Stepping away from the work isn’t avoidance: it’s processing. The brain doesn’t stop working when you stop looking at the screen. Some of the clearest structural insights arrive in the unfocused space between sessions, when the mind is doing something else entirely. Constant proximity to the work makes you stop seeing it. Distance is what lets you notice what’s actually there.
[[Better thinking over better note-taking]] gets its best inputs in exactly this space, not during the session but between them. [[Look for rabbit holes]] depends on the same condition: associative thinking requires a mind that isn’t locked to the current frame, and [[You don’t have to be the first with an opinion]] is the meeting-room version of this, a small deliberate pause before reacting.