Thinking About Nothing: The Power of Letting Your Mind Wander

I write my to-do list every morning in a Moleskine notebook.  On a fresh page.  I flip to my list from the day before, and methodically transfer everything that isn’t crossed out.  I add new things, too.  Then I star the items that absolutely need to get done today.  If another thing comes up during the day, I jot it down near the original list.  It’s all very meticulous and tidy.   

Think about your personal to-do list.  Is it similar to mine, or have you abandoned the good ol’ ink and paper in favor of something digital?  (Nerd).  Do you just keep it in your head?  (Psycho).  Any way you do it, chances are most of your list items are very tactical – “call so and so to talk about X and resolve Y,” or “build sell-in deck for project Z.”  It feels good to cross things out when you’re “done” with them, too.  Studies have shown that your brain actually releases a small amount of dopamine into your pleasure center when you give yourself a check mark, so it’s literally addicting to complete tasks and recognize your achievements (I totally made this up, but I bet it has some truth to it.  Let’s Google it together…yep, I’m right.  Boom). 

Complex problems aren’t to-do list items

But here’s the thing – many business problems are not something you simply need to get done that day.  They’re not phone calls, and they won’t merit checks in your to-do list for a long period of time.  They might not necessarily respond to a well-crafted analytical approach, either.  Brand new ideas and solutions require thoughtfulness, evaluation, and reevaluation.  They require time and a creative approach.  Put simply, they require thought. 

How many days out of the week do you run through your tactical to-do’s in their entirety?  For me, the answer is none days.  Zero of them.  The tasks grow as the day progresses, or ad hoc projects come up, or their just isn’t enough damn time.  I’ve realized that this ever-growing task-to-time ratio usually means I can’t really sit with my own thoughts and deeply consider a problem and potential creative and “out of the box” solutions (I sincerely apologize for that cliché, but you get my point).  I can’t design something truly amazing, because things need doing.  Here are some things I’m pledging to do for the next couple of weeks.  You can copy me.

Book time to think

Ever been in the shower, thinking about nothing, going through your lather/rinse/repeat routine, when some great idea pops into your head?  Me, too.  And it’s not a mistake – your mind has evolved to form creative links and solve problems when you’re thinking about nothing, allowing your mind to wander off on tangents. 

You should schedule time for this tangential, aimless thought during your day.  Seriously – one of your starred, underlined tasks should be “creative problem solving.”  You should book meeting time for this, and pledge to uphold your meeting with yourself.  Take a conference room if you can, or throw your trusty earbuds in your ears and tune everything out.   

Here’s the best part – you don’t have to schedule this fun little meeting during your hyper-active time of day, when the stress is full bore, and you’re feeling super productive and you’re GSD (that’s a funny acronym that means efficiently accomplishing things).  Turns out, it’s actually better and more productive to do this when you’re tired, because your brain has problems filtering out distractions, potential tangents, and potential solutions.  So do it when you’re sleepy and need a coffee. 

White Noise Yourself Like a Baby

I have a five month old son named Colin, who is the absolute best thing in the world.  He, like other infant children, sometimes has difficulty going to sleep.  And he eloquently expresses his difficulty by screaming really hard and flailing around until my wife or I go in to soothe him and help him out a bit. 

One thing that helps Colin is turning on his white noise machine (we’re first time parents, we bought everything).  It has all sorts of cool settings, of course – white noise, pink noise (which I didn’t know was a thing), heart beat, etc.  Sure enough, Colin hears some white noise, and he’s asleep pretty quick. 

Colin likes white noise because he spent 9 months cruising around the world in my wife’s uterus, listening to loud but muffled noise, all the time.  Although we, as business professionals, are further removed from the womb than Colin, the principles that drive his white noise success stories also apply to us.  White noise actually distracts and redirects your brain – which we want.  So tune in and turn off.  (Spotify has a white noise channel, and there are countless apps.  I’ve stopped short of borrowing Colin’s machine). 

Lastly – Exercise and Look at Blue and Green Stuff

Exercise is good.  No need to spend too much time on this one; I think we all agree by now.  Endorphins, etc.  Do it as much as possible. 

A mid-day workout is best, and works to reset your brain and body.  If you’re a runner, you also get the shower effect of thinking about nothing.  And although we all know intuitively that working out is good for your entire body, science actually proves that people who exercise during a creative task perform better than those who don’t.  So work out!

But here’s something you may not have known – looking at blue and green colors also boosts your creative problem solving skills.  Sounds like grass and the sky to me.  So get outside and run around a little bit. 

So there you have it.  If we can agree to make these small changes in our daily lives, we will produce much more innovative solutions.  Things that will impact our business for years to come, not just the next couple of days.  And to my colleagues – if you find me staring at a picture of a park, in a conference room, by myself, looking curiously like I’m doing nothing at all, I have not gone crazy – I’m thinking.