A Minute to Think
Reclaim Creativity, Conquer Busyness, and Do Your Best Work
Book Edition Details
Summary
"A Minute to Think (2021) explores how busyness is harming our productivity – and why it's so important to take regular pauses. It reveals the mental and economic costs associated with our hectic modern working environments and explains how we can reclaim our time. "
Introduction
In our hyperconnected world, we've forgotten how to breathe. Picture yourself rushing from one meeting to another, checking emails between bites of a sandwich eaten standing up, your mind spinning with endless to-dos while your body operates on autopilot. This frantic pace has become so normalized that we've lost touch with something fundamental—the power of the pause. Like a fire that needs oxygen to ignite and sustain itself, our creativity and productivity require space to flourish. Yet we've systematically eliminated every moment of breathing room from our days, leaving ourselves gasping for air in a sea of perpetual motion. The missing element isn't more time, more tools, or more efficiency tricks. It's white space—those precious moments of unassigned time that allow us to think, reflect, and reconnect with what truly matters. When we learn to reclaim these pauses, we don't just survive our busy lives; we transform them into something meaningful and sustainable.
Create White Space Through Strategic Pauses
At its core, white space is time with no assignment—the open, unscheduled moments that create breathing room in our overpacked days. Think of it as the space between notes in a beautiful piece of music; without it, all we'd have is noise. These pauses aren't idle time or procrastination; they're strategic intervals that feed the fire of our best work. Consider Danielle Bishop, who worked as a national accounts director at Pinehurst Resort. Despite her seemingly glamorous job designing elegant dinners and watching cardinals fly over golf courses, she felt trapped in constant motion. Her breakthrough came when she discovered the power of strategic pausing. She began sitting in the amber light of late afternoon with a glass of wine, allowing her mind to wander and see what bubbled up naturally. During these moments of intentional stillness, Danielle accessed something she'd never experienced before—space for her entrepreneurial dreams to take shape. The ideas that emerged from these pauses led her to quit her corporate job and launch HB Hospitality with nothing but a cell phone, a spreadsheet, and a vision. Her company now hosts seventy-five annual events, connecting meeting planners with world-class resorts. When the 2020 crisis threatened her business, she once again turned to white space, using strategic thinking time to completely reimagine her business model within two months. To create your own strategic pauses, start with something as simple as the Wedge—a small slice of white space inserted between two activities. Take a moment between checking your email and starting your next task. Pause before responding to a challenging message. Create transition time between meetings to absorb what happened and prepare for what's next. These micro-pauses compound into profound changes in how you work and think. Remember, even Olympic athletes take recovery time between sets. Your mind deserves the same respect and restoration.
Master the Four Thieves of Time
Four powerful forces drive our professional overload, and while they start as assets, they become liabilities when taken to extremes. These are the Thieves of Time: Drive, Excellence, Information, and Activity. Like morning glory vines that begin beautiful but eventually strangle everything in their path, these qualities can overtake our best intentions and rob us of precious thinking time. Drive becomes overdrive when we mindlessly accept every opportunity and take on more than we can handle effectively. Excellence turns into perfectionism when we apply the same exacting standards to a casual internal email as we would to a client proposal. Information morphs into overload when we research endlessly, check every notification, and convince ourselves we need to know everything. Activity transforms into frenzy when we equate constant motion with productivity, never pausing to consider whether we're working on the right things. Meet Ernest, a New York transplant who moved to Nashville to build a food franchise empire. His drive was his superpower—until it wasn't. Ernest's team had a telling signal for when his ambition spiraled out of control: they'd point to his motorcycle in the parking lot and suggest he "go ride the bike." This became their code for him taking white space before his intensity burned everyone out. Despite their warnings, Ernest pushed to open a second location before his first was stable, serving up half-baked directions and losing good people to his relentless pace. The antidote to these thieves lies in awareness and the strategic pause. When you catch yourself planning nine team projects in one month, pause and recognize the thief of drive. When you find yourself endlessly tweaking a bullet point that nobody will scrutinize, step back and acknowledge the thief of excellence at work. Create your own version of Ernest's motorcycle break. Build regular check-ins with yourself or trusted colleagues who can help you recognize when your strengths are becoming weaknesses. The goal isn't to eliminate these drives but to harness them consciously rather than being driven by them unconsciously.
