I wonder what it would be like if our goal was to fill the cutting room floor, instead of ‘write or illustrate a book’.

When a filmmaker makes a feature-length film, they shoot thousands of hours of footage. In the film-making culture, you always shoot more than you ever need. It’s expected that most of what is shot over years of filming will never end up in the movie; it’ll remain on the cutting room floor. It’s part of the process. When you’re making a film, that’s normal.

When you’re writing a book, or illustrating a story, it’s hard to let go of the first draft. We want it all to be in the book. It took hours to write or draw. We spent weekends on it, or precious time when the kids were asleep. We worked so hard to make the number of words people say you need for a book. And now we’ve done it. The book is done. We’re done.

But professional writers know that writing a book, and making a film, have similarities. We have to write or draw much more than we’ll ever need. We’ve got to fill the cutting room floor so that, of the thousands of hours of work we’ve put in to make all those words and pictures, only the best bits will see the light of day.

I’ve done it! I’m through! I’ve put on my long white gloves and my debutante gown. I’ve descended the sweeping staircase and I’ve been welcomed to the world. Ladies, Gentlemen, and all in-between, I’m into poetry.

For people new to poetry, the ‘rules’ for reading it aren’t clear. Do I just buy any random poetry book, start at the start and sit down for 3 hours reading it from cover to cover, like a novel? How do I know if I’ve read a good poem? Or even worse, a bad one? Did I understand the poem I read? What did it mean? Am I too dim to be reading poetry at all?

With all these questions running through one’s mind (like they did for me), it’s easy to say, “Well, stuff it, I’ll just read another novel.” But, as I’ve found out, poetry rewards those who persist. So here’s how I did it, how I broke in. It’s advice I haven’t been able to find in my internet searching and, well, I’m now rather addicted to seeking new poems.

Start wide, buy an anthology

Make your first poetry book an anthology. Anthologies are collections of poems, usually on some sort of theme. The themes vary wildly, so find one that you like the sound of. Are you a nature lover? Try an anthology about nature poems. Are you a romantic? There’s plenty of anthologies about love. At this stage you don’t need to worry about the poets they feature, or who edited the anthology (i.e. the person/s who picked the poems), just focus on the subject you’re interested in. My favourite ‘beginner’ anthology is A Book of Luminous Things. It’s theme can be best described as ‘variety’, variety of language, location, and subject. It features poets from all over the globe, and loosely groups poems into different subject matter themes.

Read your anthology like a recipe book

Poetry anthologies don’t need to be read cover to cover like a novel. In fact, they’re not meant to be read that way at all. I’ve found that they’re best read like a recipe book.

When I buy a recipe book, I scan the whole thing first. As I’m flicking through, there are some recipes that catch my immediate attention. The reason they do this isn’t always the same. Maybe I like the poached pear and raspberry sorbet one because it’s hot today. Or maybe the roast lamb with rosemary potatoes is interesting because the photo looks nice and lamb is cheap this week. Maybe I’m just more confident in my ability to make the lemon tart that I see because I’ve had repeated success with a cheesecake in the past. Either way, I always bookmark a few on my first go. These are the ones I’ll cook first.

Poetry anthologies can work the same. Do a quick pass of book. Maybe you like the sound of one because the title is intriguing (this happened to me when I read Les Murray’s Cuttlefish). Or maybe you prefer the short ones over the long ones, like Antigone Kefala’s Knossos. I’m a minimalist by nature, so I love the short ones. All you need to do at this stage is to bookmark the ones you think you might like to try.

Give your favourites a go

Once you’ve earmarked a few that sparked an immediate interest, give one a go. And when I say ‘a go’, here’s what I mean:

1. Read it once, from beginning to end. Don’t worry about trying to ‘get it’ or ‘work it out’. Just read it. You’ll stumble and fumble and mumble your way through it, that’s OK. It’s a bit like eating spaghetti for the first time. Until you learn how to twist those strands onto your fork, it’s going to be a mess. Then,
2. Read it again, slower this time. Less like a novel, more like a recipe, line by line. As you’re reading the second pass, try to notice the bits you like most. Is there a particular word or phrase that rolled off your tongue better than others? Did a particular line put a vivid image into your head? Do you even like it, still? Maybe it kind of sucks? That’s OK.
3. Ask yourself, do you like it? Have another scan through it, and again if you need to. You don’t have to have a definitive answer. But it’s good practice for you to internalise the poem and simply work out whether you think it’s a good one. You could even write some notes about it to help you work out whether this is the sort of poem you like. Once you think you’ve made your mind up, then,
4. Read a different poem. Select another poem that you earmarked from your first pass and follow steps 1-3. But, at step 3, you can now compare it to the first poem you read as a way of helping you decide whether you like it. How does it compare? Do you like the second poem more or less than the first poem? Try to work out why. There’s no right or wrong answer because poetry is simply about your experience with the words.

