
Regular readers of this blog will know that I'm no stranger to the benefits of quiet time – I've previously written about the need for boredom, solitude and guarding our attention. However, this is something I keep coming back to every couple of days, and I find myself regularly reminded of it in one form or another.
The latest reminder came in the form of Jason Chatfield's article, Creativity Requires Quiet, which I stumbled on a few days ago. The essay crystallised a feeling I've had for a while but I've been unable to articulate, perhaps because I've ironically struggled to carve out quiet time to think properly and ruminate on my ideas in the past few months.
The last few months have been quite eventful on a global level (when hasn't it?), with so much happening in the world of politics, sport and entertainment, perhaps the most salient being the recent elections in America. For months, the media milked these elections so much that it was nearly impossible to avoid the ongoings. I'm a big proponent of following global politics and trends and I'm all for staying up to date with current affairs, but even so, I've come to realise that there's just no need for the 24-hour news coverage various media outlets continue to subject us to. Now that I think about it, I'm not sure that having access to round-the-clock coverage adds anything of substance compared to the intermittent news cycles that were prevalent say two decades ago, before the hyper-connectivity culture took over our lives.
But what is so bad about staying glued to the news or religiously keeping up with current affairs, you might ask? Well, the short answer, as I've previously argued, is that it robs us of valuable attention that we could channel into creative exploits and activities. Keeping up with the news and staying up to date with the latest episodes of our favourite podcasts and shows is nice and all, but it comes at a cost. Time spent filling every waking moment with content is time not spent thinking for ourselves and letting our cognitive processes run free, which is essential for making art. In other words, if we spend every waking moment consuming, we’re left with no time for processing, and this applies regardless of whether we’re consuming things that are helpful or harmful to us.
So what to do? Well, hard as it may be, we need to push back on all the outlets vying for our attention, we need to carve out time to be bored, we need to seek out solitude, and in a world filled with so much content that would take several lifetimes to consume, it behoves us to go the radical route, to shun the noise and embrace quiet time.
P.S.: My debut non-fiction book, Art Is The Way, and my middle-grade novella, A Hollade Christmas, are out everywhere now. You can get them in all good bookstores and from all major online vendors.