Productivity guilt, anxiety, or shame is a common companion in the absorb phase because we live in a society that favors the squeeze—the busy, the doing, the having-something-to-show. We’ve put activity on a pedestal, when thinking is just as important. We typically label absorbing as procrastination, but as we might remember from Miranda July’s bank metaphor, it’s often that we simply need to accrue more time. Often we don’t allow ourselves the time to think because it doesn’t count as work, either by our own or by society’s definition. But the best ideas don’t come from frantic activity;
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