Refine, then define what you like

After you’ve given some favourite-looking poems a go. You can now begin to orient yourself in this world. Maybe you’re finding that you happen to keep liking a particular poet in this anthology (that’s what happened with me and the Polish poet, Wislawa Szymborska). By the way, I never thought I’d say that phrase. But for you, maybe there’s a type of subject, or a way certain poems look that you seem to be drawn to. What you’re trying to do, like I did, is find out where to go next. What you like, and what you don’t like. You could do another pass through the anthology and see if different poems grab your attention now; perhaps you’re feeling a bit more adventurous after a couple of first poems.

Welcome to poetry

All you need to find from your first anthology is one or two poems that you like. From there, you can seek out another anthology that is refined by your new-found taste. Maybe you’ve connected with a particular poet and so you seek out one of their own collections to see how much of their work you like. The main thing is, you’re in. You’ve got a foothold in what is normally seen to be a very academic activity. You’re one of those people now, the ones that can read and enjoy poetry. How exciting!

What if you didn’t find anything you like in your first anthology?

Well, it’s one of two things:

1. The curator/s was not for you. That’s OK, after all, anthologies are still curated by a single person or a very small group of people. Maybe you just didn’t like their taste? I’d suggest trying another anthology curated by someone else to see whether the editor of the first anthology was the problem.
2. You don’t actually enjoy poetry. Whilst I find this difficult to believe because of the sheer variety that exists in poetry, this just may be the way it is for you. That’s also OK. There are some people in the world who don’t like Italian food and some people don’t like cooking at all. At the very least, this exercise has given you this knowledge about yourself, which is great because it means you can focus on the type of reading that gives you joy, whether it’s novels, magazines, comics or non-fiction.

Pair this with my tips for writing poetry (hint: don’t call it poetry).

In the early days of human existence, we transferred knowledge to one another through the oral tradition. We literally told stories to one another. Back then, we needed one another to survive. Alone, our species is vulnerable. We passed down ‘life hacks’ from one generation to another. Grandad and his mates learned (through failure, no doubt) the best way to hunt a dangerous animal, and they told the next generation how to do it.

Oral tradition and tribal living have, in general, stood the test of time as an effective way of knowledge transfer and human survival. Indigenous Australians are a pretty good example of this if you think that survival over 65,000 years and counting is considered success.

But, like with most things, there are positives and negatives.

On the one hand, the oral tradition meant that deep, multi-sensory knowledge could be transferred between generations fairly easily. The connections to these stories would have been so personal that empathy for the experiences and emotions felt through them would have been unlike anything my privileged mind could imagine. But, on the other hand, unless someone with knowledge was able to transfer it to another before they died, the risk of lost knowledge, potentially life-saving knowledge, was high.

Over the years, as technology has ‘improved’, it’s given us the ‘freedom’ to become less reliant on one another for survival. And while we might be living in closer proximity to one another than ever before, the written tradition has re-structured our society in such a way that, at least in the developed world, one can live in general comfort and safety without needing another human being for most things. I’ve over-simplified this a bit, but you get my point.

At 35 years old, I look back on my childhood and wish I got to know my grandparents more. They’re no longer with us, and I can’t help but feel that along with them, a lot of knowledge was lost too; knowledge I probably could’ve used. Since then, I’ve started this career in picture books, and I’ve realised something.

Even in this modern, busy life that we lead, our society still values books, at least when it comes to our youngest generation. Parents and grandparents still believe that reading books to their kids and grandkids is a worthwhile activity to do together, in the same place and time as one another. But here’s the thing. I’ve been trying to rack my brain for another object on our planet that humans still value enough to introduce into their lives in this way. A physical object that creates a shared time and place for our oldest and youngest generations to come together, disconnected from the internet, and share in an idea with one another. I think picture books might be the only one.

