For many, taking an entire year off may not be practical. But there are less extreme ways to work big-think time off into any schedule. Sagmeister draws a parallel between his “seven-year itch” sabbatical and Google’s famous “20% time,” when engineers can work on whatever they want. Bill Gates took a twice-yearly “Think Week” to read technical papers. His successor, Ray Ozzie, takes time off not to read but to “dream” — and comes back to the office filled with new ideas.

While creative retreats aren’t exactly idle time, Sagmeister’s talk reminded me of one of my favorite essays of all time, published in a 2004 issue of Harper’s. Entitled “Quitting the Paint Factory,” its author Mark Slouka makes a case against constant busyness (and business). He writes:

Idleness is not just a psychological necessity, req­uisite to the construction of a complete human being; it constitutes as well a kind of political space, a space as necessary to the workings of an actual democracy as, say, a free press. How does it do this? By allowing us time to figure out who we are, and what we believe; by allowing us time to consider what is unjust, and what we might do about it. By giving the inner life (in whose precincts we are most ourselves) its due. Which is precisely what makes idle­ness dangerous. All manner of things can grow out of that fallow soil. Not for nothing did our mothers grow suspicious when we had “too much time on our hands.” They knew we might be up to something. And not for nothing did we whisper to each other, when we were up to something, “Quick, look busy.”

Our current economy is precisely the time to encourage creativity in all walks of life. How do you increase market share and keep your current customers happy in a time of shrinking budgets and increased competition for a smaller pie? Definitely not by implementing the same policies that work for you in a bull market. Ingenuity from upper to entry level management needs to be encouraged and cultivated to place any business in a salient position going forward.