The idea of invisible work relates to my previous post of taking the time to get away from a problem in order to find a solution to it. Invisible work, however, is more about what goes on in your mind as you mull over the problem. I have heard it said that if you want to solve a problem right down your question about the problem. Your subconscious mind will begin working on it while you go about your business and it’s not long before you have a solution. Fascinating how your brain works.

People of a creative nature, often, need the time and space to do internal thinking work. Oh it may look like no progress is being made or maybe we’ve gone mad, but the reality is we’re just thinking. Check out this example from Mr. Henry Ford. This is from his own story found on Wikipedia. It goes as follows:

Henry had returned from that trip to Detroit with something on his mind. In reply to her (his wife’s) anxious inquiries he told her not to bother, he was all right a statement that had the usual effect of confirming her fears. She was sure something terrible had occurred, some overwhelming business catastrophe and Henry was keeping it from her.

From the kitchen window she saw him sitting idly on the horse-block in the middle of the forenoon, twisting a straw in his fingers and frowning intently at the side of the barn.

Sometimes after supper, instead of settling quietly down with his papers, he walked up and down, up and down, the sitting-room, with his hands behind his back and that same frown on his forehead. At last she could endure it no longer. She begged him to tell her the worst.

He replied, surprised, that it was a steam engine he couldn’t figure out the ratio of power to weight satisfactorily. The blame thing bothered him.

“Oh, is that all?” Mrs. Ford said indignantly. “Well, I wouldn’t bother about it if I were you. What does an old steam engine matter, anyhow? Come and sit down and forget about it.”

It was the one thing Ford could not do. His mind, once started on the project of building an engine to use on the farm, remained obstinately at work on the details. He spent weeks considering them one by one, thinking out adaptations, new devices, in an effort to overcome the difficulty.

Still he could not see how to construct a cheap engine which would pull across his soft fields, carry the necessary weight of water, and still develop enough free power to be useful.

He was still struggling with the problem three months after his trip to Detroit.

“I declare to goodness, I don’t know what’s got into you, Henry. You act like a man in a dream half the time,” the wife said, worried. “You aren’t coming down with a fever, are you?”

“I should say not!” Henry replied hastily, with visions of brewed snakeroot and wormwood. “I feel fine. Where’s the milk pail?”

He took it and his lantern and hurried out to the barn, but even while he sat on the three-legged stool, his practiced hands sending streams of warm milk foaming into the pail, his mind returned to that problem of the steam engine. He was sure a machine could be made to do the work of horses; he was confident that he could make it if he persisted long enough.

Interesting that thinking is really one of the keys that leads to innovation. Thinking and time. So next time your boss catches you staring off into space, tell him you are doing invisible work on the inside. Either that or point him to this story – that might go over better.