Is a publishing professional with more than twenty years of

Chapter 25
Make time  
to think

---

---

243
C
reativity is one of the first casualties when we allow our-
selves to get too busy.
You rush from appointment to appointment, challenge 
to  challenge.  The  phone  rings—another  disaster.  You  run  faster 
and faster to keep even—never mind get ahead. There’s no time to 
plan; you simply react.
In a moment of quiet despair, you realize that you haven’t had 
anything resembling an original idea in weeks.
Where did your creativity go?
It didn’t go anyplace. You’re still thinking. In fact, you couldn’t 
stop it if you tried. Go ahead. Sit in a corner and not-think for five 
minutes. How about a minute? Five seconds? Can’t do it, can you? 
zen masters need years of practice to learn to empty the mind.
Ah, but those aren’t pearls of wisdom rattling around in your 
poor,  distracted  head,  you  say?  More  like  the  rattling  of  loose 
change in an aluminum can?
Listen closer. Your wisdom, your intuition, your creativity are 
right where they’ve always been, just beneath the surface of con-
scious thought. You just haven’t had time to listen.
You have almost infinite capacity for inventiveness and creativ-
ity. But when you get caught in the time trap, you leave no time for 
reflection or for the incubation that yields flashes of insight.