I get my best ideas in the mountains. 

Or even on a long car journey to the mountains.

I am most creative on an early Monday morning. 

I keep a notepad nearby to jot down ideas, and the page fills up by my first Pomodoro. I may be most productive on a Friday afternoon, with the urgency of my personal deadline looming, but I’m most creative on a Monday, with the whole week ahead of me. My mind has freedom to roam.

What mountains and Mondays have in common [besides the letter M] is SPACE.

On a long journey, my mind has time to be free. To let go of tasks. To exhaust busyness and let my mind wander. No obligations, no distractions.

On a Monday I can stretch out. I have a sense of unhurried-ness. Calling it procrastination would be stifling; what it really is is possibility. The dam is unblocked and the flood of ideas pours through: I could do so many things! 

By the end of the week I am too focused on crunch time. 

I push those thoughts out of my head before they hit the page – sometimes before they are even fully formed. They probably get pushed to the Monday part of my brain; I don’t know how that works.

Realisations like this remind me of why I’m a minimalist. 

Minimalism is having space to explore and freedom to breath. When my home is tidy, my eyes don’t dart around to the clutter. When my wardrobe is tiny, I work solely with pieces I love. Minimalism makes it easier to focus, but it also provides the space essential for creativity: fewer choices, fewer things to remember, more time and space for creativity to seep in. 

P.S. There’s more on my minimalist journey and how it opened up room for opportunity in my ebook, Own Your Story.