Concluding “Time Off”: Be A Lantern

Alison Gopnik, one of the leading researchers in developmental psychology, introduced a “lantern consciousness” metaphor to describe how children learn. Babies take in their surroundings all at once, like “a lantern casting light in all directions.”

As adults, we have “spotlight consciousness” – we focus on the activity at hand and direct our light only to “the things in our intended direction.”

Yet, creativity is about establishing new connections between the dots, so the more dots you have, the better.

So how can we remain adults and keep our lantern shining?

Turns out that we can keep it lit from time to time by playing.

Playground Innovation

Time Off has an entire chapter called Play which starts with a provocative question –

Where do you think the most innovation is happening within 20-miles radius of you?”

As you already guessed from this sub-header, the answer is “playground”.

Indeed, observing little kids creating a new game on the spot, coming up with the most unexpected conclusions out of unrelated adult conversations, and going for a walk with a blue shoelace because that’s “a doggy” while they have 2-3-5 actual stuffed dog loveys at home – is simultaneously adorable and admirable. Why are we losing touch with our imagination as we grow up?

To make the most of our creativity, we need to unlock our sense of playfulness again.”

---

If you ever played with very young kids, you might have noticed how time inevitably slowed down around them.

A one-year-old has a 2-second focus of a butterfly but she bestows it generously upon Every. Single. Flower she sees on her 10-foot walk from the car into the daycare building.

When was the last time you noticed a flower on your walk and stopped to look at it in detail?

---

There is a reason why training coaches are using games in their group settings. We feel free when things are not official. We can improvise, try out new things, shed that thick skin, and feel like kids again – a bit crazy, a bit careless, very imaginative, and not at all serious about life in general.

I used to tell my team “Let’s have fun!” before any particularly challenging project. Intuitively (because I hadn’t read Time Off yet) I knew that this would bring a certain degree of playfulness to our work. And playfulness paves the way to imagination – when everything is both real and unreal – in a sense that anything becomes possible.

And if anything is possible, you are more likely to try out new things and come up with unusual solutions and combinations.

In playfulness, time slows down. In playfulness, the irregular can occur.”

Breaking your usual routine is one of the best ways to switch from spotlight to lantern mode, and to restore a sense of awe and wonder.”

And this is a perfect segue into our next segment.

“Leisurely Travel“

When we think of travel, we usually imagine one of two things: an exploration of new places in bulk (like taking a cruise and backpacking in Europe) or a perfect getaway somewhere on a tropical island where we are as far removed from the stress and our jobs as possible.

In our dreams, we are either lying down on a beach between a scheduled massage session and aromatherapy or we are voraciously putting as many pins on our traveling map as possible to make sure that we didn’t miss any main tourist attractions and/or hidden gems of our destination.

The former idea sees traveling as escapism and a source of relaxation, the latter – as entertainment.

Yet traveling can offer more.

---

When Oleg, my mother’s childhood friend, lost his business and had no idea what to do next, he made an unusual move. He went to Estonia, rented a house, and spent a week reflecting on what to do next.

He didn’t go there to visit tourist locations (although, I’m sure he took some good hikes and walked a lot around Tallinn). His main goal was to completely remove himself from his usual surroundings – take time off from his hometown and everything he knew so he could discover something he wasn’t familiar with yet – within himself.

Oleg came back with several new ideas and launched his new business. Then one more. And then one more.

He would repeat his weekly “retreat” annually for many more years using it to reset and gain a new fresh perspective for his business and life.

---

Much of what we learn on the road is actually about ourselves.”

Time Off authors make a good point that we do not have to travel far to get away from our routines.

For instance, you can visit a district within your city you never explored. But you should do it mindfully, with intent, and try to engage your lantern consciousness as much as you can. Become a 1-day tourist, you can even stay in a hotel in a different part of town and pretend like you are seeing the city for the very first time.

What new discoveries does it have for you?

Travel, just like a playground, allows us to redefine and reinvent ourselves.”

Tech Shabbat

It would be impossible to talk about time off without mentioning the shining beacon of productivity and distraction, efficiency and procrastination, civilization progress and its probable doom – technology.

