Defocus to Focus
Some problems yield only to a less conscious approach. And that brings up an interesting question. What counts as “work” or as “effort”? Are you “cooking” when you’re letting something marinate for twelve hours? Are you “working” when you’re sitting around thinking about a problem?
Yes, is the short answer. Creativity does not function on a time clock and does not generally yield results when pressured. In fact, the situation is quite the opposite: you need to let go of the problem with your conscious mind and let the problem sit in the marinade of thought for a while.
Tom Lutz, author of Doing Nothing: A History of Loafers, Loungers, Slackers, and Bums in America [Lut06], says, “It’s very clear that for a lot of people ...
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