Across so many of my recent podcast conversations, there’s been a quiet but persistent theme: the importance of protecting the space — for doing nothing, for pausing, for letting things settle. It’s something I’ve had to learn the hard way, as someone whose mind rarely sits still.
The world rewards productivity, action, and measurable output. But the most meaningful ideas — the ones that actually move things forward — tend to arrive in the gaps between all that noise. In the walk between meetings. In the shower. In the silence after the song ends. That’s not coincidence; it’s how our brains work best when we give them space to breathe.
This came up beautifully in my recent conversation with Ezra Hewing on Big Bad Beautiful Brains. I asked him to describe how his brain works in three words, and he said: Information, Knowledge, and Experience.
He went on to explain that the balance between these three is what shapes how we learn and think. When we’re overloaded with information — the constant scroll, the data, the noise — we lose the ability to build knowledge, to actually process what that information means. And when we don’t make space to experience the world and let ideas connect naturally, we cut ourselves off from insight, creativity, and meaning.
Ezra described how learning happens in cycles: saturation, contemplation, forgetting, illumination, and verification. We absorb the information, sit with it, let it fade into the background — and that’s when the penny-drop moment happens. That’s when we see the pattern, the relationship, the idea.
It reminded me of the times I’ve sat at my desk refusing to stop until I “solve” something — usually ending up frustrated and foggy. But step away for a dog walk, a drive, a cup of tea, and the answer arrives as if from nowhere. It’s not magic, it’s biology. Our minds need that pause to connect the dots.
We live in a culture that’s saturated with information and starved of contemplation. And yet, the brands, ideas and people who stand out are usually those who give themselves — and their audiences — the space to think.
So much of my work now is about helping people and brands protect that space. Not just to slow down, but to make room for clarity, curiosity, and meaning to surface.
If you do one thing this week, protect a small pocket of nothing. No phone. No agenda. No goal. Just space. That’s often where the best work begins.