March 30, 2026·3 min read·FREE ESSAY
The Practice that Led to Breakthroughs
From Aquinas to modern day CEOs
For Thomas Aquinas, writing the Summa Theologica (summary of theology), was no small feat (3,112 articles and over 1.8 million words).
The project was an attempt to bring together ideas from opposing worlds. It was a labor of reconciliation as F.C. Copleston described it.
"The labor of the Summa was the labor of reconciliation. Thomas had to read, digest, and comment upon almost the whole of the Aristotelian corpus, the works of the Fathers, and the writings of the Arab and Jewish philosophers. His 'hard work' was the relentless pursuit of unity in a world of intellectual fragments."
A History of Philosophy
The sheer difficulty of the task was not only reading diverse arguments, but also, absorbing and and synthesizing them in one book.
Information overload was a problem. Thomas had to find a way to find clarity from the different conflicting viewpoints.
However, Aquinas knew and embraced a practice that helped him handle the massive project.
After intensive study, he intentionally stepped away from his desk to engage in meditative walks along the cloisters of the Dominican convents. These were not ordinary walks but a practice of ruminatio.
Ruminatio (“chewing the cud”) as the practice was known in Latin, involved allowing the mind to wander as one examined or “chewed” different arguments all without the pressure of deadlines or immediate goals to be attained.
The goal was to contemplate on the ideas and view them from many angles.
Thomas discovered that when he allowed his mind unstructured time to wander, he could find clarity and identify links between different unrelated ideas.
The practice transcended into the modern world as author Steve Johnson considered it important to allow “slow hunches to crystallize into an idea.”
"The secret to innovation is not the 'Eureka' moment of a lone genius. It is the 'slow hunch.' These hunches need time to incubate, to collide with other ideas in a state of unstructured play. They need the mental equivalent of a coffee house or a long, aimless walk where the mind can drift across different disciplines without the pressure of a deadline."
Where Good Ideas Come From
Throughout history, we see so many examples of high achievers who intentionally carved out time to simply allow their minds to wander and this made all the difference.
Most recently, we had Jeff Weiner, former CEO of LinkedIn, who intentionally created a buffer time in his calendar.
For up-to 2 hours, Weiner had unstructured time where his calendar had an empty space. The sole goal of this white space was to allow him to wander.
During the sessions, he would gradually transition from “reactive” to “proactive” management, spotting shifts in industry that his company leveraged.
While he was LinkedIn CEO, Jeff scaled LinkedIn from 330 to 16,000 employees.
It was only through practices of mind wandering to identify links between ideas that such breakthroughs were possible, including the acquisition by Microsoft.
Today, the hustle culture demands that we are “always on”.
As a result, we feel guilty or anxious when we have an empty space in our calendars or when we have nothing scheduled in our workflows.
However, as Thomas Aquinas and Jeff Weiner showed us, sometimes, clarity comes when we intentionally create space to explore, think, and reflect with no goal in mind and without the pressure of a deadline.
What I find works for me is:
Prioritizing my core work (what moves the needle)
Setting up unstructured time in my calendar at the end of the day and
Creating an automation that reminds me to take a moment to just wander
