Allow Yourself to Wander

“It's such a good question, and I honestly don't know how it works. If I did, I would try to explain it. I know it involves lots of wandering…

When I sit down to work on a problem, I know I don't know where I'm going.

So to go in a straight line, to be efficient…

Efficiency and invention are sort of at odds because invention, real invention, not incremental improvement…

Incremental improvement is so important in every endeavor, in everything you do. You have to work hard, and also just making things a little bit better.

But I'm talking about real invention, real lateral thinking — that requires wandering.

You have to give yourself permission to wander. I think a lot of people, they feel like wandering is inefficient…

When I sit down at a meeting, I don't know how long the meeting is gonna take if we're trying to solve a problem. Because if I did, then I'd already know there's some kind of straight line that we're drawing to the solution. The reality is we may have to wander for a long time.

And I do like group invention. I think there's certainly nothing more fun than sitting at a whiteboard with a group of smart people and spit balling and coming up with new ideas, and objections to those ideas, and then solutions to the objections and going back and forth.

So… sometimes you wake up with an idea in the middle of the night and sometimes you sit down with a group of people and go back and forth, and both things are really pleasurable.

“Well, I first of all, I get up in the morning and I putter… just like, I slowly move around.

I'm not as productive as you might think I am. I mean, 'cause I do believe in wandering and I sort of I, you know, I read my phone for a while. I read newspapers for a while. I chat with Lauren, I drink my first coffee. So I kind of, I move pretty slowly in the first couple of hours.

I get up early just naturally. And then, I exercise most days, and most days it's not that hard for me. Some days it's really hard, and I do it anyway. I don't want to, you know, and it's painful. And I'm like why am I here (at the gym)… but I know that I’ll feel better later if I do it.”

“I don't keep to a strict schedule… my meetings often go longer than I plan for them to because I believe in wandering.

My perfect meeting starts with a crisp document. So the document should be written with such clarity that it's like angels singing from on high.

I like a crisp document and a messy meeting. And so the meeting is about asking questions that nobody knows the answer to, and trying to wander your way to a solution. And when that happens just right, it makes all the other meetings worthwhile. It feels good.

It has a kind of beauty to it. It has an aesthetic beauty to it, and you get real breakthroughs in meetings like that.