When was the last time you rowed on a lake at night and gazed at the stars?

Einstein understood something many leaders forget: insight rarely arrives when we are busiest.

It arrives in the spaces between.

As I shared last time, Regina and I have recently walked the final 81 kilometres of the Camino de Santiago over four days. Thousands of steps. Long conversations. Silence too.

No endless notifications. No Teams meetings. No social media positing!

Just walking.

And somewhere along the way, something subtle happened.

The noise reduced.

Ideas surfaced.

Questions that had been sitting unresolved for months suddenly felt less complicated.

For many, the Camino is a religious pilgrimage. For others, it is exercise, adventure, community, or healing.

What struck me was that perhaps it is really something else:

A deliberate vacuum.

And vacuums matter because creative thinking needs space.

As I highlight in my talks and to businesses i advise to, searches for critical thinking outnumber searches for creative thinking by around six to one. Yet in turbulent, unpredictable environments - the kind many organisations now operate in - creative thinking is often the scarcer resource.

Boards search for clarity.
Leadership teams ask for direction.
Founders seek confidence in the decisions they are making.

But these rarely emerge from constant activity.

They emerge when we create enough distance to see differently.

That is why nature matters.

Why long walks matter.

Why rowing onto a lake at night matters.

And why perhaps we are seeing so many people searching for renewed purpose, both professionally and personally.

The Lighthouse was built around three ideas:

Clarity. Compass. Courage.

But perhaps there is a quiet fourth force behind them:

The creative space required to discover them.

So here is my question:

What are you doing to create the vacuum that better thinking requires?

Best,

Peter