Claiming the Negative Space

I'm not an artist.

As in drawing, painting, photography, or design.

But for some reason I have always loved the idea of negative space: That space around and between what’s on the canvas.

It’s the space needed to define the boundaries of the thing.

Rather than focus on the actual subjects in a piece of art, an artist might focus on what's between them. And this space can be as important as the objects themselves. You can guide the viewer’s eye with this space. 

Negative space can create atmosphere. It can create a sense of movement, openness, or tension.

Ever want to define the atmosphere in your life? 

Well, just like in art, in life, we need negative space to define the thing. 

There are a lot of subjects twirling and spinning around us. Sometimes, it seems as if there is barely any space to breathe.

If there’s no negative space at all, there can be no art.

If there’s no negative space in life, there can be no true life.

Just like an artist, we need to design the space around the things. We need that space to recover and renew from the work, activities, and demands.

My partner and I have excelled at building negative space into our calendar lately. We plan regular vacations one, two, even three years in advance. 

Instead of allowing noise to fill up all that negative space, we claim some of that time and room as ours. We go out-of-office in our calendars, and that time sits there patiently and blissfully waiting for us: Clear, open, and ready to be filled how we wish.

What negative space might you need to claim before it gets consumed? 

A friend who is 15 years older than me told me recently that it's been fun watching me grow. She first met me when I was 24. “Back then,” she said, “your work and life filled in first and then if you could, you squeezed something in around the edges. Now, you claim your vacation first and then you fit your work in between.” 

I loved that idea. 

It is a total mind shift. 

What if you saw your life like that? 

What would be different? 

It’s aligned with that idea of putting the big rocks in first. When placing objects into a glass jar, if you put the big rocks in first, there’s still tons of room for pebbles, smaller rocks, and then even sand and water. But if you select the big rocks that claim space, you will be that much closer to joy, and who you are, and what makes you “you.”

Perhaps you can’t take weeks off from work at a time. 

You have too many big rocks in your work at the moment. 

There are many kinds of negative space—this is not all about macro negative space. There’s micro negative space—small gaps within elements—the margins on the canvas or the small spaces between objects. 

For me, it’s taking that first hour or two of a day to do what I want to do—or building in that lunch with a friend or afternoon bike ride or time to pet the cat or making sure I spend time with family when I’m on the road. 

I block out a noontime “recess” as many days as I can—where I claim that hour to be with my partner if I’m home or eat lunch quietly by myself if I am on the road. 

Granted, I still work by far most of my weeks, and I can stress out because I have many back-to-back days of 10-12 hours of meetings, and months where I fly somewhere every single week. I, too, have months without much negative space in my calendar. 

But I have lots of micro moments of negative space. 

And with a balcony view of my calendar 12 months at a time, there's a lot of joy packed in there. 

You know that feeling when you have two weekend days with not much going on and you sit with the bliss of that unscheduledness? Or when you have the vastness of days on a staycation or vacation open up before you? 

That’s what it is like being with negative space.

It’s an expansive awesomeness.

My wish for you is to sink into more of it more often.

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