So then I think, wow. In this last surviving space for intergenerational, synchronous story-telling and knowledge transfer, lay the ideas I’ve added to the world. Right there, sandwiched in this weirdly precious moment. Books like Queen Celine and Eric the Postie. The ideas and messages in these stories planted in the brains of two or more generations at once. An idea sent to this tiny tribe from a foreign land. What will they do with this new information? Will it change a mind, or spark a conversation? It’s a responsibility that I don’t take lightly, but one I’m immensely grateful for having the opportunity to be a part of.

Let’s face it, these days, it’s easy to be the same. To conform. To take a nice, comfy seat high up on the bell curve of what’s ‘on trend’. If I want to buy some new clothes, it’s easy for me to pull up a Pinterest board and see, in an instant, what the world is wearing. If I want to plan a picture-perfect wedding, the same is true. But, if we’re all looking at the same thing, reading the same information, looking at the same style, then we’re probably, eventually, going to think the same. If we’re thinking the same, we’re probably going to create the same things. That’s boring.

To think differently, we need to act differently. We need to ask ourselves, what am I doing differently to everyone else? If people are no longer letting boredom into their life, if they aren’t staring out the window, if they’re all listening to podcasts while they’re doing passive activities like cooking or vacuuming, if passive activities are now ‘wasting time’, and a thing to be avoided, then maybe I’ll ‘waste’ some time. Maybe I’ll stare out of a window for a while. Maybe I’ll shut off the incessant sound of podcasts in my ears. Maybe I’ll do exactly that, and see what happens.

Believable environments filled with intrigue are something that an author very rarely describes in a picture book text. But, it’s an area rich in possibility for a good illustrator and storyteller to exploit. It can add depth to the work, it can improve it’s repeat-value, and can help reader and child engage in a far deeper conversation about the context of the action than what the text describes. It’s, in short, what the great picture books do. But this isn’t just a thing about picture books, it goes right back to what great painters do.

Not so still-life

This image is a painting by Cezanne. It’s called “Still-life with Commode” (1883-87).

Now, in my opinion, the subject matter is relatively banal, but then again, so is the painting. We see some fruit, a few jars/vases, there’s nothing particularly human about it. It feels staged; something that Cezanne setup to paint, then put back once he was done. I mean, who puts a bowl of fruit in front of a set of draws?

In contrast, the image below from Van Gogh, a still-life called “A Still-Life with a Plate of Onions” (1889) invites the viewer into a story.

When I look at this image by Van Gogh, I’m not asking whether he set it up intentionally to paint or not. I’m asking questions about who was at the table and why. The pipe, the letter, the book, the half-consumed bottle of wine all indicate a human presence without explicitly showing a human. It invites my brain to invent my own stories from these disparate items. It draws me right in. Was Van Gogh really eating onions whilst drinking wine and smoking a pipe by candlelight?

Background stories

When I’m creating environments (like a living room) in my picture books, it’s easy to include all the tropes I associate with living rooms. A couch, some pillows, a TV, a bookshelf, and so on. It’s easy to forget the fun and human-ness I can bring to a simple environment like this. Does the couch seat have an indentation? What shape is it? Is the pillow askew? Are the books on the bookshelf scattered? Are there books missing? Is the TV on? If so, what’s on?

Backgrounds, and settings in general, give the illustrator a rich opportunity to tell stories through the pictures alone. It’s one of the most fun parts for me. And almost always, it’s the child that notices first.

A short thanks to Sarah Davis, Illustrator and Art Director at Walker Books Australia for her wonderful talk at a recent conference that got me thinking about how we can bring more intrigue into illustrations in picture books.

One of the most joyous parts of using watercolour is painting skies. There’s something about the softness of watercolour pigment that gives any sky a sense of lightness and delicacy that no other medium can easily mimic. But, there are only so many blue skies one can paint before, well, skies become a bit dull.

When I first started watercolour, I stumbled across the energetic work of Marie-Louise Gay. I found her work at a time when I was trying to understand the basics of how watercolour worked. Her lightness of touch and the energy in her work was something that I was drawn to immediately. I also found I came back to it, time and time again, as my confidence in the medium grew over the years.

Paint what you see

In the early days of my time with watercolour, I was obsessed with capturing reality. Skies were blue, trees–green, the sun, yellow. With every painting, I began to learn the ‘formula’ for matching these ‘realistic’ colours of the world to a watercolour pigment. Once this mapping gets into your muscle memory, you’re ready to move on. The next step? Beyond reality.

