this?

Our brain has a finite capacity. If we focus on tasks - as we do most of the time - other data is left as background. If we're idle, the brain has the free capacity to consider data that was previously ignored as irrelevant to the specific problem(s) at hand - to draw new inferences and connections.

So why don't I get ideas while riding a train or bus?

So why don't I get ideas while riding a train or bus?

Your brain is processing the input from around you, I guess? Idk, I get good ideas on car rides and plane rides.

So why don't I get ideas while riding a train or bus?

Depends what you're doing on that train or bus - even assuming you're not reading, listening to music, etc, I'm pretty sure there's some conscious thinking going on about where you are relative to the destination, processing the landmarks you pass by, etc. The brain possibly also handles the physical stimuli of being bounced about by the car/bus movement too.