Interstices

Last weekend, I had one of those longer stays at an airport and was pleasantly surprised to get pretty far in a few books that I was reading. That reminded me of a chapter named The Interview from our English textbook in class 12¹. The interview was of Umberto Eco. The relevant piece is this:

Say you are coming over to my place. You are in an elevator and while you are coming up, I am waiting for you. This is an interstice, an empty space. I work in empty spaces.

I had a different perspective on these interstices. Little impotent chunks of time. I now feel focusing on the littleness of these chunks makes you ignore their innominateness which lowers expectations and constrains context–switches.

I wonder what it takes to simulate these chunks. Definitely not just any empty day since planning takes away the core idea. They are actually easier to get when you are on an externally maintained schedule. Keeping ample time margins before certain time-to-act mixed with a few coin tosses might help.