Here is the full text and audio of Allison Holzer’s talk titled ‘The Gift and Power of Unstructured Time’ at TEDxHartford conference.
Listen to the audio version here:
TRANSCRIPT:
Allison Holzer – Author
How many of you have come up with a great idea in the shower? Yeah, this is a thing, 72% of people say this happens to them, according to one study, but why is that?
Well, as it turns out, the shower taps into just the right combination of things that can unlock more open and creative thinking. And when we sometimes can have these eureka moments.
Unstructured Time
Now, this is a uniquely human experience, and it even goes back into history. You might recall the story of an ancient Greek inventor by the name of Archimedes, who supposedly ran through the streets shouting, Eureka! Which means, I found it! After he uncovered a new scientific principle while relaxing in the bathtub.
Or a more modern example is Lin-Manuel Miranda. He had been working non-stop for years, finally goes on a vacation, he’s reading a book, relaxing to the beauty and the sounds of the water, when he unexpectedly comes up with the idea for his Broadway smash hit musical Hamilton.
In fact, he told Arianna Huffington in an interview, ‘The moment my brain got a moment’s rest, Hamilton walked right into it.’
You see, both Miranda and Archimedes, they tapped into this different mode of thinking. One that led to new insights. And here’s the thing, you can do this too. You can create space for new thinking that can inspire positive change.
Whatever that positive change might look like or mean for you in your world, in your zone of mind-wandering genius. Whether it’s coming up with a solution for a workplace challenge, or an idea for an important conversation you need to have, or new awareness about your emotions and beliefs.
It starts with something called Unstructured Time which I first learned about in 2014 over coffee with my former Dartmouth psychology professor, and now mentor, Dr. Christian Jernstedt.
And since then I’ve learned that unstructured time, three things are coming together. One, you have no structured agenda, goals, or tasks for that time. In fact, you’re literally stepping away from any kind of complex here and now problem solving. And what that does is free up your mind to wander around and inward to the world of your ideas, your emotions, and your thinking about the future.
Two, we’re also doing some kind of automatic activity, something that we do often, like showering, or driving a car, or walking, or chores. These types of activities don’t take up a lot of mental bandwidth, and because of that they help us zone out and tune in.
Three, and this is really important, we’re feeling relaxed. Because when we’re stressed during unstructured time, we might go into a mind-wandering spiral of worry. But when we’re relaxed and pleasant, researchers have found that our minds are more open, and we might even tap into something called alpha wavelengths in your brain, which are associated with more creative thinking and insight.
So things like being in the shower, or relaxing with deep breaths, or being in nature, or just listening to relaxing music, all these things, whether we do them intentionally or not during unstructured time, they can ease our minds.
Power Of Unstructured Time
Now when these three things come together, it can be really powerful. I want to share with you my first experience of the power of unstructured time.
I was a young girl growing up in Kentucky, and on this particular day I had a really tough day at school, the kind of day where just everything seems to go wrong. And when I got home, I immediately went behind our house into this woods, to this place where I would often go and putter around, sometimes for hours, playing with rocks and sticks, building forts.
This place, it was like a sanctuary to me. It relaxed me, the nature, the sounds. And as my mind relaxed, it started to wander. And all of a sudden, I got this unexpected, inspired idea that I was going to carve soap in the shape of horses and sell them door to door during the Kentucky Derby, which was coming up in a few weeks.
Yeah, kind of a weird kid. But I got really excited, and all of a sudden I started creating business cards, and I started carving soap. Now, I admit, this is no Broadway musical or scientific discovery kind of eureka moment, but it was a moment of unstructured time that created space for new thinking and inspired positive change for me, which at that young age meant going from having a tough day at school to being excited about something. And, as an added bonus, I created a business that ended up being way, way more profitable than a lemonade stand.
Then, something happened. Like all of us here, I grew up and entered the adult world with all of our obligations and responsibilities and hustle mentality, especially in Western culture, where all of a sudden our work lives become about things like goals, KPIs, strategies, results, getting things done, making it happen.
And we have calendars that often look like this. Add to our productivity obsession that even when we’re not busy, we often fill up our free time with distractions and devices.
In fact, researchers from UC San Diego found that the human brain takes in 100,000 words and 34 gigabytes of data each day in our brains. Yeah, that’s a lot.
In fact, I asked my IT professional about this, and he said, Allison, if your brain were your laptop, it would only take a few weeks for it to begin to look something like this. Are any of us surprised that burnout is on the rise?
Now, it’s exactly in these moments when we’re stretched in, stressed out. This is when unstructured time helps us the most.
It gives our brain a rest and helps us think of new ideas. But it’s also exactly in these moments that unstructured time seems most indulgent and out of reach.
Because how do you justify what looks like on the outside doing nothing when there’s so much to do?
