“In his youth Albert Einstein spent a year loafing aimlessly.
You don’t get anywhere by not ‘wasting’ time- something, unfortunately, that the parents of teenagers tend frequently to forget.”
~ Carlo Rovelli, Seven Brief Lessons on Physics
I always have a pile of books next to my armchair, the sorts of books that are beautifully written and that I can pick up and dip into for a few pages at a time over a coffee. One such book is “The Order of Time” by Carlo Ravelli, often called the “poet of physics”.
I love the way he thinks about time and how we human beings relate to time as we “swim in time” as part of our being in the world. I particularly love the quote above, a celebration of “loafing aimlessly”.
As the father of sons, the youngest of whom is now 19, I have seen plenty of “loafing aimlessly” from each of them over the years, yet much of that time spent “aimlessly” has then released thoughts, ideas, creativity for them to move on in different directions and interests.
In business, I agree with Carlo Rovelli too, in that often I see leaders take very little time indeed to “loaf aimlessly”. Now, I’m not saying that time they spend with me is aimless, as we always have a context, a “why” for our work and conversations that I have in my mind at all times. However, the time that clients spend with me (often a one hour video call each week) is sometimes the only focussed and concentrated time they have to really dive deep into big picture ideas that can then inform and lead them in directions that create vision and strategy for transformative change.
I spend much of my time in conversation with leaders, one way to “see inside” such conversations is via my podcast WhatComesNextLive. Sometimes these are focussed, but often they feel like half an hour or more of “loafing aimlessly”, particularly when guests come on with nothing particular in mind, simply trusting to have a conversation that flows wherever it may serendipitously go.
One such conversation was my podcast yesterday with Sam Roots, where we ranged widely and randomly, often spurring many thoughts in each other and going off on tangents. We “loafed aimlessly” yet we both also drew several wonderful nuggets of learnings from a wonderful conversation.
I hope you sign up for the podcast and that you enjoy my conversation with Sam, then feel free to dip into the archive of nearly 100 past shows.