Ever notice how your best ideas come when you’re not trying to have them? In the shower. On a walk. Right as you’re drifting off to sleep.
This week, I found myself immersed in creator communities and workshops where everyone was hunting for the same thing: tactics, templates, AI prompts, shortcuts—anything promising quick results.
The subtext; “Please just tell me what works.”
And beneath those requests was something deeper.
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- A hunger for permission to slow down.
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- A need for space to think strategically.
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- A craving for what many call “whitespace.”
We’ve built an entire ecosystem and mythology around “Rise and Grind” without asking what we’re actually grinding toward.
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- We’re optimizing workflows without purpose.
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- We’re chasing followers without knowing why they matter.
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- We’re collecting dots, not connecting dots.
And it’s not entirely our fault.
We’re wired for immediate gratification.
The dopamine hit of new shortcuts, followers, hacks, prompts, templates, etc., is far more seductive than the slow burn of strategic thinking.
Because this kind of deep thinking feels, well…slow. Inconvenient. Unproductive.
But what if the most valuable thing you could do today isn’t adding another tool to your stack, but creating space to ask why you need those tools in the first place?
So this week’s Red Thread is about reclaiming the whitespace.
It’s a reminder to every creator, builder, and leader feeling burned out or stuck:
The thing you’re missing might not be another tool.
It might be the silence required to use the ones you already have.
This post is an excerpt from my Red Threads newsletter.
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