Cultivating silence, as Hal Gregersen writes in a recent HBR article,
“increase[s] your chances of encountering novel ideas and information
and discerning weak signals.” When we’re constantly fixated on the
verbal agenda—what to say next, what to write next, what to tweet next—
it’s tough to make room for truly different perspectives or radically new
ideas. It’s hard to drop into deeper modes of listening and attention. And
it’s in those deeper modes of attention that truly novel ideas are found.
Even incredibly busy people can cultivate periods of sustained quiet time.
Here are four practical ideas:
1) Punctuate meetings with five minutes of quiet time. If you’re able to
close the office door, retreat to a park bench, or find another quiet
hideaway, it’s possible to hit reset by engaging in a silent practice of
meditation or reflection.
2) Take a silent afternoon in nature. You need not be a rugged outdoors
type to ditch the phone and go for a simple two-or-three-hour jaunt in
nature. In our own experience and those of many of our clients,
immersion in nature can be the clearest option for improving creative
thinking capacities. Henry David Thoreau went to the woods for a reason.
3) Go on a media fast. Turn off your email for several hours or even a full
day, or try “fasting” from news and entertainment. While there may still
be plenty of noise around—family, conversation, city sounds—you can
enjoy real benefits by resting the parts of your mind associated with
unending work obligations and tracking social media or current events.
4) Take the plunge and try a meditation retreat: Even a short retreat is
arguably the most straightforward way to turn toward deeper listening
and awaken intuition. The journalist Andrew Sullivan recently described
his experience at a silent retreat as “the ultimate detox.” As he put it: “My
breathing slowed. My brain settled…It was if my brain were moving away
from the abstract and the distant toward the tangible and the near.”
The world is getting louder. But silence is still accessible—it just takes
commitment and creativity to cultivate iT.
by Justin Talbot Zorn and Leigh Marz
March 17, 2017