Take A Vacation

It’s summer. And while vacation might seem like a counterintuitive tactic for increasing creative output, it is not, necessarily...

“I have come to think that one of the most revealing signs of a young man's capacity is the use he makes of his vacations. Some fritter away those precious three weeks while some get more out of them than all the rest of the year put together.”

- David Ogilvy, Confessions of an Advertising Man (more here)

“The best idea you had (the idea to make a musical of Hamilton) actually happened when we were on vacation -- on a pool float with a margarita in your hand -- and you had a moment when your brain could kind of unplug from your day-to-day concerns and really drift."

- Vanessa Nadal, to her husband Lin-Manuel Miranda, creator of Hamilton

“A key turning point for MacCready came when he was on vacation: ‘I realized you could figure out the flight speed and the turning radius of birds soaring in circles — like you see a hawk, or a turkey vulture do — by noting the time it takes to do a turn and estimating the bank angle. Just a fun little scientific hobby. You can do it with essentially no tools. Just your wrist watch, and estimating the bank angle. From those two numbers you can calculate the flight speed and turning radius... The subconscious again shouted, “Aha!” The light bulb of innovation glowed over my head. And the Gossamer aircraft concept emerged…’”

- Paul MacCready, who won the 18-years-unsolved Kremer Prize for human-powered-flight after 6 months of work on the elegant and inventive Gossamer Condor, per this fantastic longer piece from Signal v. Noise, which is packed with lots of other goodies…

So this summer, instead of compartmentalizing — hiding away from problems in need of a creative solution — try deliberate disconnection instead. Who knows? As Ogilvy says, you might get more out of vacation weeks “than all the rest of the year put together.”

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