"And then I have a secret. Did you know what will happen if you eliminate the empty spaces from the universe, eliminate the empty spaces in all the atoms? The universe will become as big as my fist...Similarly, we have a lot of empty spaces in our lives. I call them interstices..I work in empty spaces"

Umberto Eco, Italian literary critic, novelist, semiotician talks of working in empty spaces when asked in a an interview about the secret to his astonishingly large and diverse writing output ranging over 5 novels and more than 40 works of non fiction and scholarly works. He goes on to explain the idea of working in empty spaces. "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. While waiting for your elevator to come up from the first to the third floor, I have already written an article! (Laughs)."

"Not everyone can do that of course..." The Interviewer Mukund Padmanabhan, goes on to say. My initial response to this was quite similar. But when i came to think about it, practically, reading and re-reading Eco's way of filling empty spaces, I realized it wasn't all that impractical. It was just a matter of becoming conscious of our thoughts.

If we look at our daily activity, apart from the work hours, time when we consciously let our mind relax by watching television, playing, talking etc, there are phases that are empty. These are moments we are accustomed to, time when we are not conscious of our thoughts and let our mind stray on its own whims. It could be what Eco talks of, fraction of moments like waiting for an elevator, jogging, taking a bath, driving, or taking an evening walk.Such moments aren't empty in the real sense of the word but that we are not aware of them. If we become conscious of these black holes in our life, we will never run short of time. If we monitor our thoughts closely, we can extract the best and utmost out of our life.

Let me share how it works for me, and how you can make it work for yourself. Try them out and feel the difference.

Find out your empty spaces: Where are the black holes? That's the question to ask to begin with. Watch out for such phases in your daily routine where you get into unconscious thinking. Our mind is accustomed to thinking, all the time. All we have to do is become conscious of it and direct it into constructive thinking.

Accustom your mind: Once you have discovered your empty spaces, you need to train and accustom your mind. If you begin utilizing your time in thinking about a particular hobby, about anything you recently read, heard of, something that triggered a thought, your mind gets into the idea generating stage.

Don't Let the thought die away: How often does it happen, that we come across something that triggers our senses, thoughts but the very next moment there is something else that captures our mind and in the process we let our thoughts die away. If you ever see though those Eureka moments when your mind gets into idea generating phase you will realize how much you lose when you don't get enough time to ponder on something you would have wanted to. You must remember them to ruminate over them later.

Become a Ruminant: Your empty spaces are the right moments to ruminate over ideas that triggered your thought process. Like a cud chewing animal bring them back to surface, delve into them, generate your own ideas, mindwrite articles. After a few deliberate attempts your mind gets into the frame of working in those empty spaces. Even Archimedes worked in empty spaces, it seems. When he discovered the physical law of fluid displacement Archimedes leapt out of the bath crying Eureka Eureka and without even bothering to get dressed ran home to try out his idea

Record before you Lose: That's the most important phase. We lose a lot of creative ideas because we think we'll remember and we don't. Record your thoughts when they have taken a desired form and make sure you record term right away. A thought left unrecorded is a thought lost because as soon as you come out of your own world, you will get engulfed into the daily routine and lose a part or whole of your thoughts and ideas.

Most of my poems, articles (this one included) are ruminations from such empty phases. So when I thought of sharing them with the world, I created a blog with Eco's quote as a title. For me most of the ideas come to life when I am eating, waiting, taking a bath. I am trying not extend the list because people have started calling me absent-minded and lost. So I'll end with a caution, choose your empty spaces with care.