When Nothing Is Happening, Everything Is Happening
A Leadership Apothecary on Preserving the Creative Space
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The escalator was already carrying us upward, but people rushed up the steps anyway, my young son Hadrian noticed, puzzled. His question lingered with me for days: Why hurry when you’re already being carried?
I thought of that moment often during the long, uncertain days of writing my dissertation, when progress felt invisible. We live in a world that teaches us to move faster even when movement is already happening — to run when we are already rising. It is the same restless urge that keeps us stepping forward on an escalator designed to lift us without effort, the same impatience that confuses motion with meaning.
Hadrian’s brilliant observation captured a deeper truth I was only just beginning to understand: sometimes the greatest wisdom is to allow ourselves to be carried, to trust the movement already underway, instead of striving endlessly to go faster.
I encountered a similar insight again when I was in Milan, attending the poetry opening night of Ida Trevi. Standing under the soft lights, she spoke of her writing process — how she had to fiercely preserve the creative space, to defend it against distractions and doubts. Without that protected space, she said, the poems could not emerge in their true form. Creation needed silence, room, and patience.
Creativity has its own pace. Leonardo da Vinci, who needed wide-open fields of time to wonder, observe, and invent, understood this. Michelangelo, different but no less brilliant, could deliver masterpieces swiftly under pressure. Both, however, knew that creative space had to be fiercely protected — whether it meant resisting the rush of patrons or the demands of courts.
Last year at the Kennedy Center, I was listening to Noseda Conducts Wagner: The Ring Without Words. There was a long stretch in the performance where it felt like not much was happening. The music quieted, slowed, almost emptied out. I found myself thinking: This feels like that gestational creative space I enter during dissertation writing — when it seems like nothing is moving, nothing is alive. And then, slowly, the music shifted. A blooming, an aliveness, a surge. Everything was happening. I sat there with tears in my eyes, realizing that even during the stillness, even when nothing appeared to be happening, something had been happening all along — unseen, gathering, preparing to break into life.In fact, it was the striking contrast between the deep stillness and the blooming that allowed me to recognize the breakthrough at all.
The creativity process often works this way. Growth isn’t always loud. Blooming doesn’t always announce itself. Sometimes the most important work happens beneath the surface, invisible but essential.
As leaders, as creators, our work is not always to speed up the escalator, but to honor the moments when life — and creativity — are already moving beneath the surface.
Preserving the creative space is an act of faith: faith that invisible work is still work; that not all progress is measured by visible steps.
When nothing seems to be happening, everything is happening.
The creative process has its own rhythm — seasons of blooming and seasons of quiet gestation. The slow, stuck, even uncomfortable moments are not mistakes; they are part of the necessary cycle that allows new birth to come through. True leadership recognizes this. True leadership holds the space open, even when the surface looks barren, trusting that unseen roots are growing deeper, gathering the strength to break into bloom.
Apothecary Practices for Preserving the Creative Space
Practice 1: Keep a "Dormant Days" Journal
On days when you feel like nothing is happening — no breakthroughs, no visible progress — take five minutes to write down what is quietly stirring beneath the surface.
What thoughts are brewing? What questions are alive inside you, even if they have no answers yet?
Trust that these invisible movements matter. Naming them in a journal gives form to the unseen work. Over time, you’ll notice patterns, growth, and seeds you didn’t even realize were taking root.
Practice 2: Create a Weekly Sacred Hour
Choose one hour each week that is completely protected for creative space — no meetings, no screens, no deadlines, no tasks.
You can sit in silence, write, sketch, walk, or simply daydream.
The purpose is not output. The purpose is space itself. Protect this hour like a sacred ritual. Over time, you’ll find that your best insights often emerge from these unhurried pockets of time.
In a world that measures success by speed and visibility, preserving the creative space can feel countercultural. But it is in this quiet, protected space that the real work — the lasting, meaningful work — is born.
When nothing seems to be happening, everything is happening. Trust it. Tend it. Lead with it.