Ezra Klein

It's just, how are you defining productivity?

And turning off the spotlight.

Mm-hmm.

That the spotlight gets in the way because of those blinders.

And I think when you're daydreaming or mind-wandering, the blinders are kind of opened up and you're taking in information from more places.

She argues that it's just the belief that this is unproductive thought because nobody wants mind-wandering workers.

Yeah.

Right?

The capitalists want us to be, you know, spotlight consciousness.

And the example she gave is like, right now, my job is to grade blue book exams, and that's what I should be doing.

But my real life project is making sense of my life and having a fulfilling life, and I would be better off taking a walk or mind wandering.

So there's a tension.

There's a tension there between what the economy considers productive thought and what emotionally is productive thought or creativity.

Do you have a pencil or pen in your hand?

Completely agree.

Kalina edited this book, The Oxford Companion to Spontaneous Thought, and there is a history of spontaneous thought that looked at how incredibly creative people, composers, novelists, how they spent their days.

And they only worked like four or five hours.

They spent a lot of time in unstructured wandering, walking.

And we all know there's a connection between creative thinking and walking.

It's much more likely to break through if you're stuck in your writing or whatever else you're doing, if you get up from the desk and take a walk instead of just like worrying that problem.