If your job is making good decisions (which for most of you it is), thinking about work is work.

It might feel like time spent staring at a blank page without knowing what to write is not productive. It might feel like getting up from the laptop and taking a walk is procrastinating. But those are all parts of the process - maybe the most important part.

No one can sit down and turn on the idea machine every time. No one can always be in flow state

So you have to learn to give your brain the space it needs to sort out a problem. And you have to learn how to not beat yourself up when you need that space.

The more senior you get, the more this will be true. Your job will increasingly be about making a small number of very important decisions. These are not decisions you can just sit down and resolve on a reliable schedule.

So get comfortable with the messiness of the process.