Working Without Working: The Creative Night Shift
Work doesn't just happen when you're trying to. — Paul Graham
It’s noon and I am climbing the Cirjoch, a mountain pass in the rugged Dolomite Alps of Italian Südtirol. This is my treat, or re-treat, after trekking all over Germany to visit my family. It’s a gift to spend this time alone in nature. Paradoxically, it is also a productive time.
I make my way past jagged rock formations, exhausted elderly hikers, and families feeding their children. Occasionally I draw a concerned look because I wear my orange running shoes. I will just relax in the mountains, I thought and left the hiking boots at home. Naturally, once I saw the striking peaks in person, I had to get closer.
As I navigate the trail, my mind starts wandering. Fragments of memories and ideas trail through my consciousness against a backdrop of weather-beaten trees and endless sky. Suddenly, I stop and pull out my phone to record a voice note. The walk has yielded a first creative spark. Ideas start flowing. I didn’t plan it this way, but I’m not surprised either. Walking without distractions (no music, no podcasts, no audio books, no calls) has become one of my staple practices in surfacing answers and ideas. It’s part of my rhythm of input, processing, and output.
The Night Shift
Reframing time away from the desk has profoundly shifted my perspective on work. In the words of one of my favorite scenes from Curb Your Enthusiasm, there is a time to be ‘working without working’. In a culture obsessed with the grind and the number of hours spent at the keyboard, it’s invaluable to have practices that stir catalyze creativity, unlock answers to problems, and get you unstuck.
Artists, scientists, and other creatives have long known about the connection between creativity and activities like walking, sleeping, showering, or driving. I previously wrote about the issue of ‘reading FOMO’ in Cranking The Learning Machine Up To 11, and emphasized the need to put things down and allow time for processing. The framework for Strategic Intuition calls the moment before a creative spark a state of ‘presence of mind’, a moment in which diffuse-mode thinking connects the dots. Research suggests this is a pretty common occurrence:
In a 2019 study, 98 professional writers and 87 physicists recorded their most creative idea each day, as well as what they were doing and thinking when it struck them. … 20 percent of their most meaningful ideas came while doing something else — washing dishes or taking a shower. …
One study of more than 1,100 respondents reported that their moments of insight came during mind-wandering in the shower (30 percent), in transit (13 percent) or during exercise (11 percent). — Washington Post
Writer Cormac McCarthy called this the ‘night shift’, the time when the unconscious is doing the work1. He talked about it in this interview with David Krakauer (~minute 47):
Poincaré was stuck on a problem one time and he finally said he went off on vacation with some friends. As he was getting on the trolley car in this distant city, the equation suddenly appeared in the air over the head of the conductor. … It was just there.