Studies have shown that particularly creative and anxious minds need a lot of space—or downtime—for what is called our Default Mode Network to make sense of things. “Deprived of it we suffer a mental affliction as disfiguring as rickets,” essayist Tim Kreider wrote in The New York Times. “[Space] is a necessary condition for standing back from life and seeing it whole, for making unexpected connections and waiting for the wild summer lightning strikes of inspiration.”
