Down time matters. It matters a lot, in fact; it is the space of stillness where ideas have a chance to bubble along, mixing and mingling their flavors until new combinations arise. Sitting in the car can be incredibly productive; as a driver, I’m happy to dictate, and as a passenger, my ever-ready so-much-scribbling notebook is there for me as my adult-level comfort blanket.
Some of this trip has just been list-building. Oh, no, not that kind of list building – back up three steps: not “what do I think,” but “what do I plan to do to make room for thinking (and when.)”
And that’s the joy of vacation time. No need to cross things off (except for the “take the treadmill out of the basement in time to throw it away. THAT got written down and crossed off, and I’m resting from that exertion now!). Just sitting in as close to idle as I ever get, planning a day at the beach, sitting in the quiet and reading for a while, and poking at my phone a bit, and then breaking into active list-making-planning for another bit, and then back to idle mode.
Jack is reading the newspaper; Nissa is doing her paperwork. Tom has disappeared into the back room after saying sharp, incisive things about printer updates, many of which can’t be repeated in polite company.
The reality is that ideas have remarkably little respect for office hours. They show up while driving. Or while somebody else is reading the newspaper. Or during a dispute with a printer driver. Or in the five minutes that immediately follow the decision (ha!) that you are absolutely not going to think about work for the rest of the day.
Which may be why I have stopped trying to draw a hard line between working and not working. There is concentrated work, certainly. But there is also the long simmer: reading, noticing, talking, scribbling, staring out the window, putting two things next to one another and seeing what happens. An email which surfaces a quote for the next article. An idea that would be fruitful when it’s time to work on that article-related blog post. An image that might be worth a paragraph in the next chapter. Or do I mean the other chapter. Let me think about it for a while.
And, happily, vacation gives the simmer more room.
The trick, for me, is not to mistake every blurping bubble a command-to-action. Some things need to be written down. Some just need to be scheduled. And some need to be left alone until they become interesting enough to come back on their own.
And some things, like obsolete treadmills, just need to leave the basement before the trash truck arrives.
Good pre-term holidays, everyone!
YOU MIGHT ALSO BE INTERESTED IN:
- First Monday of a New Month: What to Write? — On keeping a “to-consider” list of possible projects without turning every interesting idea into an obligation.
- Writing is Momentum — On blogging, listing, staring into space, and other forms of thinking that count as part of the writing process—even when they aren’t producing the Official Important Words.
- The Whiteboard Where Big Things Live — On getting obligations out of your head, making priorities visible, and accepting small, humane, imperfect progress instead of heroic productivity.