Beyond reality: Paint what you don’t see

The thing I love about Marie-Louise Gay’s work is how her use of colour isn’t about capturing reality any more. It’s about capturing a mood. It’s about a direct mapping of colour to the way colours make us feel.

Whether it’s the heat of the day, the coolness of the air by the sea, or that moment of the day whether the sun dips its weary head below the horizon, Marie-Louise Gay’s work sends us beyond reality to a time where the sky didn’t have to be blue, if we imagined it wasn’t.

Words are difficult. They need to be taught, and learned; that takes time. But looking? That’s different. The majority of us are born with the ability to look. From day 1, lightwaves are entering our tiny little pupils, and our brain is processing the incredibly vast amount of information. And yes, it’s VAST.

As language takes a little time for us to develop, we bridge the gap between birth and reading picture-free stories with tools like picture books; stories that can convey meaning without the need for words. We introduce really young brains to the ideas of beginning, middle, and end. They begin to experience the physical form of a book — the idea of pages, and sequence. Even if the child can’t understand us, we say the simple words that often accompany the pictures. We get them used to the sing-song sounds of the English language. We begin to help them connect what they’re seeing to what they’re hearing.

As language begins to develop further, they start reading the words along with us. And soon enough, a child is engaging with a picture book on their own. But picture book language is ‘simple’. The language doesn’t need to be complex because the images are telling half the story. So, what do we do? We begin to give a child books with more words; junior or middle-grade fiction. These are small ‘novels’ that start to make the child feel a bit more grown up. Because of the extra words, and the format of the physical form, something’s gotta give, and so we begin to remove the pictures from a story. Instead of an image on every page, there’s a simple line drawing every few pages or so.

As the child grows, so does their vocabulary and understanding of words. Soon enough, if they want to live in a world of books, those books are awash with words, and very little imagery. In fact, after about 13 years old, books don’t come with pictures anymore.

The slow removal of visual literacy from our adult vocabulary

If you don’t use it, you lose it. So this ‘progression’ of a small human’s story-interpreting ability towards the written word and away from the visual one probably has some ramifications. I don’t know this for certain, but anecdotally, I see it everywhere.

I’m lucky that I happen to be a strong visual communicator. I use this strength almost every single day in the work that I do as a software designer. People often remark that it’s a superpower. I’ve been explicitly asked on to projects *so* I could draw a diagram or workflow of something that others couldn’t find the words for.

Unlike most professional illustrators, I didn’t hone this skill from birth. I never spent my teenage years drawing and doodling like mad. Attending Art School never entered my mind. I took to Physics and Chemistry like a duck to water and so it wasn’t until later in life that my natural tendency to communicate ideas with pictures emerged.

But most people aren’t me. They don’t have a natural strength for colour and shape; for doing a quick drawing of a circle, two dots, and a line in a particular combination to form a face whose expression can cross language barriers and communicate human emotion in a much more intuitive way.

This isn’t about drawing

I can’t help but think that this difficulty that people have with ‘drawing’ isn’t that their hands can’t physically pick up a whiteboard marker and press it against a surface to make marks. I think this might be about the amount of time they’ve spent looking at stories that have been told in words, instead of pictures. It’s about familiarity and exposure, not about physical inability. I have plenty of people say to me, “I’ve written a children’s book, it’s really good, wanna read it?” but almost no one says, “I’ve drawn a wordless picture book, it’s really good, want to take a look?”

We’re living in an increasingly visual culture. Perhaps the rise of emojis and gifs are our response to our ever globalised culture as we seek ways to communicate across language boundaries. A smiley is a smiley in any language. Pictures are one of the most natural methods humans have for expressing their thoughts and feelings to the broadest group of people possible. Visual literacy is being set up to be one of the most fundamental skills of our time.

So, if this is all true, why is the road to literacy paved in words?

There are many things I consider when I’m deciding whether to put an idea out into the world at scale through a publisher. It doesn’t matter whether it’s text I’ve written and illustrated myself or a text I’ve received from an author where I play the role of an illustrator; I don’t think there’s a more important question than, “Is this idea really worth spreading?”

Valuing an idea is difficult. Balancing the ideological and behavioural impact of my work against its economic and environmental impact is a bit like comparing apples and oranges.

What’s the cost of an idea?

