Have you ever been caught in a rare moment when it feels like your child is growing up in that very second, right before your eyes…and not wanting it to happen? I had one while visiting the Atomic Bomb Dome and Peace Memorial Park in Hiroshima, Japan.
The Rejuvenating Power of Time Out
What is it so many world leaders, renowned entrepreneurs, inventors, artists and authors all have in common in their pursuits for excellence, their chasing of dreams?
Surprisingly, it is not high IQ, or work obsession, access to buckets of money, or absurd luck, although all those things would be very nice.
The one common denominator is that they embrace and deploy ‘the power of time out’ as a deliberate high-performance strategy. They get away; switch off; disconnect to create mind space to create, invent and problem-solve. With examples from John Cleese to Mozart; Bill Gates to Churchill; Microsoft and others, as well as a few silly anecdotes of my own year out, my recent TEDx talk, delves into this concept, highlighting the irony that in the future, there will be an awful lot of business and technology developed to help us stay away from busyness and technology.
In fact, it’s already started; an explosion in digital detox holidays, apps teaching us mindfulness, net-blocking software deployed so we can avoid distraction. With technology addiction centres being one of the fastest growing property uses in Asia, 300 of them in China alone in the past few years, join the revolution of those seeking ‘time out’ as a strategy to achieving personal greatness.
Click here for the link to the 13 minute TEDx talk, presented at Australia’s no 55 world-ranked university, the University of Queensland.
As Socrates once said, when overwhelmed with busyness, “beware the barrenness of a busy life.”
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Kurt Vonnegut on How to Make Your Soul Grow
Shaun Usher’s book ‘More Letters of Note’ is a compilation of correspondence from and between famous people. This is one such extract from author Kurt Vonnegut to a high-school class that he was to visit at age 84, but couldn’t make.
” I don’t make public appearances any more because I now resemble an Iguana … What I had to say to you, moreover, would not take long, to wit: Practice any art, music, singing, dancing, acting, drawing, painting, sculpting, poetry, fiction, essays, reportage, no matter how well or badly, not to get money and fame but to experience becoming, to find out what’s inside you, to make your soul grow.”
