Our time is under attack.
Meetings, emails and ever-present smartphones are gobbling it up. Innovation and creativity are withering before the false god of busyness. At home, families struggle to connect. Grown-ups multi-task in the evening, tied to the office by invisible ropes of worry and expectation.
This is the troubling portrait of the culture of insatiability.
This culture of insatiability has turned the average workday into a sprint of reactive activity, squeezing out the time to think. And when talented people don’t have time to think, business suffers.
When is the last time you caught someone thinking at your workplace?
WhiteSpace is the time for which you have no plans and no predetermined agenda. It is unconnected, open, flexible and fluid.
When the brain is supposedly at pause, MRI scans reveal amazing and complex activity within the default neural network. This type of activity has been linked to insight, introspection, memory and creativity.
WhiteSpace is not meditation. WhiteSpace is not mind wandering. WhiteSpace is not mindfulness. WhiteSpace is freedom for the mind. It is allowing your mind to explore and ponder and follow instinct.
Look at your calendar. Could you use some time to focus on the big picture, where you’re going and what’s really important? Are there specific activities that take too much of your time and rob you of WhiteSpace?
For many of us, email has become a major source of frustration.
– We can feel out of control.
– We feel like our productivity has been robbed from us.
– We’re always trying to reach “inbox zero.”
Watch the following message from Juliet Funt about how you can create WhiteSpace.
Juliet Funt
CEO | Juliet Funt GroupThe Trouble with Our Busy Culture
Published September 25, 2017TOPICS IN THIS ARTICLE
CommunicationLeading YourselfProductivityReplenishmentWellnessOur time is under attack.
Meetings, emails and ever-present smartphones are gobbling it up. Innovation and creativity are withering before the false god of busyness. At home, families struggle to connect. Grown-ups multi-task in the evening, tied to the office by invisible ropes of worry and expectation.
This is the troubling portrait of the culture of insatiability.
This culture of insatiability has turned the average workday into a sprint of reactive activity, squeezing out the time to think. And when talented people don’t have time to think, business suffers.
When is the last time you caught someone thinking at your workplace?
WhiteSpace is the time for which you have no plans and no predetermined agenda. It is unconnected, open, flexible and fluid.
When the brain is supposedly at pause, MRI scans reveal amazing and complex activity within the default neural network. This type of activity has been linked to insight, introspection, memory and creativity.
WhiteSpace is not meditation. WhiteSpace is not mind wandering. WhiteSpace is not mindfulness. WhiteSpace is freedom for the mind. It is allowing your mind to explore and ponder and follow instinct.
Look at your calendar. Could you use some time to focus on the big picture, where you’re going and what’s really important? Are there specific activities that take too much of your time and rob you of WhiteSpace?
For many of us, email has become a major source of frustration.
– We can feel out of control.
– We feel like our productivity has been robbed from us.
– We’re always trying to reach “inbox zero.”
Watch the following message from Juliet Funt about how you can create WhiteSpace.
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About the Author(s)
Juliet Funt
CEOJuliet Funt Group
Juliet Funt is the CEO and founder of Juliet Funt Group, a training and consulting firm helping organizations, their leaders and employees reclaim their creativity, productivity and engagement. With thought-provoking insights and actionable tools, she has become a globally-recognized expert in helping leaders cope with the “age of overload” in which we all live and work. A warrior against reactive busyness and a force for change in organizations around the world, Funt teaches a streamlined method for personal process improvement that reduces complexity in the workplace. Teams that incorporate a WhiteSpace mindset and skill set increase creativity and engagement, reclaim lost capacity and execute at their finest. Her clients include a number of Fortune 100 companies and span a wide array of industries, from financial services to technology, manufacturing to the military. Funt’s new book, A Minute to Think, released at the 2021 Summit.
Years at GLS 2017, 2018, 2021