Transform Communication and Meetings with Purpose
Great communication is simply the result of thinking before you speak. The strategic pause allows us to control our impulses, choose the right medium for our message, and express ourselves with both honesty and kindness. This transformation begins with understanding that not every conversation belongs in an email, and not every thought needs immediate expression. The 2D versus 3D framework revolutionizes how we share information. 2D communication—emails, texts, reports—works perfectly for simple, factual exchanges. But when we try to build consensus for an important decision through a sputtering email thread, we're forcing 3D content through a 2D medium. Complex discussions, creative brainstorming, and relationship building require the richness of live interaction, whether by phone, video, or in person. Sophia, a department head at a financial services company, discovered the power of strategic communication when she learned to say one simple word: no. Her automatic reflex had always been yes, whether she had bandwidth or not. When asked to handle travel bookings for a hundred-person sales team—completely outside her role—she agreed because she wanted to be helpful. But with the support of a "No-Buddy" to help her craft the language, Sophia finally pushed back graciously while offering to train the team to handle their own arrangements. This single boundary led to a larger transformation. Sophia set a goal to spend only twenty percent of her time on operations and eighty percent on strategic projects. The clarity and focus this created propelled her to her first promotion into management, and she continues ascending because she learned the art of purposeful communication. Practice the Hourglass technique when facing any yes-or-no request. First, notice your initial flash response. Then take a strategic pause to examine your motives, consider your recent history with similar decisions, and project the future impact of your choice. Finally, deliver your considered response with confidence born from intentionality. This process transforms reactive decisions into conscious choices that serve your highest priorities.
Build a Life Beyond Endless Busyness
The oxygen of white space transforms not just our work but our entire approach to living. When we learn to see through this lens, we recognize that some of life's most precious moments require no agenda, no achievement, and no documentation. They simply ask for our presence. Think about the deathbed regrets that palliative care nurse Bronnie Ware documented from her patients. The number one regret for every single male patient was "I wish I hadn't worked so hard." These weren't lazy people or failures—they were accomplished individuals who realized too late that professional achievement alone couldn't sustain a meaningful life. Brian Benedik, a high-drive executive at Spotify, made a different choice before it was too late. Feeling the distance growing between himself and his authentic self, he did something radical: he took the entire month of August off. Not a long weekend or a typical vacation, but a complete shutdown of projects and email while he went to a beach cottage with his family. This deep white space allowed him to reconnect with his children and rediscover parts of himself that the relentless pace of work had buried. The same Thieves of Time that steal our work effectiveness follow us home. Drive tells us we must accumulate impressive possessions and wealth. Excellence demands perfection in our fitness, parenting, and every hobby we touch. Information insists we stay current with every news cycle and cultural trend. Activity convinces us that cramming more into our evenings and weekends somehow wins us points in life's grand game. Combat these forces by asking yourself the same simplifying questions you use at work. What can you let go of in your personal commitments? Where is good enough actually sufficient in your home life? What do you truly need to know about world events versus what feels compulsive? What deserves your attention when you're off the clock? Most importantly, give yourself permission to stop without guilt. You are not required to optimize every moment, achieve constant growth, or maintain perfect anything. Sometimes the most productive thing you can do is sit on your couch for ten minutes and simply exist. These moments of presence, scattered throughout your days, become the foundation for a life fully lived rather than merely survived.
Summary
The missing element in our hyperactive world isn't another productivity system or time management technique—it's the simple act of taking a minute to think. As this journey has shown us, white space isn't empty time but the oxygen that feeds the fire of our creativity, relationships, and authentic selves. The strategic pause becomes our superpower, the Thieves of Time become manageable when we recognize them, and our communication transforms when we think before we speak. Perhaps most importantly, we discover that our permission to stop, breathe, and be present is not something we need to earn—it's our birthright. The path forward is beautifully simple: take a strategic pause, every single day, and watch as space for your best life naturally unfolds. Start now, with this very moment, by closing your eyes, taking a deep breath, and remembering that in a world obsessed with doing, your being is the most radical act of all.
By Juliet Funt
