The case for idling
and experiential hallways
Do you feel like the opening moments of whatever you’re making could have a little more spice? Do your meetings feel stale? Your collaborations sluggy? Your people uninspired? Your ideas bleh?
Do you love icebreakers? Or hate them because they are mostly terrible? Refuse to show up to meetings until five minutes after they’ve started in order to avoid them all together?
Then come hang out next Friday, May 30th @ 9 am PT, at How to design a warm-up that doesn’t suck. A free workshop to help you supercharge your creative work.
Bring friends, co-workers, your boss, and your intern.
Last week I caught an episode of RadioLab in which they were trying to use science to prove common adages.
One in particular stuck with me: “Idle hands and an idle mind are the devil’s workshop.” I think because, in working with clients, I often find myself trying to make the case for spaciousness.
And spaciousness and idleness seem to be sisters, of a sort.
So here’s some interesting science for you:
The TL;DR:
There’s this researcher, György Buzsáki, looking at rat behavior. He listens to rats’ brains by hooking them up with electrodes, and coding neuron firing patterns to specific sounds.
So when the rat has a particular series of thoughts, the researchers can hear it. On their listening machines, it will go off like a ringtone.
So imagine: they put their little rat in a maze, in search of a Fruit Loop (rats, they’re just like us). As the rat navigates the path, their brain will go through a series of thoughts (I’ll go left here — ding, right at this little curve — dong, over this bridge — ringading). Meanwhile, what the researchers are hearing is ding, dong, ringading.
Well… it turns out, after the rat completes the maze, that melody, ding dong ringading, will keep replaying in their brains, thousands upon thousands of times.
These repetitions are called “short wave ripples.”
And these short wave ripples are the mechanism by which we code and create memories, and effectively digest our experiences.
Short wave ripples are why certain moments stay with you — because your brain has actually relived the experiential pattern thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of times.
And, they are the way we are able to leverage that learning in novel situations. When the rat is placed in a new maze, it will rewind that short wave ripple pattern in attempt to make sense of the new scenario, and to plan for what could come next.
Craving a better explanation of brains? Listen to the people better than I at explaining science:
BUT here’s the thing: short wave ripple replay only happens when we are idle — and not at all when we are focused.
This is why your brain surfaces the answer to the question you had (Where the heck do I know that person from?) three days later while you’re walking to the bathroom (oh my god I KNOW WHO IT IS, it’s the weird guy my friend went on that date with that we aggressively internet stalked afterward).
Your brain has been chewing on the question, subconsciously, in all the interstitial moments — wandering back through old patterns and past memories until it gets to the ‘a ha’.
All of this is to say…
What could it look like to design for more idling in whatever we are making?
More liminal. More in betweens. More slow nothings.
As experience designers, I know intimately the urge to focus on content. To do more in the time we have…
It comes from a good place. Wanting to value people’s time. To make use of what we have. To design out the friction and the non-useful and the unproductive. To not waste this space we are sharing.
And yet…
In doing so, perhaps we are designing out the digestion. The soft, subconscious processing we need to make sense.
Meanwhile…
Our tech is quickly and surely eroding our ability to idle. We go to stand in line for a sandwich and immediately pull out our phones. An addictive demand for our attention.
And so I fear our idling muscles are atrophying.
And also…
It feels like there’s an ever quickening degeneration between idling and fixating. When we do give our brains space, they too quickly find their way to whatever we are stressed about and begin worst-case-scenario-ing.
So what do we do about it?
Whatever I’m designing, I often think in the metaphor of a house. The rooms as the various experiential containers. With doorways and thresholds. Welcome mats and peep holes. Windows and drawers.
And in this model, maybe our idlings are our hallways. Their purpose as simply the betweens.
Because idle movement can be the way through.
We give our bodies a little rhythm, and it softens the lenses of scarcity and constant risk assessment. Our brains can wander to the short wave ripples, without playing whack-a-mole with our anxieties.
Fold the laundry. Walk. Play the piano. Shower. Comb your hair. Sweep. Shell the peas. Make little balls of play doh.
So I want to make the case for space. For this soft embodiment. Without feeds and notifications and tasks that require our full attention.
Not (just) structured reflection time, but more of the squishy and unformed goopy soup.
Imagine…
You’re hosting a prototyping session. But rather than having the materials already set out on folks’ tables, you put them in another room. Necessitating movement. A wander within the doing.
Or walking all the way around your block to get to your mailbox.
Or mindlessly emptying the dishwasher when you feel creatively stuck, rather than trying to strong-arm-think your way to an answer.
What would it look like if we took the slow road a little more often?
Your assignment, should you choose to play:
Actually…two assignments.
One: what are you making? A meeting, a party, a program?
Design in some idling. Soft movement. Use of our hands or our bodies, in a way that eases the pressure on our brains.
Two: what are you stuck on? A problem? An answer? A way through?
Have a structured little think on it. Sit down with a pen and paper, a blank document, your spreadsheet, your stickies. Give yourself 20-30 minutes max.
Then get up, and go for a walk. Mop the floors. Water the plants. Don’t think at your problem. Just let it simmer, idly, in the background.
See what happens.
Yours, Olivia
Interested in keeping up with all the tricks, treats, and upcoming experiential Fruit Loop mazes from The Design for Feelings Studio?