The Fishing Line Technique - Noisli

When you try to come up with new ideas, you first need to spend some proper time pondering over the problem. And once you’re onto something, it’s like when you got some tension on that fishing line! Now it’s all about holding this tension for as long as needed to transform that first glimpse of an idea into something more concrete – which in our fishing example equals bringing the fish to the shore.

If at that very moment, when the idea is finally materializing, you get distracted by something, your tension on the line is lost and the idea might be gone forever.

Whenever you’re trying to come up with a new idea, trying to work out a solution to something or doing any creative work in general, make sure beforehand that nothing will disturb you.

This means basically doing three main things:

• Allocate proper time for thinking and doing some deep work, and let others know that you won’t be available during this time.
• Retreat to a space where you can be undisturbed for as long as needed and tune out any potential distraction with background sounds.
• Make sure every possible notification is turned off.