At Grey New York, someone had the radical idea that to be creative, you need time to think creatively and not be at the mercy of relentless calendar invites. Our boss, Tor Myhren, agreed and instituted the Thursday Morning No-Meeting Zone from 9 a.m. to 12:00 p.m. This is officially sanctioned time for us to expand our minds and devote time to ideas that kept getting pushed to the side, using whatever methods worked for us. And not just for the writers and art directors. This was a never-before-seen, agency-wide missive. I thought it sounded great. But I had no idea that the mental expansion plan I dreamed up would turn out to be so painful.

My plan was to Force Myself to Learn About Something I Am Not Interested In. I figured instead of just diving deeper into my comfort zone,....