A thought flares into existence in your mind. It is not yet an idea. It is small and fragile. Unless you give it immediate attention it will gutter and die.

Thoughts are important but we do not treat them so. They need space. Space to breathe and grow. Space to protect them. They need light. Shine the light of your attention on a thought and it will grow into an idea.

More often than not we don’t do this.

Instead of giving a thought space and light we crowd it. Depriving it of oxygen. Strangling it. Keeping it in the dark. Allowing it to wither and die before it has had a chance.

It’s not a surprise. Our modern lives are lives of information. There’s more of it every day. And we flood ourselves with it. How many times a day do we check Facebook? Or Twitter? Or Reddit? or Instagram? Or Pinterest? Or Snapchat? Or… Or…

Our brains are flooded with this information. It crashes in from all directions. Drowning our thoughts. Carrying them away in the never ending deluge.

No, I am not suggesting that all information is bad. After all, from information comes the seeds of our ideas.

To give our thoughts the space and light they need to grow we need to stop trying to drink the flood of information. A healthy flow will nourish them. The flood will wash them away.

We need to give ourselves time without content. Take time away from information. Time to allow our own thoughts to flourish and grow into ideas.