The Tortoise Enclosure

A blurb in a newsletter I got this week caught my eye:

"Presentation advice from Monty Python's John Cleese: What can Monty Python teach you about being creative?"

I was feeling particularly overwhelmed and undercreative--and I'm a huge fan of John Cleese--so I clicked the link. It was to Garr Reynold's Presentation Zen blog, which has lots of good tips and advice on presentations.

The blog post contained a link to a 10-minute video of a presentation John Cleese gave on creativity. In the video, Cleese talked about creating a "tortoise enclosure" in order to let your creativity come out. In that enclosure, you create an oasis of boundaries of both space and time. Get rid of all distractions--computers, phones, everything. Because, as Cleese says, "We don't know where we get our ideas from. We do know that we do not get them from our laptops."

Reynolds ended his blog post with this image:

I like this quote, and it got me thinking. Back in college, I had my tortoise enclosures. Whenever I needed to do homework that required lots of thought and creativity--whether it was an essay for Brit Lit or my Differential Equations "opportunity set" (Sr. Ann Mason didn't call them "problems," she called them "opportunities")--I headed to the back corner of the library on the 2nd floor of the Academic Building when the weather was cold or wet, or to the grassy area near Wege Pond when it was warm or dry. While I didn't have a cell phone, I usually took my Walkman and a couple cassette tapes. I work better with background music.

Cleese's presentation made me realize that I don't have a tortoise enclosure in my professional life. I am interrupted frequently during my day by the phone, e-mail, coworkers, etc. Which, most of the time, is okay--I've learned techniques over the years that help minimize the effect of distractions. But there are times when I really need to not be interrupted so I can do some creative thinking, and I don't create the oasis of boundaries that I need.

So while it's a little early for New Year's Resolutions, I think mine is going to be to find my new tortoise enclosure. Closing my office door won't work--I don't have one in my cubicle. And the back corner of the library and Wege Pond are 6 hours away.

Where do you go to do your creative thinking? What advice do you have for creating a tortoise enclosure in an open office environment?