Phew. I’m not alone.

A recent column in New York Times by Lisa Belkin discusses the way in which many people have discovered their own personal creativity hotspots, or white spaces, where they are their most productive and most innovative.

Desks suffice for answering phones and filing forms, but when it comes to the creative or introspective aspects of a job, desks can be uninspiring at best, or formidable obstacles at worst.

So we leave those desks. Because we can. We take our laptops and seek shelter (and WiFi) either elsewhere in the building…or farther away in libraries and bookstores.

The term “white space” implies a place set apart, physically and mentally. It is not only used by graphic artists to describe the empty space in a layout, but also by time managers to explain the minutes frittered away between appointments on office calendars.

Since I started my job at Columbia University,

I have made a habit of spending one or two half-day periods not in my office, to get chunks of my work completed. Not that I don’t like my office–it’s beautiful, with a fantastic view of the Hudson River as the picture here shows–or my colleagues. But because a main responsibilty of my job is to write, I need hours and hours of uninterrupted time to work; something I can’t get in my office because of phone calls and visits. At the office, it’s easy to get pulled into the daily ‘fires’ that need putting out. And I’m the type that can’t postpone actions very well–even if they don’t need immediate attention. If I know about them, they gnaw at me and I gnaw back at them.

So, I tend to go to a jazzy little pastry shop in my hood. Good coffee, and more importantly, no wi-fi, which is a gift for times when I just need to concentrate (I’m always available by cell phone, however). If I need to keep my access to email, then the public library works just as well (sans espresso, alas).

The article ends with this snippet, which reminded me of my own work environment:

Dr. Huber [a professor at Purdue Uni] said his cafe offers something his office (a nice one with a window) cannot: the very fact that it is not the office.

That, in the end, might be the ultimate purpose of white space: The choosing, the control.

“I might work much of the day in a coffee shop, which sounds pretty cushy, but I also work 12 hours a day 6 days week,” Dr. Huber wrote in an e-mail message from the cafe. “If I am to work all the time, then work is no longer a means to an end, it is the end itself. So it had better be rewarding and it had better happen on my terms, not on anyone else’s.”

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