A founder friend of mine recently showed me her calendar. Between investor calls and product sprints, she’s carved out a daily hour labeled simply: “Think.”

No agenda. No KPIs. Just unstructured white space that most of us, myself included, feel borderline guilty about.

She calls it her AGI insurance policy. Not because she’s meditating about AI futures, but because she’s noticed that in a world where AI can out-hustle any human on execution, the only ideas she has worth pursuing are the ones that emerge from true mental idleness — the odd connection, the naive question no bot has asked yet.

It’s counterintuitive, almost heretical for the productivity-obsessed. But as AI takes over the routines, the premium will land on thinking without prompt, wandering outside the obvious tracks. Blank space as strategic leverage.

I’m starting to wonder: maybe the new productivity flex isn’t how much you do, but how much untethered space you can protect for yourself to see what can’t be automated.