Just run.

I managed to drag my skinny arse out of bed this morning and go for a three mile run. I can’t seem to get cool again. It did give me time to think though, and that’s why I do it.

It’s so easy to get wrapped up in all of the little things that we think our lives consist of that it’s really good to just run them off. That’s my approach to it anyway. I do some of my best thinking whilst running (and also in the bath (yes, like Archimedes)). What I like to do is spend the first half mile just getting used to running, on the basis that twenty minutes before my body had been rolled up in a duvet dreaming of electric sheep, quicksand or forced marriages.

After that first half a mile I open my mind and I think about what I’m working on, whether that be a novel, script, song, my actual job. I’ve written entire chapters in my head doing this, it helps to be away from being able to do it if that helps, it gives me a chance to think the whole thing through, not just to jump into it like I tend to.

This morning I was thinking about a long-stalled project that I’ve been pondering on and off for over a year, I won’t say anymore than that because it may never evolve beyond being an idea I had whilst running. The important thing is that without a tool to hand I can just think, and it’s a nice break from everything else.

Go and do it now, just do a mile, you’ll be amazed how you snap out of thinking about running. You let your body do what it does, and get on with some thinking.