Well, it starts with changing the idea of doing nothing to the idea of creating space for a different kind of thinking. So many creatives, they intuitively get this. Like Beethoven, Georgia O’Keeffe, they were known to start their days with unstructured time, these long, meandering walks in nature to do their best creative thinking before sitting down to do their structured work.
Imagine what could be possible if we called out unstructured time as a powerful workplace and even leadership strategy that can lead to greater awareness and quality of thinking. Over the last two decades, I’ve worked with thousands of professionals across different industries, levels of leadership, and what I’ve heard again and again is: I need more unstructured and open time to think.
So this year, I ran a poll in my LinkedIn network to learn more about this. And the results that came back really confirmed what I had been hearing. The vast majority of people said that unstructured time helps them be more effective, strategic, creative in their jobs. 93% of people said that it helps them be more in touch with their emotions and their values. 77% of people said that they would benefit from more unstructured time.
What an opportunity! So if this is something that you’re wanting more of in your life, in your workday, I can teach you to begin to make this a reality, starting with a few simple shifts.
Shift from Guilt To Gift
First, we have got to move from guilt to gift. When you find yourself thinking of unstructured time as indulgent, unproductive, or only for your leisure time, change your mindset. I want you to think about a time when you went from stuck to having your own version of a eureka moment.
Do you remember what that felt like, that stuck feeling? It’s usually a tension in our bodies, our stomachs, our shoulders, and then that sudden feeling of relief when you had a new path forward. Right? This is amazing.
Now, I want you to think about that and think of an image or an artifact that takes you back to that moment and feeling so you can keep it near you. Every morning when I go into my office, first thing that I see, a soap carving business card that I keep out on my desk as a reminder that unstructured time is a gift, and that helps me remember to prioritize it each day in my work and my life.
Plan For Unstructured Time
Next, we have got to plan for and fiercely protect unstructured time, especially in our workdays. Now, is it ironic to put time in your calendar for unstructured time? Maybe a little bit. But can it work? Yeah, it can.
Shante, a senior leader in HR, she told me how she had been stretched thin. She was working full time, getting her doctorate, parenting, stuck in what she called firefighting mode, where she could only deal with the things that immediately came across her desk until one day she said, enough.
She started carving out an afternoon each week for unstructured time. She puts it in her calendar. She tells her team about it. When the time comes, she shuts down her e-mail, steps away from distractions, she takes a few deep breaths and gets relaxed and present, and then she allows her mind to wander and think big.
Sometimes, she says, she even tries to not think at all and to see what ideas can come to her. She says that these afternoon creativity blocks, she gets more high-quality thinking done than in a whole week of back-to-back meetings.
Now, this is a place where forward-thinking organizations can help, like one company in the United Kingdom. They ask all employees, including the CEO at the top, to have no meetings on Wednesday mornings until 11 a.m.
But here’s the thing. Everybody actually respects this rule and follows it. So that time can be used for unstructured time if people wish. So I encourage you to try it this week. Look ahead. Plan some time for unstructured time. Start with just 10 minutes. Put it in your calendar or tell people about it. And when the time comes, fiercely protect it as no-agenda, relaxed, mind-wandering time.
Finally, for this to really work well, we have to build unstructured time into the fabric of our day-to-day lives and moments. We have to make it habitual.
So I want you to think about an existing habit or routine or even a workplace commute where you can begin to bring an unstructured headspace to it. Like Jennifer, she turned a stressful morning commute into powerful unstructured time by turning off the news and driving in silence to work.
She keeps a recording device in her car to capture her ideas. Now, she said at first this made her feel really uncomfortable to be driving in silence, but now it’s how she shows up at work each morning with her best ideas and quality energy.
Or Mike, a neurosurgeon who gets unstructured time during packed days of surgeries when he’s washing his hands, which surgeons have to do a lot of throughout the day. He calls the scrub room his sacred place. When he walks into it, it’s one of the few times of day that he’s often alone.
The habitual movement of washing his hands in the warm water relaxes and eases his mind so he can tune inward and incubate and process his thoughts. He says these hand-washing resets are absolutely essential to his daily well-being and performance as he’s out there healing people and saving lives.
As you can tell from these examples, unstructured time is really personal. What’s exciting about that is you get to define and create what it looks like at its best for you, the right cadence, the right situation. You get to find your version of a sanctuary in the woods or an afternoon creativity block or a powerful morning commute or a hand-washing reset.
When and how we tap into our beautiful brains in different ways, it really matters. And knowing this helps us plan our time more thoughtfully to balance our striving for productivity with unstructured time where we create space for new thinking that can inspire positive change.
Each of you here has creative genius, insight, and wisdom inside of you that is meant to be unlocked and shared for your benefit and the benefit of those around you. But sometimes, y’all, we have to clear out the noise to tune in and listen.
So, next time you’re in the shower or suddenly find yourself with some unexpected open time, embrace it as a gift. Take a deep breath. Relax. And unleash your mind-wandering genius.