Any idea, published at scale through a publisher takes resources. Trees have to be cut down, that’s a given. But the chemicals used in the inks need to be manufactured, the book likely needs glue for the binding. If it’s a gloss cover or if it has some unique finish, there’s likely to be polymer and plastics involved; things that will never degrade.

There’s the creation of the artwork, too. Oil paints (petrochemicals), acrylics (plastic), watercolours (pigments like Cadmium), the paper or canvases needed to create the work, the brushes manufactured from natural and synthetic hairs, the wood used to make the brush handle, the list goes on.

Oh, and don’t forget the labour. Publishing a book means that actual humans are spending their finite time on Earth, helping to spread the idea. Everyone from the publishing team, sales and marketing, and the book printers and suppliers. The people who drive the delivery trucks and planes to the bookstores across the country, maybe even across the world, and of course, booksellers. It’s all part and parcel of bringing what most people see as a ‘pretty simple book’ to market.

Maybe I’m thinking too hard about this, but it costs us humans a lot to spread our ideas in this way.

What’s the impact of Queen Celine?

The irony of writing, illustrating, and publishing a book about the impact of our actions on the environment (like Queen Celine) is not lost on me.

I genuinely believe that the printed word, bound in books, is one of the most potent behaviour-change tools humans have ever invented. There’s no argument that the speed and convenience afforded by the simple printing press changed humanity forever. The format of the book is archival. It can last hundreds and sometimes thousands of years as long as it can escape its nemesis, fire. It’s been our primary method of intergenerational knowledge transfer for centuries.

To make me feel OK about using precious resources for spreading my idea, I work SO hard to make sure that a book like Queen Celine has the best chance of making the change that I seek to make. And no, that’s not to accumulate awards or make me enough money to be a full-time writer. And it’s certainly not for my ego. What I want from any of my books is to introduce a different perspective to someone. Make them think a little differently than before. Open their hearts and minds to the experience of others. If they can think differently, maybe they’ll act differently, too. Or, at the very least, with a bit more empathy. Perhaps they’ll be more kind, more forgiving, more understanding. The things that I think the world needs right now. I sweat obsessively over every word in the book, every punctuation mark, every line I draw or colour I select. Every single thing matters because it’s a terrible use of resources if the book doesn’t achieve its purpose.

Whose choice is it, really?

You might say, “Gee, Matt, you’re taking getting published for granted a bit, aren’t you?” And you’re right, I am. But although publishers are gatekeepers of sorts, what concerns me, I suppose, is that I don’t hear the industry talking about whether an idea should have the world’s meagre resources used to spread that idea in the physical form. I know publishers talk about “Return on Investment”, but it’s often regarding the simple, financial equation of “How much money did we pay the printer and author? How many copies did we sell? Did we end up in the black or the red?” And I don’t judge that approach either. It’s necessary so that publishers survive so that books do.

The generous optimist in me would like to assume that the selection criteria used by publishers have the “What is the strain on the Earth’s resources” question implicit in them. But I haven’t seen evidence of this so far. I’ve had plenty of ideas turned down, but I haven’t had a book turned down because, “We don’t think your idea is worth the irreversible damage to the planet, sorry.” For what it’s worth, I would love that! The reasons I hear more often are “The market for this book isn’t clear or big enough” or “Sorry, this isn’t something that fits with the rest of our list right now.” It suggests that a focus on financial ROI and reputation or brand is at the core of the decision-making process.

So, if publishers aren’t judging an idea against its impact on the planet, maybe it’s up to authors after all? Maybe it’s in our court to objectively assess our ideas and really try to understand whether this idea that we’ve had – this bright spark of inspiration – is worth spreading in the resource-intensive, traditional format of a book. Do we need another book about poo? Do we need another book about the alphabet? And if we do, then why? What’s so special about this idea? How will this change lives in a different way than what’s come before? If this idea was spread and the plastic cover it was printed on never degraded, would it have been worth it? Maybe if we use criteria like these on ourselves before we seek an agent or a publisher, we’ll only take our best ideas – truly life-changing ideas – to them. Maybe it’ll reduce the disappointment we get when we receive hundreds of rejections and it’ll increase our chance of being published anyway because we deeply, truly believe that this one is worth it — win-win.

A really smart publisher once told me her litmus test for knowing whether an author of a story knew why they were writing it. She said, “When I ask someone to tell me what their book is about, I typically get two types of answers. One author begins to describe their plot; the sequence of events from their outline. It usually takes about five minutes and is so full of information that I’m unable to keep up. The second author takes fifteen seconds. They’re the ones who succinctly describe the relatable human theme that their book is exploring, which also points to why people should read it.”

