How to make space for ideas

If you don't watch out, you might never stop stuffing your brain with information.

While you eat breakfast, you can check the day's news on your phone. At work, you can read emails, attend meetings, and chat with coworkers. On the toilet, you can browse Instagram. On your commute home, you can listen to a podcast. During dinner, you can watch series. And after dinner, you can watch even more series!

I over-ingest information like this sometimes. Do you?

The problem with stuffing your brain with a never-ending stream of information is that you don't give that same brain the chance to process information, to come up with ideas, or to take a break.

Good ideas tend to pop up when you're not consuming information. They appear when you're in the shower or when you're staring out the window on the bus. To generate more ideas, stop the information intake now and then.

Want to make space right now? Set a timer for 15 minutes on your phone, then sit down and do nothing until the timer runs out. Yes, a quarter of an hour of doing nothing might feel like an eternity. But when you do this consistently, it's like magic.

Yours,

— Peter