The importance of margins
Take a minute and look over the layout of this page. Most importantly I want you to observe what’s on the sides of this text. Assuming you don’t have your browser zoomed in to 400% you should see blank space on either side of this text. At first glance this seems wasteful. We live in the information age and every day people are coming up with new ways to increase the density of information. That blank space on either side is called a margin and it serves an important purpose. With a margin you can remain focused solely on the content you are viewing and not be distracted by your environment. If the words started at the very edge of the screen and each line went as far to the other side as they could a couple of things would happen. First, you would burn through a lot of mental energy just trying to keep track of where you are in the text. Shorter lines allow the reader to remember the first word of the line so you can quickly identify the next line you are moving to. Second, the closer your eyes get to the edge of the screen (or a book) the more likely it is that something else in your environment is going to capture your attention.
Publishers of reading content understand the importance of margins in their content but margins are an important concept in many other facets of life.
Life can be busy. It is far too easy to wake up, go to work or school, come home, go to an appointment, make dinner, clean the house, and go to sleep exhausted. Then we get up the next day and repeat the cycle. This is what productive people do we tell ourselves and try to pack our days with more and more activities hoping that we will be fulfilled.
Unfortunately, humans don’t work that way. When our brain is engaged constantly throughout the entire day we miss out on a lot of the value our brains can provide when they aren’t forced into any particular activity. Our brains do their best thinking when they are allowed to wander. When not being explicitly directed, our brains take the time to process your experience and start to make sense of past events and come up with ideas for how the future could be better. Not only that but when we free our minds from directed activity we start to notice the world around us and maybe just realize that the world outside the four corners of our glowing entertainment devices is actually pretty interesting. The higher levels of brain function only occur when we aren’t forcing the brain into directing the normal, everyday activities.
As a software developer, I can confirm that my best thinking happens when my mind is not actively engaged in whatever I’m doing. I have solved countless problems while daydreaming in the shower, sitting on the couch, or riding my bike. It’s the margins of life that allow deep thinking to happen.
“A generation that cannot endure boredom will be a generation of little men, of men unduly divorced from the slow process of nature, of men in whom every vital impulse slowly withers as though they were cut flowers in a vase.” - Bertrand Russell