Wandering isn’t always wasting. Sometimes it’s research.

Time with no visible product looks like waste because you have been taught to measure a day by what it produced. Much of what you will later call taste gets assembled in unaccounted hours. You read the thing nobody assigned, you take the long way home, you poke at an idea for no reason. None of it has a deliverable, and all of it is gathering material.

Leave one block this week unplanned on purpose and do not apologize for it. Afterwards, write down the one thing you noticed. That note is the receipt.