Where do you go to (deep) think?
There are very few times in life that you really get to slow down and be patient with your thoughts.
There are plenty of spaces that demand you to have answers, to move swiftly, to be efficient, to find alignment, to remove uncertainty.
I will say again: there aren't a lot of places that tolerate or even invite impatience.
And for the spaces that do, they are either more personal in nature (a catch up with a friend, a family member) or when they are in a professional realm…
…they are inconsistent at best, and more to “vent” at worst.
((a bit of poetic irony for the professional one… not sure about you, but I find it can happen over chat using a tool that purports to add “Slack” to the system…
…which is exactly what we all need (!) but can’t seem to get, because…
…we are getting so many more tools to make us more efficient + more available at more times/in more ways [and therefore able to take on even more work…
…yet, not get deep enough with it if we are not careful - aye, feels like an adjacent application of / interrelated outcome of ye olde Jevons Paradox])).
I can’t tell you how many calls I’ve been on in the last year as a fractional exec or senior IC where there is such gravitational pull towards alignment that there are some very “juicy bits” of insight, friction, and opportunity that are either seen as:
(1) “distractions” “rabbit holes” - then silenced and / or
(2) “bugs” to be smashed and not in fact features.
I get it, time is tight, budgets are tight, scheduling time to collaborate synchronously across calendars + timezones is hard.
But each of these are products of this system that promises us “time back” for using “better tools”.
The budgets are also tightening because the expectations are that you can do more with less, but forgetting that the most critical parts of “more” require being confused and confusing in order to truly be novel and creative.
Anyway… :)
This is why, over the last 6+ years, I've deeply valued my deep thinking work with Nitzan Hermon.
He is a facilitator, a coach, a philosopher, and an enabler of people’s most creative selves.
In a meta-move by Nitzan, we not only had more time and space to have a spacious conversation on his pod Being in Space (along with Linda Booth Sweeney and guided by generosity, patience, and some real mind-tickler questions from Creative Surplus)… but both Linda and I also shared where we both do our deeper, more spacious thinking (for me: night time, fall & winter - all three as literal calendar/times, as well as figurative energies).
I'm sharing this conversation here as a reminder and gift of patience to/with myself and others.
In case it’s not self evident, I didn’t use AI in writing this post. I am working to let me mind free-flow a bit more when possible, as well as not lose my own craft of thinking/writing. If I do use AI (and understand that others do/will choose to, too), I will disclose it.
