When you’re not working, you’re still working

What happens when you leave an idea alone

I’ve found the most successful way to write these blog posts isn’t to sit down and hammer out words on a deadline. It’s to start an idea rolling on Monday, let it drift through the week like vapor, and then, by Sunday, it’s ready to land. This one began in a half-formed note just after I hit publish on the last piece. I returned to it on Thursday with a few new thoughts and shaped it into something fuller by the weekend. I’ve started applying this rhythm to other work too, not just writing, and it’s reminded me that so much of what we call productivity happens off the page, outside the task, in moments that don’t look like work at all.

I wrote in an earlier post about how due dates can kill momentum — that you don’t have to finish a task in one moment, you just have to engage with it a little. Sometimes that little snowballs and becomes a flow session. Sometimes it doesn’t, and the task slips back into the background. Either way, it’s still alive. That first touch-in is enough to start something stirring. I don’t think we give enough credit to that kind of invisible work—the work that simmers while you’re walking in the park, or lying in bed, or staring out the window without realizing you’ve slipped into the middle of it again.

The brain has its own way of revisiting things. On my daily walks, I often stumble across answers to problems I wasn’t consciously thinking about. Noticing how an idea I’d started earlier in the week has evolved slightly. Two previously unconnected thoughts now sit side by side, quietly linked. Same thing in the shower. In fact, long showers away from my phone feel like a shortcut back to my mind. I know none of this is groundbreaking — there’s a name for it, after all. Psychologist Graham Wallas called it incubation. He laid out a four-stage model of creativity almost a hundred years ago: preparation, incubation, illumination, verification. It still holds. I find comfort in the idea that letting go for a while is not just part of the process — it is the process.

But I do wonder how often I derail that process myself. I know when I’ve scrolled too much, checked for updates on too many apps, yanked my brain out of that gentle hum and into distraction. I’ve started thinking of my phone as the enemy of incubation. I wonder how many ideas I’ve buried with overstimulation, how many breakthroughs I’ve drowned out by refreshing tabs that didn’t need refreshing. There’s something fragile about that drifting state. It doesn’t shout. It slips in when your mind is a little bored, a little open, not being asked to perform.

The idea of letting things rest isn’t modern, of course. I first came across the Daoist concept of wu wei years ago and it stuck with me. Non-doing, or more precisely, effortless action. It felt at once obvious and profound. I ended up reading the Dao De Jing, and then reading it again, and again. One line in particular keeps circling back to me: “Muddied water clears when left alone.” There’s something deeply relieving about that. That we don’t have to fix or force everything. That stillness is not failure, but a strategy. There’s a kind of bravery in leaving something alone long enough to let it become clear.

It’s the same with therapy. I often find myself grumbling about the price of a session: an hour that feels short, especially when I compare it to my own hourly rate. But the more I think about it, the more I realize the session is just a spark. The real shifts happen in the days between. Something unspools in the background. What felt tangled or stuck starts to loosen, not during the appointment, but in the quiet that follows. It’s the same thing, again. The work we think we’re doing is only part of it. The real change often happens later, silently.

That said, not everything needs days to marinate. Some tasks genuinely benefit from being done in one go — emails, admin, booking the damn dentist. Even creatively, there are days when everything’s ready at once and the words come tumbling out in a single sitting. But when that happens, it’s usually because the thinking’s already been done. I just didn’t notice it. The bubbling happened in the background. The writing part was just the final stage, the part that looks like work.

The moments I find hardest are when I’m expected to come up with something on the spot. A slogan, a concept, a sentence that sums up a campaign. It never works. I always freeze. My brain isn’t built for spontaneity in that way. It’s why I get so frustrated when someone says, “Just write it now!” as though writing is transcription and not excavation. I’m not an improv comic. The good stuff comes when I’ve had time to not think about it.

What this means in practice is that at any given time, I’m spinning several plates in my mind. I picture them quite literally, each one something I’ve nudged into motion. Some are spinning fast and don’t need me yet. Others wobble and ask for attention. The trick isn’t to keep all of them moving constantly — it’s to know when to step in and when to let them be. That’s what I’ve found Nestful quietly supports. The nesting function lets me break down big things into manageable parts. It gives me a bird’s-eye view, so I can dip in, check on something, and leave again. It mirrors the rhythm of thought itself — touch in, retreat, return.

There’s a strange joy in coming back to something that’s been quietly cooking in your mind. When you open the doc and find the shape is already there, you don’t need to push, you just need to tinker. The effort has already happened. It’s like skimming the fat off the top of a broth that’s been simmering all day. All that’s left is refinement.

And all of this — this drifting, circling, returning — it doesn’t happen well if you’re exhausted. It hinges on good sleep. Not just quantity, but quality. Regular, unrushed, properly dark sleep. I’ve noticed a direct correlation between my creativity and the nights I sleep well. Not because I wake up with epiphanies, but because the baseline of my brain is calmer. It gives me more chances to slip into the space where good work can happen.

So when I say I’m working on something, I often mean I’ve nudged it forward, let it go, and trusted it’ll come back when it’s ready. Sometimes it surfaces while I’m walking. Sometimes while I’m showering. Sometimes not at all, but even that’s okay. There’s no real rush. The plate keeps spinning. The water clears on its own.

Try Nestful.