Our brains have become unable to sit still for more than a few seconds, to focus on a single task for long stretches of time, to process any information that can’t be presented in a bite-sized snippet.”

There is a great podcast with Dr. Kanojia (more widely known as Dr. K), a Harvard-trained psychiatrist specializing in modern mental health and the impact of technology on the brain. Here he explains how new apps are competing for our attention, the effect technology has on our attention span, and how we can get back control of our attention.

It’s an hour-long podcast but it goes by fast. Try to give it a shot on your next commute.

So, we know that constant email alerts are distracting, social media is destroying our attention span, and we have more apps on our phones than hours off on a typical weekend.

Yet we also understand that technology can be our partner: it can reduce our routine work and free up our time. Our global connectivity creates opportunities for growth, development, research, and groundbreaking discoveries we could have never fathomed before the Internet.

Ditching technology completely is unreasonable. So, what do we do?

Tiffany Shlain, American entrepreneur, filmmaker, and author, practices what she calls “Tech Shabbat”. Every Friday night, Tiffany and her family turn off their digital devices and don’t turn them on till 24 hours later.

This requires some preparation (writing down important phone numbers, alerting relatives and friends, printing out itineraries and schedules in advance) but once it becomes a weekly routine, the practice becomes quite usual, with a number of activities to choose from. Some of those include:

• Reading a book
• Gardening
• Slow cooking a meal
• Visiting neighbors by foot
• Exploring and inventing games like a kid again (speaking of playfulness!)
• Taking a nap

24 hours without technology seems like a lot. Personally, I don’t think I would be able to do it weekly.

But I like the idea of occasional technological detox: half a day on a weekend and/or 1 hour before bed on a weekday.

What would you do, if you had no phone and no internet access for a day?

A Few More Things To Consider

To conclude, here are a few things you can do to gain more time off:

1. Introduce some playfulness in your life: improvise a meal with your friends, family, or team. Instead of looking for a recipe or paying for a pricey cooking class at a corporate offsite, go to the local farmer’s market or grocery store, get some ingredients, and try to cook something edible. Laugh, chat, cook, and make mistakes together. You will have a great adventure, and if you are lucky – a good meal to go with.
   
   
2. Take a day trip to your city: go to the area you haven’t been to before and explore it. Plan your trip as if it was your travel plan somewhere far away. Check TripAdvisor, Google for some hidden gems, find a couple of places to eat, and immerse yourself into your journey.
   
   
3. Take a technology detox: take 1-2 hours on a weekend to go completely device-free. Make a plan in advance of what you are going to do or just allow yourself to be bored and see what happens.

The phone gives us a lot, but it takes away three key elements of discovery: loneliness, uncertainty, and boredom.” – Lynda Berry.

The ‘reasonable person’ … is willing to learn under proper guidance, but unable to be guided by his dreams.” – Arthur Koestler.

Creativity has become one of those buzzwords that appear in every job description and on every resume just between the words efficiency and attention to detail.

Yet creativity surpasses them all because it is one of the essential qualities that makes us human – for it is our ability to create something.

An act of creation requires more than just will, skill, and the absence of distractions.

Last year I read a story about a young woman who, during the pandemic lockdown, took computer design classes online and gained decent skills. It wasn’t until she got her first client that she realized that she had absolutely zero creative ideas. She knew how to make a design on a computer but she didn’t know how to imagine a new design.

When she shared her story on Twitter, professional designers started sharing their stories and how important it was for a good designer to do what they called “developing your eye” – gaining a lot of visual experience to develop a sense of aesthetics – understanding what is beautiful and what isn’t.

True creativity requires effort, intent, reflection… and a lot of time off.

So if you want to unlock your creative potential and leave your creative mark, make sure to take plenty of time off to rest, reflect, play, and travel.

Bring your inner lantern and cast your light in all directions!

---

This article concludes our deep dives into Time Off: A Practical Guide To Building Your Rest Ethic And Finding Success Without The Stress. Next week, as usual, I will summarize this book’s key ideas and add some thoughts on its usefulness and blind spots. And then we will dive into our next adventure – Hidden Potential: The Science of Achieving Greater Things by Adam Grant. Stay tuned!

---

The title photo is by S. Tsuchiya on Unsplash