Find The Whitespace

Draw a dot in the middle of a whiteboard and ask your audience (students, colleagues, etc.) what they see.

Chances are you’ll get the obvious responses: a dot, a circle, a round mark. You might get something a little more abstract like a bug, a ball, or perhaps something more interpretive like opportunity or hope (…maybe).

The thing that most of the responses will have in common is that they’ll all have to do with the drawing itself.

What they’re not seeing is the giant sea of white space all around the drawing.

When we focus our attention on the wrong thing, we become tunnel visioned and bliind to what’s right in front of us even if it’s orders of magnitude greater in size and scope.

In what ways have you become blind to the white space, and what can you do to find it?