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We might suppose that the best place to think would be a large room with a big desk, plenty of natural light and a window with a view, perhaps onto water or a park.
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This is the premise behind the layout of most offices.
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The nearer one gets to the top of the organization, the closer one's work station will approximate to this supposed ideal
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in tribute to the quality of thinking that, ideally, one would do there.
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Bosses tend to have big desks and even larger views.
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But these assumption are not – in fact – really true to the way our minds work.
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The primary obstacle to good thinking is not a cramped desk or an uninteresting horizon.
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It is, first and foremost, anxiety.
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Often the most profound thoughts we need to grapple with have a potentially disturbing character.
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If we were to pinpoint them accurately and get clear about their significance, there could be a risk.
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We might discover that some of our past, rather cherished, beliefs were not as wise as we'd supposed;
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we might realize we were previously deeply wrong about something;
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we might have to make some significant and tricky changes to our lives.
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As these potential implications start to come vaguely into view, our inner censor, motivated by a desire for calm rather than growth, gets alarmed.
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A vigilant part of the self gets agitated; it distracts us, it makes us feel tired or gives us a strong need to go online.
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Skilfully, it confuses and muddles our train of thought.
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It blocks the progress we were starting to make towards ideas that – though important and interesting – also presented marked threats to short-term inner peace.
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ideas that – though important and interesting – also presented marked threats to short-term inner peace.
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It's in this context that the shower emerges as so helpful to the way our minds work,
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and earns the right to be honoured as one of the best places on earth in which to do any kind of serious reflection.
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Amidst the crashing water and the steam and with a few minutes of respite before the day starts, the mind is no longer on guard.
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We're not supposed to be doing much inside our heads
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we're mainly occupied with trying to soap ourselves and properly rinse our hair.
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The ideas that have been half-forming at the back of our minds,
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ideas about what the true purpose of our lives might be and what we should do next,
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keep up their steady inward pressure – but now there is a lot less to stop them reaching full consciousness.
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We're not meant to be thinking and so – at last – we can think freely and courageously.
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This quality of sufficient – but not overwhelming – distraction
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might equally well be present when we're driving down the motorway or walking in a forest;
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when there's just enough for the managerial timid side of the mind to be doing to keep
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it from interfering with our authentic and bolder inner machinations. Our world places
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a very high premium on good ideas – but it spends very little serious effort in investigating
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why we find it extraordinarily hard to hatch them. Ralph Waldo Emerson once wrote: 'In
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the minds of geniuses, we find our own neglected thoughts.' In other words, so-called geniuses
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don't have thoughts different from the ones most of us have. They're just a lot better
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at not allowing their inhibitions and preconceptions to get in the way of properly entertaining them.
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In a utopian future, we would get a lot more creative about what real thinking
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is and where it happens. We'd learn that the real enemy of good thinking isn't a
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small desk or a modest view: it is – almost always – anxiety, for which there can be
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few better cures than that library of our deeper selves: the morning shower.
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