It was a big penny-drop moment for me. I was once the first author, but since this conversation, I strive to be the latter. For example, here’s my story, Queen Celine in two different versions.

Queen Celine is a story about a little girl who lives an ordinary life, except for when she goes to the beach. At the beach, she becomes a ‘ruler’ of a rockpool kingdom. She loves it dearly, so, she builds a wall to protect it from ever changing. But, after a little while, she realises that the residents are unhappy because everything is beginning to stagnate. In her distress, she looks out to the other rockpools and sees that there is happiness and joy there. The only difference between their rockpools and hers is the wall. So, with the help of her kingdom, she knocks down the wall. New life floods her stagnating kingdom and regenerates it with healthy life. She doesn’t want anyone else to make the same mistake as her, so she leaves a message for future rulers of this place that they should always welcome all.

Long, and boring. Even for me reading my own writing. But here’s the same story, described in a different way.

Queen Celine is about viewing change and diversity as something to embrace, rather than something to fear and avoid.

Describe your idea, or refine it

I not only use the second, more concise way of describing my idea for books I’ve written now, but I use it to test whether the idea I might have just had, the one that isn’t written yet, is worth writing at all. If I can’t find what that relatable human need is, then I need to work harder because until I have that, my story is just a sequence of events, and not about anything at all.

I keep a small pocket journal on me at all times to capture the random, unintentional thoughts that pop into my head on a day-to-day basis. I’ve developed this habit because I never know when these ideas will float to the surface of my consciousness. I’ve lost good ideas by not being prepared in this way.

I used to walk to my nearest train station to get to work. It’s a 3.5km walk, and it took me about half an hour. As I got busier with life, I thought I could save time by cycling to the train station instead. And yes, it did save time. It cut my half-hour walk down to a 15-minute ride. In a return trip, that saved me half an hour per day. I was happy. I had optimised!

I rode the bike for many months before I noticed that I wasn’t getting through as many pocket journal pages as usual. I had been using the same one for much longer than I usually would. Those thoughts and ideas I had come to take for granted and planned for began to dry up.

So, I left the bike at home and went back to walking. Sure enough, after a little while, the thoughts and ideas returned. They came back with a flood.

Ways to plan boredom

Planned boredom seems like an oxymoron, but there’s research to prove that it works. My mind makes the most interesting connections when it’s not focussed on anything in particular – when it knows it’s in a safe place, with no immediate threat, and it’s allowed to wander. It has space to invent. To make connections that I could not make intentionally.

When I’m on the bike, my mind is continuously in survival mode. It’s monitoring traffic, my balance, speed, and pedestrians. There’s no room for expansive or accidental thought. Riding a bike isn’t a time for serendipity, it’s a time for focus.

Our devices are robbing us of boredom, so we have to fight back

Planning unfocussed time into my day has become critical to my creative practice. It’s the wellspring of my creative projects. But with technology designed to fill every gap in our day, we have to try harder than ever to make this time for ourselves. Here are a few ways I know that have a pretty good strike rate in getting ideas into my notebook:

1. My walk to work (or a walk anywhere). Mindless, repetitive tasks like this ensure the blood is moving around the body, feeding oxygen to all my important bits, namely, my brain and heart.
2. Shower time. Shower time works less reliably for me these days, but it’s still a safe place where my brain can let my body go into an auto mode so my mind can wander.
3. Laying on the floor with a sketchbook. Kids do this naturally, and I only started doing this as an adult again, but boy is it powerful. The theory would say that by laying flat, you’re distributing the blood around your body more evenly and so your posture alone is gearing you up to be in a more receptive and powerful space for idea generation. When you add a sketchbook into that, boom, the magic happens.
4. Staring out of a train window (instead of staring at Facebook or even listening to music). A fairly self-explanatory one but and it’s SO hard to resist the temptation to listen to another fascinating podcast, right?

Integrating these moments in your life can be difficult to prioritise. Do I need to scroll through Facebook or Instagram right now? Or could I spend that time setting my brain up to have another idea, or make a new connection that no one has ever made before?

‘Avoiding boredom’ is something that we’re trained to achieve in a bid to be ‘more productive’. But it’s not until you permit yourself to be bored again that you truly see the power of it. At least, that’s the way it’s worked for me.