The other day my family and I took a 5+ hour drive.
During that drive, I did quite a few things:
- Listened to a very long podcast episode with Daniel Vassallo + Ch Daniel
- Thought about the contents of the podcast episode and how it applied to me and how I felt about it
- Thought about a process for a task I’m accountable for work and how I can delegate that
- Thought about topics from an online course I took a while back and how I can apply it to some personal projects
- Thought about how I would like to approach a couple of my personal projects and where to take them next
I was able to achieve deep thought.
As a knowledge worker and someone that works from home, doing deep work and thought is nothing new to me. But by the time I’m off the clock for work, I found myself tired of doing much deep thinking for things outside of work.
What was refreshing about the long drive was, my mind was able to wander for hours. In doing so, I was able to process things that have been in my mental backlog for a long time. I was also able to make new connections with information I had floating in my head that I didn’t know would fit together.
This is different to a work commute.
Work commutes are often times filled with chaos – pressure of getting to work on time, dealing with traffic, piecing together your day’s agenda, perhaps even loathing the destination you going to. I also think you don’t have enough time to get into deep thought like a long distance drive.
This long distance drive while I had my family in tow was focused. We didn’t hit any traffic and it was a route, I was familiar with.
The drive was physically taxing, but my mind feels rejuvenated with energy from the deep thinking.
Have you experienced a place where deep thinking occurs?
