New episode · Season 4 · Episode 3 AI gave you time back. What did you fill it with?Two practices that take less than two minutes with Natalie Nixon · creativity strategist, author of Move. Think. Rest. |
Dear friend, Think of the last hour AI gave back to you. What did you fill it with? If the answer is more work, you are in good company. Natalie Nixon has spent years studying how creative work actually happens, and she found that most of us skip the same thing: the pause. We complain about having no time, and when a tool hands us some, we fill it with more busyness. Our best ideas never get a window to climb through. Natalie is my guest on The Future Is HOW today. Every time I read her work I feel we are describing the same thing from two sides. She calls it wonder and rigor. I call it a future-ready mindstate. She works with creativity, I work with the future, and we both believe you do not wait for either one. You create it, from within, with your body and not just your head.  Episode 3 · Natalie Nixon & me |
◆ Two creative practices from this conversation Practice 1 The 90-second window Natalie takes daydream breaks. Ninety seconds, a timer, a window or a doorstep. You do not observe, you do not plan, you let your senses take over. The neuroscience is on her side: the part of the brain that connects the dots only switches on when you step away from the task. I have my own version. Every day I take a thirteen-minute nap, wherever I am. What comes after it is sharper than anything the hour before it produced. Practice 2 Start with your body, not your to-do list When I taught creativity at Stanford, students expected us to begin with brainstorming. We began in the atrium with my colleague and friend Aleta Hayes from the Stanford dance department, moving for thirty minutes before a single idea was spoken. The ideas that came afterwards were better, and there were more of them. Natalie explains why: when you move, your ideas move. It does not need to be a dance class. Stand up, stretch, walk around the block before your next piece of thinking. |
“We are not in the middle of a technological revolution. Most people think we are. We are actually in the middle of a human revolution.” Natalie Nixon |
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In this episode, Natalie and I talk about why AI can give us every answer but cannot find a problem worth solving, why procrastination is often incubation, how to start a Monday like a dance, and a five-minute doodle exercise you can run in your next meeting that gives you better ideas.  The Future Is HOW · Season 4 · Episode 3 |
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◆ Your experiment Today, when you feel stuck, set a timer for 90 seconds and stand by a window. Then notice what shows up when you sit back down. |
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 | From within,
Frederik |
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P.S. Know someone whose best ideas have gone quiet? Forward this to them. It takes 90 seconds to try. P.P.S. Natalie’s books are The Creativity Leap and Move. Think. Rest., which turned one this month. If you are in New York on November 7, her Leap Lab is a day to think deeply with strangers, which is often where the best questions come from. |
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