📰How I Freed Up Time to Daydream

How I Freed Up Time to Daydream I enjoyed Twitter. I genuinely did. The problem is I loved it a little too much. I'd find myself checking it when I should be working, running late to my daughters' school events because I tried to fit in a quick peek or staying up far too late surfing vast oceans of information, tired and barely interested but unable to resist the glowing undertow pulling me in. So I blocked Twitter. I went from being on it nearly every day to being off it for two months now. Being offline didn't make my life a bastion of meditative bliss. But there is one way that leaving Twitter has benefited my life and my mind. The times when I checked Twitter were often the transition points in my day. Leaving these small moments of my day unfilled changed how I walk through time. My new motto born of this experience is: Guard the margins — those seemingly unimportant parts of our day and time. We need moments when we get no input, no news, no videos, no memes, no opinions. We need moments when we space out, daydream, when our minds go blank. My friend Timothy is a studied musician. I asked him about the function of small breaks in music — of rests. He said that rests in music, even short ones, create rhythm, variety and narrative. They help guide and change the course of a song. Our days, which are so full of work and thinking, of arguing and learning, of disappointments and confusion, of striving and creating, must have moments when nothing much is happening. Leaving these small moments empty is what makes the difference between noise and music. Play the rests. Guard the margins. They matter.