Travel can be wasted time, but it can also be a fruit­ful ses­sion that is hid­den amidst an oth­er­wise dreary part of the day. Some use it for work, some use it to read or to lis­ten to music.  I like to use it to set aside the time to let my mind wan­der, pull out my trusty note­book, and dump my thoughts onto the page.

Let me tell you: noth­ing that you can use with a key­board, mouse, touch­screen or oth­er­wise will com­pare to the sheer cre­ative force of a pen and paper.

When­ever I’m feel­ing cre­ative, or when­ever I would like to be feel­ing cre­ative, noth­ing spurs me on like a crisp, blank page stretched out before me. Open a note­book, take a pen in your hand, and wait. When I see that yawn­ing expanse of empti­ness and know that I alone am expected to fill it, it flicks a switch in my mind. It some­how reaches inside me, draw­ing my cre­ative energy into my fin­gers, through my pen and out into the world.

If it all sounds too sim­ple, too easy—or even beau­ti­ful, somehow—then let me assure you that it is most cer­tainly not. When that inky wave of energy hits the page, hurl­ing itself against the white, narrow-ruled cliffs, it is noth­ing but flot­sam and jet­sam. All that lies before you is a tan­gle of half-formed ideas: themes that have yet to become a symphony.

But the themes are present.

Start with an idea, sketch it out, and begin to brain­storm. Don’t worry about struc­tures or links; get the frag­ments onto the page in whichever way you see fit. If you find your­self group­ing thoughts together, going back up the page to add new ideas, draw­ing lines or even scrib­bling things out, then go with it. Let your ideas flow, but don’t try to line them up too neatly. Elab­o­rate on the ini­tial thoughts when you can think of some­thing clever, but move on to new pas­tures if you can’t.

Before you know it, you’ll have a bur­geon­ing mess of ideas. Some will be good, some will not. Some will drive you from one page to the next. Some will prompt you to rush off on a tan­gent or push you in a direc­tion you hadn’t con­sid­ered. Oth­ers will stop dead and be left hang­ing in the air like an awk­ward silence. It doesn’t mat­ter: another thought will soon take their place and fill the page with easy­go­ing chatter.

Later on, the next time you sit down to work on some­thing seri­ously, you will find your­self fore­armed with a slew of thought-provoking prompts to help you out. You already have a way around the writ­ers’ block, a hint for when you run out of steam, or a gen­tle push towards your next great piece of work.

Pen and paper have helped me to achieve a great many things over the years. White­boards have done the same. With­out ink, I wouldn’t have thought up British­Bonus or Surely Not!, projects which ended up pay­ing for my degree. With­out a note­book, I wouldn’t have come up with the killer slo­gans and core mes­sages behind the War­wick Athe­ists soci­ety. With­out a white­board, I wouldn’t have passed any of my final year exams.

Get­ting offline and using our hands inspires some­thing pri­mal, some­thing cre­ative that has existed since we made our first tools and painted our first caves. Try it: you’ll be pleas­antly surprised.