When I was going to Bengaluru on Wednesday night to attend a family wedding, I decided not to take my laptop with me this time. Not only was I worried about her safety in the marriage hall, but relatives had started calling me ‘screen man’ so I had also planned a digital fast. Anyway, I am not a person who remains glued to the small screen of a mobile phone. Therefore, I kept making mental notes for this column while continuously observing the surrounding environment. Then I wrote this column on mobile. The first reaction of one of my relatives was, ‘Don’t you get bored looking around for hours?’ I said, ‘Absolutely not.’ This question-answer forced me to think that I was deliberately trying to create boredom for myself, yet how did so many ideas come to my mind in this one air journey? While watching people all the way, I kept wondering how they behave, what they eat, what they wear, how and what they talk about and what their body language is like. Seeing all this, my mind was asking many questions through my eyes. Eventually those questions became strong story ideas for the next few days. As soon as I wrote those thoughts in my diary, my stress and anxiety about how I would be able to write the next article in a crowded wedding went away. Dr. James Dankert, professor of cognitive neuroscience at the University of Waterloo, Canada, says that ‘when a person separates from a stressful situation and gives himself space to think, a new idea is born. This claim of Dr. James can also be seen in the film ‘Ikka’ released on Netflix. In one scene, Tilottama Shome, playing the role of a public prosecutor, understands an important thing related to forensics after seeing an everyday incident. While sitting in a tea stall, his mind is blank, but his eyes are on the shopkeeper washing the utensils. Instead of a brush or cloth, he puts his finger deep inside the glass and moves it across the inner surface to remove dirt. This is the ‘Eureka’ moment for them. She connects this motion with evidence that investigators had ignored. She visualizes that if the car key was used in the murder, then the car must have been started with the same key. That is, there will be traces of blood in the small chamber of the keyhole, which cannot be removed by simply cleaning the surface, as the criminal might have done. This scene is significant because it echoes a classic thriller trope in which a simple act solves a complex forensic puzzle. After this the direction of the case changes. The public prosecutor is able to present concrete evidence that directly challenges the defense’s narrative. Call it ’empty time’ or ‘unfilled time’, but when it is linked to some big goal of yours, a person does not feel bored. Like I never get bored of watching the events happening around me. By reducing content consumption I actually create space for mindfulness. This also does not mean that I was full of creativity the whole time while looking at the paan seller, the public prosecutor or the co-passengers. But as the watching continued without any hope, suddenly the activity became linked to the public prosecutor’s goal – to find a break-through in a complex criminal case. The bottom line is that to be creative in the workplace, it is important that you have some ‘unfilled time’, which can also be called ‘me time’.
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N. Raghuraman’s column: If you use ‘unfilled time’, creativity will come out.
