Working outside this morning at the bistro table, in bright warm sunlight (t-shirt temperature), was a real treat for late September. It was a glorious Indian-summer day!
I have spent the last four days in scruffy clothes, helping Kim refurbish her rental flat. I consider this work (cleaning & painting particularly) to be really good for the soul, not to mention good from a thinking perspective. Its mundane, repetitive nature requires clear singular focus, leaving space in the background to process more important stuff, in this case preparing for a series of new (and typically unusual) L&D sessions that I’m running for clients over the next few weeks.
Neuroscientist David Eagleman describes the conscious in terms of a stowaway on a trans-Atlantic liner, claiming the credit for the journey and ignoring the vast machinations below that are actually doing the hard work. The subconscious will have spent days, weeks or even months making connections between input material and everything else we already know and the result bubbles to the surface like methane from an old rubbish tip. If the conscious has plenty of bandwidth available, then it is able to sense this virtual methane, claiming it as brilliant flashes of inspiration.
I chose my short local route to minimise the time out, opting for the sunny paths to make the most of the weather. The greens were lush and the wooded sections delightfully dappled and all the while my conscious mind was whirring away, catching the ideas that bubbled up from my subconscious.
I was even surprised at one point by a memory from the seventies. Ferns must create their own microclimate which is more humid and has a really distinctive smell. Passing through a bank of ferns in the sun I experienced both the humidity and the smell and recalled the times that I had come across them in Walstead woods when I was a young Scout… happy days!
I was so enjoying the stuff going on in my head that I extended the run by running across the Common on my way back home, despite the fact that my body had probably already had enough!
So, according to Strava, 7 miles in 67 minutes, an average of 6.26mph.
The sky is still clear but the afternoon is already not so warm… with the Autumn equinox approaching fast, we’re unlikely to see many more Indian summer days this year. At least I’ve really enjoyed this one!