Good article, Steve, with a lot of interesting points. In my current job situation we're way too short staffed to be able to take much time off to do creative activities such as you describe. If we stop one thing, 3 others are behind it requiring immediate attention. However, it hasn't always been that way here. When I first joined we had more people and could take the time to experiment with ideas. In fact, our boss gave us an afternoon off, each week, to test something new or learn something different. That was really great and one of the best things I loved about working here. Almost everyone took advantage of it, although there was one lady who refused to spend any time learning anything new, but she was the exception. Man, I miss those days. A casualty of shrinking budgets and the recession.