My usual writing spot is a 10-minute drive. But on Sunday, I walked.

An hour each way. No cell-phone. Nothing. Just me, my backpack and a path that wound across a bridge from Da Bronx to Manhattan, through the woods, along a river and through a park.

Walking instead of driving, I lost nearly two hours of writing, to-do-listing, emailing, social-media-izing, conference-calling, outlining, building, designing and whole bunch of other getting stuff done yadda yadda. That’s hardcore productive time. Gone. Poof.

Pretty damn stupid, right? I mean I”m a busy guy. No time to waste. A launch deadline this week, people to serve, a legacy to build.

Wrong.

Because in the mindful window opened during my walking, not only did I get my exercise in, not only did I drink in a stunningly gorgeous fall day, not only did I absorb myself in the meditation of life as it unfolded and ramped my cognitive abilities and mood…I stumbled upon two awakenings.

One, a realization about movement, stillness and clarity and a very cool visual demonstration. More on that in a future post/video. And, two, an innovative solution to a seemingly intractable business challenge I’ve been grappling with. Something that kicked off a cascade of secondary realizations that may well lead to not only a substantial shift in the way I am building my professional path, but also in the experiences, products and services I create for others.

Last week, I talked about the power of embracing The Thrash.

This week, it’s about The Space. The moments of “in-between” that we increasingly fill with tasks, often enabled by the near-impossible to escape umbrella of digital connectivity. All in the name of supposedly optimizing productivity. Getting stuff done.

Thing is…

Life’s not about getting stuff done, it’s about getting the right stuff done.

It doesn’t matter how productive you are if the ideas you’re building on don’t represent the best you have to offer.

And the best you have to offer rarely ever comes when you’re filling every nook and cranny of mind-space, every waking moment of every day.

Genius comes when you disconnect from tasks and reconnect to source. Click to tweet

Kill the space, kill the dream.

So, a question and a challenge:

1 – How can you build a deliberate digital pause into your day?

2 – Will you commit to doing this in writing, here in the comments, for the next 30 days?