The Gift of Time

When you are busy doing something – inventing, creating, working, developing – you never can tell where or when the moment of inspiration may arrive. It can happen when you are in your work space while you are up to your elbows in work. Ideas flow more quickly than you can implement. It’s like the flow of ideas from your head faster than your hands can produce.

Then there are the moments when it all runs dry. You hit a snag and no matter how long you sit at your workspace you cannot move past the current state. The problem at hand has you stumped and your brain cannot see the solution, no matter how hard you push. So what do you do now? Do you force yourself to work? Do you fall back on older ideas to help spark some sort of movement? Or do you stop, wait, and do something else? Getting past this moment of emptiness can make or break your ability to keep creating or finishing this idea.

I know artists who exercise to get their juices flowing. I know others that eat. I have a friend who takes a shower, and another who simply goes and does something else, something completely different than what they were doing. And then there is sleep. Giving your brain the ability to rest, process, and somehow find a way to move from where you are to the next level of the idea can mean doing anything other than working on the idea. Our brains have a way of processing things when we give them space. That means time to process while we might not think we are still processing.

My Dad was working on a piece of furniture. and hit a snag in the way the wood was responding to the design. He stopped working for the day and went home. He told us that he got up to use the restroom during the night and BLAM, the moment he got back into bad the idea for the solution to his dilemma made its presence known. When he got back to his workshop he executed the idea and moved past the nag. It was a revelation, relief, inspiration, and encouragement all rolled into one.

The ability to stop working and not force the solution is key to getting things done. It means taking the time to stop working and process without consciously processing. Think time can move your idea from dead end to breakthrough. The challenge is you usually cannot control when the solution makes itself known. The time you take to think may or may not supply the solution when you want it to…so you keep waiting, processing, thinking.

Give yourself time to process, time to think, time to simply do something else. Your idea will still be working even if you are not conscious of what is happening. You may need to build thinking time into your process in order to give your idea breathing room. You may have a place or favorite chair, or certain activity that spurs your brain while it processes. Knowing this about yourself and your development process can mean the difference between being blocked and finding the way to your greatest creation. Giving yourself the gift of time can transform your world right before your eyes.