“Never be afraid to sit awhile and think.” Lorraine Hansberry

“Men give me credit for some genius. All the genius I have is this: When I have a subject in mind, I study it profoundly. Day and night it is before me. My mind becomes pervaded with it…the effort which I have made is what people are pleased to call the fruit of genius. It is the fruit of labor and thought.” Alexander Hamilton

“The road to happiness lies in two simple principles: find what it is that interests you and that you can do well, and when you find it, put your whole soul into it—-every bit of energy and ambition and natural ability you have.” John D. Rockefeller III

Somehow, these three comments belong together, don’t they? They all convey the same message: thinking matters. Deep, constant thought applied to any subject yields rich fruit.

And yet, how hard it is to make the time and space to delve deeply into anything—even something we care about. Everything around us—cell phones, the Internet, the news, the cares of the day—everything seems designed to distract us. Instead of diving deeply, we skim the surface of things, trying to hold onto our belief that sometime soon we’ll get to whatever it is that really matters to us.

How many times have we all been there? Many, I’m sure.

And yet, the solution is simple: Carve out some quiet time.

Time to “sit awhile and think.” Time to dream. Time to noodle around ideas. Time to make messy mind maps that pull whatever we’re musing about out of our heads and onto the page. Time to tackle a topic that’s been bedeviling us. Time to dive deep into our heads and see what’s going on there—what pearls we can emerge with.

Holiday times are busy. We’re all running around and distracted. And yet, let’s remember that there’s always a quiet place we can go to. And there, as Hamilton said so well, with “labor and thought” we’ll find the biggest gift we can give ourselves: ideas we care about. Write on!

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