John Cleese, the great British comedian and one of the original creators of Monty Python’s Flying Circus, has had a successful second career as a creative coach to business leaders. A few years ago, while watching one of Cleese’s creativity talks,34 I was struck by his insistence that any creative person who wants to actually create must regularly escape to what Cleese called a “tortoise enclosure”—a quiet, secure place where one can be alone with one’s imagination. Cleese advised going into that shell for a designated period of time—and, he said, “you mustn’t come out until the time’s up.”
A place where there is no contact with the outside world. A place where you can be with your own self and just do or try to find out what it is that you love the most. A place where you can be distraction free.
