Caffeine, place and space

Someone asked me to keep a list of what I'd been thinking about. That was when I realised that any attempt to put into words what I had been thinking about actually stopped the creative act of thinking.

Thinking is a funny old thing.

For me, creative thinking looks like sitting, daydreaming over a latte or hot chocolate with a drawing pad and pen, just doodling or mapping things out. It involves trying to unfocus my conscious mind, relax, go blank and just see what bubbles up. It's immensely productive. But it doesn't look it at the time!

That kind of thinking goes deep, can be slow, and tends to generate energy rather than consume it.

Turning the creative thinking into the kind of thinking that generates action needs a different kind of space. It needs lines, logic, order, and at least a double Expresso. It is a completely different kind of of thinking, very focused, very intense. It usually means using the Notes on my phone because somehow typing with my thumbs doesn't take as much brain space as using all my fingers on a keyboard. And turning thinking into action involves channeling all available brain power into a single stream of planning and problem solving. When I'm in the zone, I can cut through problems like the proverbial knife through butter because I just see the solutions. Distract me by talking to me, and you are likely to get the rough side of my tongue because once I've lost the connection to the rapid-thinking, it's gone.

I need a good rest after that kind of thinking to allow everything to settle down and because I'm usually exhausted after a couple of hours.

I need a third kind of space and place as well. I need places where I can plough through the mundane, barely-thinking, almost autopilot tasks that are needed to make things happen.

How did I learn to use difference places and spaces in quite such an organised, premeditated way? I listened during sociology lectures (eg work of Henri Lefebvre), thought about my own predisposition and thought I'd give it a try - separating out physical spaces for different types of intellectual work to see if it made me more efficient/effective. It does.

So, if anyone wonders why I spend a good hour or so at the Management Centre cafe most mornings before I go up to the postgrad room, just have a glance at what's on my table and in my cup, and you will have a pretty good idea what I'm up to and whether it's wise to come and say "hi" - or not!