Interesting essay. Kind of distracting how every sentence is followed by two spaces, though.<p>Should listening to music necessarily be considered "consuming"? I go running all the time while listening to instrumentals, and it helps me concentrate.<p>I too have a significant portion of my epiphanies while running or biking, or just walking away from what I was doing, staring at the ceiling, and thinking it over. Gazing into a computer screen seems to promote the narrowing down of ideas rather than the conception of new ones (if that).<p>Also, has anyone else found showers extraordinarily easy to concentrate in? I'm not sure what it is (white noise?), but I often find that when I take a shower my stresses fade away and whatever problem I was having folds out with an obvious-in-hindsight solution. (I also take notoriously long showers, for this reason.) I really wish I could replicate this experience somewhere else; the only other time I've had it is occasionally when falling asleep (which also, incidentally, causes me to take much too long to fall asleep — not exactly an ideal combination).