Unstructured Time

by Alan Lightman

Psychologists have long known that creativity thrives on unstructured time, on play, on "divergent thinking," on unpurposed ramblings through the mansions of life. Gustav Mahler routinely took three- or four-hour walks after lunch, stopping to jot down ideas in his notebook. Carl Jung did his most creative thinking and writing when he took time off from his frenzied practice in Zurich and went to his country house in Bollingen. In the middle of a writing project, Gertrude Stein wandered about the countryside looking at cows. Einstein, in his 1949 autobiography, described how his thinking involved letting his mind roam over many possibilities and making connections between concepts previously unconnected. All unscheduled.

6S

Alan Lightman is a physicist, novelist, and essayist. His six sentences are excerpted from his book, In Praise of Wasting Time.