Creating White Space on Your Page

My habit is to overfill my schedule, brain, and physical spaces, leaving me exhausted. My parents would often warn me not to “burn the candle at both ends.” When I was a Director of Programs, I’d often forget to eat breakfast and lunch because I’d go go go all day, running on adrenaline. I’d pack my day full and then squeeze 10 more impromptu things in between the scheduled stuff.

I’ve spent many decades reinforcing this bad habit, and, like any habit, it’s hard to change. One way I’m changing it is making time in my days for what graphic designers call white space. This is the part of the page without text or images, the “breathing room” for your eyes. White space isn’t just space that happens to be unused—it has an important purpose in the success of a page’s layout. Put another way, it is a design element in itself, and not just the absence of other design elements.

I love listening to Alan Watts discuss nothing. I’ve listened to this more than 30 times in the last few years as I’ve tried to create more space in my life. I feel centered, connected, and focused when I listen to it. If we pack our lives so full of distractions and clutter that there’s no time to stretch, pause, relax, daydream, and rest, we are not allowing ourselves space to put focus on what is most important to us. This is the philosophy of my business. It’s all about creating time and space to reflect, learn, dream, connect, and create.

Last winter I was facilitating a workshop on the Seven Levels of Effectiveness, and a participant remarked that it’s so critical to be in spaces like the workshop to reflect, learn, and connect with others. I shared that I was writing an article about exactly that: creating space. I decided to experiment a bit, and I asked the participants to observe five minutes of silence while on a break. Get something to drink or eat, stretch, use the restroom. I asked them to just be present to their thoughts and emotions, to be in their “observer mind.” When we came back from break, I asked them what it was like to hold silence for five minutes. It was liberating and powerful. The silence became an element which enabled the objects in it to exist at all.

In graphic design, the balance between positive and negative (white) space is crucial. If there’s too much white space, the page won’t feel complete. The doing, the accomplishing, the tasks completed and tasks ahead—these are important parts of your days. But creating white space allows us to be present to what is. In this space, we set our intentions for who we want to be so we can do and have what our hearts desire. In this space, we can honor what our values call us to create. In this space, we create safe spaces for others to dream, wonder, observe, reflect, learn, try, fail, persevere.

Welcome. I’m delighted that you are here.