Leo Babauta recently wrote The No. 1 Habit of Highly Creative People on ZenHabits.net, and the number one habit is solitude. By eerie coincidence I recently finished reading Switch: How To Change When Change Is Hard by the Heath brothers, which makes something of the same point.
The rational portion of your brain (the rider as the Heath brothers put it) is a weak limited thing that wears itself out quickly by making decisions, exercising self control, and ingesting information. If you isolate yourself for long periods, be it long bike rides or marathon running, or simply taking the phone off the hook, closing email, and minimizing distractions, you free your mind to work on important matters, like being creative. The above explains why I tend to have creative breakthroughs while on long bike rides.
As I write this it occured to me that visual clutter probably plays a part in tiring your brain as well. I must clean the office!
This post originally appeared on the Stronico blog – with the absorption of Stronico into Digital Tool Factory this post has been moved to the Digital Tool Factory blog
Tags: wetware
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Written By Steve French |
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