The most productive thing you can do might just be to do nothing…
And that is the hardest thing of all.
We’re All Addicted to Busy
Check your phone. How many notifications are waiting right now?
If you’re like most project managers, your day looks something like this: You wake up and immediately check Slack. Three fires already burning before you’ve had coffee. You sit down at your desk and open your project management tool—47 tasks, 12 overdue, 23 people waiting on you. You jump into your first meeting. Then your second. Then your third. Someone messages you during the third meeting about the crisis from the first meeting. You’re now handling four things simultaneously while pretending to give your full attention to each.
Lunch is at your desk, one hand on a sandwich, the other responding to emails. The afternoon is more of the same; status updates, roadblock removal, stakeholder management, budget reviews. You finally close your laptop at 7 PM, feeling like you’ve run a marathon through quicksand.
And here’s the thing: you didn’t think once today.
You reacted. You responded. You executed. You put out fires. You moved tasks from one column to another. But actual, dedicated thinking? That deep consideration of whether you’re solving the right problems, whether this project should exist at all, whether there’s a completely different approach you haven’t considered?
Zero minutes.
The Notification Economy Has Hijacked Your Brain
We’ve built an entire professional ecosystem designed to prevent thinking. Every tool, every platform, every process is optimized for one thing: immediate response.
Slack wants you to reply within minutes. Your PM tool wants you to update that status right now. Your email inbox is a slot machine. Pull the lever (refresh), get a reward (new message), feel that dopamine hit. Check it again. And again.
We’ve become addicted to the quick win. The notification cleared. The task marked complete. The inbox at zero. These micro-accomplishments feel productive because they’re measurable, immediate, visible.
But here’s what they’re not: strategic.
Think about your last major breakthrough.
When did it happen?
I’m willing to bet it didn’t happen during a standup. It didn’t happen while you were fixing your backlog. It probably didn’t even happen at your desk.
It happened in the shower. Or on a walk. Or right before you fell asleep. Or during that long drive.
It happened when you finally weren’t doing anything else.
When you had space.
What the Great Ones Know (That We’ve Forgotten)
Here’s where it gets interesting. When you study how the most creative, productive, and innovative people in history actually worked (not how we imagine they worked) you discover something interesting:
The greatest minds in history built their days around what looks completely unproductive.
They didn’t optimize every minute. They didn’t clear their inboxes. They didn’t pride themselves on back-to-back meetings. Instead, they did something that would get them fired from most modern companies: They scheduled large blocks of time to do absolutely nothing.
Let me show you what I mean.
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Aaron Sorkin’s Eight-Shower Workday
Aaron Sorkin (The West Wing, The Social Network) takes eight showers a day when he’s writing. Not because he’s dirty, but because he has his best thoughts in the shower.
His system: Sits down to write. Gets stuck. Takes a shower. Resets completely. Breaks through the plateau within minutes.
Sounds crazy right?
The science backs this up: “You do your best thinking in motion or in water.” Warm water and zero distractions let your brain make connections it can’t make while staring at a screen. Sorkin isn’t working less. He’s working smarter by building in time that looks like he’s not working at all.
Einstein on a Boat
Albert Einstein would climb into a tiny boat (with no motor) and float into the sea for hours. The Coast Guard warned him about drifting too far without a way back.
Einstein’s response? “The further the better.”
This wasn’t a break from his work. This was his work. Floating in the ocean, completely disconnected, he was forcing himself into a state where thinking was the only option.
As a project manager, when was the last time you made yourself unreachable for hours specifically so you could think?
Darwin and the Four-Stone Problem
Charles Darwin measured problems in stones. When wrestling with a difficult problem, he’d walk laps around a path, kicking one stone off at each lap’s start. He’d describe challenges as “four-stone problems” or “five-stone problems”; how many laps it took to make real progress.
Your body’s movement unlocks your mind’s movement. Got a problem today? We schedule a meeting. Still stuck? Another meeting. Darwin knew better: When thinking got hard, he stopped trying to think and started walking. The thinking happened on its own.
The Telegram Founder’s Forced Disconnection
Pavel Durov, who built Telegram, takes four-hour swims. “I get fitness and I get thinking at the same time. And guess what? You can’t be on your phone when you’re in a lake for four hours.”
He’s not just making time to think. He’s making it impossible not to think. No Slack. No emails. No emergencies. As project managers, we wear constant availability as a badge of honor. But what if being always-available is exactly what’s preventing you from having the insights your team actually needs?
Tim Ferriss and Bill Gates: Think Time as Strategy
Tim Ferriss has turned down every magazine and documentary request to follow him for “a day in the life.” Why? “It would be incredibly boring.”
His morning doesn’t start with a perfectly optimized routine. It starts with what he calls “puttering.” Stretching. Drinking tea. Sitting. Just... being.
“I spend long periods of time in inaction where I’m just trying to think of what is it that I really want to do and what is it that I actually should do in this situation.”
He’s thinking before doing. We’re doing before thinking.
Even Bill Gates, who built Microsoft through relentless execution, schedules one week per year dedicated purely to thinking. Not planning. Not strategizing. Just thinking. No meetings. No calls. No interruptions. Just him, some books, and unstructured time to process the big questions.
If Bill Gates, who had thousands of employees depending on him, who was building one of the most valuable companies in history, could afford to disappear for a week just to think, what’s your excuse?
The Pattern You Can’t Ignore
Look at what all these examples have in common:
They all look unproductive while you’re doing them
They all involve physical disconnection from normal work
They all prioritize thinking over doing
They all produce breakthrough results that grinding never could
Taking a nap at 2 PM? Lazy. Floating in a boat all afternoon? Irresponsible. Taking eight showers in one workday? Absurd. Walking in circles kicking stones? Wasting time.
Except these aren’t lazy people. These are some of the most accomplished humans in history. They didn’t succeed despite this “unproductive” time. They succeeded because of it.
So What Should You Do?
This week, try this experiment:
Block one hour on your calendar. Label it “Project Strategy Review” or something that sounds legitimate to your organization. Then close your laptop, silence your phone, and go somewhere you can’t be interrupted.
Don’t bring a notebook. Don’t try to produce anything. Just think about your most important project. Ask yourself the big questions:
What am I assuming that might be wrong?
What would this look like if it were easy?
What am I afraid to admit about this project?
If I were starting fresh today, would I approach this differently?
You might feel unproductive. You might feel guilty. You might feel like you’re wasting time.
Good. That means you’re doing it right.
Because the most productive thing you can do today is the thing that looks least productive. Just ask Einstein, Darwin, Sorkin, and every other genius who understood that breakthrough thinking requires breaking away.
The question isn’t whether you can afford to take this time.
The question is whether you can afford not to.
👋 If you are in need of more help or want one-on-one project management coaching, I’m currently taking on a few clients. You’re welcome to reach out anytime; just reply to this email or send me a DM.
Amazing post! I wouldn't be able to do my job like I do without thinking time. You cannot process complex issues while being in a meeting and eating lunch at the same time. So true
I didn't know that so many great people did the same. Thank you!
Good read! Taking the time to reset your mind is the most underrated thing ever.
It feels a little uncomfortable at first but as you get used to 'doing nothing', you start looking forward to it.