Yesterday, I spent 45 minutes in an art shop buying supplies for a project that doesn’t exist.

No particular reason. I was passing and felt like going in.

At school, I was made to feel that art wasn’t for me. I wasn’t good at it, so why bother? Looking at you, Mrs Hollow.

But yesterday, I spent 45 minutes happily wandering around, eventually emerging with an eclectic collection of pens, paper, stamps and the biggest marker pen I’ve ever seen.

None of it makes much sense. I have no particular project in mind and there's no obvious business case. But that’s the point. I’m going to make something. I just don’t know what yet.

I think it goes back to the stickers I recently created for my book, Humanizing Rules. They were intended to give other people permission to play and be creative.

Somewhere along the way, I seem to have given myself that permission too.

And it’s made me wonder how many things we don’t do because someone, decades ago, persuaded us they weren’t for us.

But this is all relevant to my work.

I bring ideas my clients won’t have on their own: different perspectives, energies and thoughts. And I get those by doing different things; activities without an obvious business rationale.

The art shop visit wasn’t separate from my work. It's an integral part of it.

Sometimes, I've come to realise, the most useful thing I can do for my work is make space for something that doesn’t look useful at all.