Daydreaming by Paul Lemberg.

"I would while away the hours, consulting with the flowers,
conferring with the rain..."

The Scarecrow, yet again

For most of us, daydreaming is really out of bounds. We might believe that time set aside for focused thinking is acceptable, but idle daydreaming really goes against our type-A biases. So much so that we chastise ourselves publicly whenever we get caught – “Oh, I was just daydreaming.”

Daydreaming... Hmmm. Dreamlike musings or fantasies, while awake. I must admit it doesn’t sound much like work. But Einstein came up with the basis for Relativity Theory while daydreaming, and Friedrich Kekulé conceived of the carbon ring during a fanciful reverie. There are many other examples. Daydreaming has definitely proved its worth to the human race.

How does this apply to moving fast, faster than change?

Let yourself go. Give your thoughts some room to stretch out and go wild. Let your mind roam and range, inventing whatever images, sounds and feelings, stories and fanciful creations it desires. There’s no pressure to come up with anything useful.

But you might.

And therein lies the opportunity. You just might come up with
something far out on the curve – far ahead of whatever the market is thinking about. Something very useful – your next source of competitive advantage. You see, if your normal left brained analytical thinking hasn’t given you the great idea you need, your daydreaming brain, freed from the bounds of standard reality, just might.

There is a side benefit. Daydreaming frees your mind for creative thinking later on. While you might not generate any breakthrough ideas during your dreaming, you may be more inventive later on. The solution to some thorny problem might pop into your mind later, because you loosened things up a bit.

Spend some quality time each week daydreaming. Give yourself an hour or so. Go to the beach, or the park, or sit in your den. Put your feet up and relax. Play some music if you like. Keep a pad or a recorder handy if you want to make some notes.

Let your mind wander. Who knows what it’ll come up with?

Copyright 2002-04 ©Paul Lemberg used with his expressed written permission

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