Having just returned last Sunday from a week of research and development with the Slunglow team, I’ve had time to reflect on how the week went for me in terms of productivity, efficiency, effectiveness, those sorts of things.
Winter Break
We stayed in St. Aygulf on the South Coast of France, the French Riviera, just down the road from Cannes and St. Tropez. The setting alone was inspiring. Each morning I was greeted with a view from the villa balcony of (mostly!) cloudless, blue skies and the Mediterranean sea not far away in the distance as I sipped my freshly percolated coffee.
As it was low season, most of the shops were still closed from the winter break. Whilst it was almost consistently sunny, it was pretty chilly in the shade so definitely not shorts-and-t-shirt weather.
Great Company
The company was great fun. Fourteen in total, just over half of us the core creative team of Slunglow; the rest were other-halves and friends, most of whom were also involved in some form or another in one of our four upcoming shows this year; others were along to catch up, making the stay yet more fun.
All of this was amazingly conducive to the creative process of continuing to research and develop our shows as our ideas were bounced around between us without the depressing distractions of cold, rainy, grey scenes of the wintry North of England.
No Wifi, No Phone
However, the most significant effect of this week for me was totally unexpected.
The villa had no internet, no free wi-fi. There was an internet cafe in the town but I never seemed to have the time to head down there. For the first time in a long time, I was completely cut off from the worldwide web. Although it niggled me slightly for a bit, I got used to the blissful ignorance of an email inbox unchecked, a tweet untwittered and news unread.
To add insult to injury, I also brought the wrong charger for my mobile phone, and realised this fact only when the battery was on its last legs on the first day there. So, off it went, to be checked only once a day for five minutes only, managing to last until the penultimate day before return. Again, somewhat niggled, but then that began, slowly but surely, be replaced by a feeling of calm and uninterrupted focus that was bizarrely effortless.
Lesson Learned
So, not only did the fantastic company, the scenery, the weather, the lack of shopping and the novelty of having to use my barely GCSE-level conversational French serve to distract from the frantic pace of everyday life back home and allow a brief moment of calm reflection and unwavering focus, but the bubble of zen that appeared around me as a result of a lack of internet and mobile phone access taught me a lot.
Sometimes, to get stuff done, you just have to turn the wifi off.