Blank space
Sometimes you have free time and you fill it with hobbies, entertainment, and seeing friends. I know that’s probably the majority of the time for me. This week I’ve found myself really relishing blank space: free time where I’m not doing anything very stimulating, but just reflecting, resting, or writing. I particularly have found it nice this week to do this during periods of the day before I’m exhausted. You know that special zone of energy you get when you’re fully awake but on a plane or train and can’t do your normal things? It feels like that, where I’m in no rush, not sleepy, and just allowing quiet flow to emerge. I feel deep creativity and satisfaction which is often subconsciously the very thing I’m seeking when I fill my time with other higher-stimulation activities.
As I reflect on how much I’m enjoying this moment, this blank space, I realize how little of it I make for myself. I realize how only after a nice two-week vacation are my habits shifted enough that I’m making room for this vs. reaching for a game or conversation to entertain me. Thank goodness for time to reset, rest, and reflect. Are you prioritizing those in your life enough? Can this realization help spur you even if you didn’t just return from a two-week trip?
Learning about our own neurobiology in “Your Brain at Work” by David Rock put this blank space in a new context. He writes about how small and fickle our neocortex is, yet how critical it is to creative work. He writes, “Your prefrontal cortex holds the contents of your mind at any one point… it’s where we hold thoughts that are not being generated from external sources or from the senses.” Yet, at the same time, it is very limited.
Rock likens it to some spare change in your pocket if the rest of your brain was the entire US economy and says it is the “Goldilocks” of the brain. He writes about a metaphor I love, that we have a small stage and each thought is like an actor coming on it. We can only handle so many and each time we bring some actors out in our day it makes the next time we do it harder.
So yeah, blank space sounds pretty satisfying based on his summary of current neuroscience. It is a chance to let your mind create its own play and rest instead of the chronic overstimulation it probably can’t handle at top capacity. Instead of pushing, I’m giving myself some time each day to let things emerge and hopefully increase the quality of the other tasks I have chosen to do.