Pull out your Scanner Daybook and a pen and see if you can find 10 or 15 uninterrupted minutes. I’d like you to try this fantasy for yourself:
Imagine you’re on a tiny desert isle alone, with nothing to do. A ship will be by in 2 or 3 days and you have enough to eat until then, but there’s no one to talk to, nothing to work with, just a couple of days to pass while you look out to sea.
At first your mind might be empty, but give it a little time and when something comes to mind, pick up your pen and start writing.
What happened? Did you get bored or find your thinking slip into a different mode?
Try this for 10 or 15 uninterrupted minutes. Write down whatever thoughts come into your mind while you fantasize that there is nothing you can or must do for the next 2 or 3 days.
If you find yourself happily coming up with ideas for projects until you come crashing down to earth with the thought that you don’t have the time or resources to proceed with them when you get off the island, you might want to give the Alternating Current Life Design Model—alternating solving the problems in front of you with time for generating and fleshing out ideas—a try. If you find your thoughts leaning toward recalling song lyrics or choreography steps or practicing a foreign language or planning how to greet the folks who are coming to rescue you, then this one’s probably not a good fit.
So tell us what you thought about and how it felt. After you share your experience, read the rest of the comments and reply to a few.
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I’d work on moving my body in different ways. Perhaps I could find an object I could shoot at a target like a basketball or some object I could try to ride in the waves like a surfboard. I would take breaks to breathe. I would definitely roam the island to understand the lay of the land and debate where I wanted to sit.
I didn’t get bored, but I didn’t get any kind of salient ideas. Me stranded on a desert island for 2 days and not needing to hunt or find drinkable water means a lot of staring out to sea and sunburn.