A walk without earbuds is where your own thoughts finally get a turn.

Every gap has something in it now, which means the part of your head that sorts things out has nowhere left to work. Thinking happens in dead time, on a walk, in the shower, on the bus, and if there is audio in all of those slots the sorting simply does not get done. That is often why everything feels crowded without actually being busy.

Leave the earbuds out on one walk this week. The first ten minutes are boring and slightly uncomfortable. After that things start arriving, some of them answers to something you have been circling for a month.