Lockdown was three years ago. No, really. How did that happen, right? I think everyone reading this can relate to the feeling that the world is speeding up, not slowing down.

For those of us in the creative industry, that can be both a blessing and a curse. Working fast is often a great way to create positive pressure and bring forth the best ideas. However, there are times when I need to step back and slow things down in order to get to my best thinking. As someone with a strong bias for action, it took me a long time to recognise how powerful slowing down could be in helping me get a breakthrough. Social entrepreneur and futurist, Roger Hamilton summed this up perfectly when he said “Sometimes you need to slow down to speed up”.

My go-to when I want to slow things down is to indulge in a spot of people watching. Not in a creepy way, I promise! I’ve always been fascinated by what makes people tick. There’s something I find incredibly relaxing and grounding in watching others. It takes me almost into a hypnotic trance where I’ll get lost in a reverie, and find myself making up stories about the strangers around me.

I was talking to an old friend recently about my obsession with people watching and she laugh and said that I’d always been a bit of a ‘flâneur’. Not knowing what it meant and unsure whether it was a compliment or an insult, I surreptitiously reached for my phone to Google it.

A flâneur is defined as ‘someone who walks around not doing anything in particular, but watching people and society’. A person who takes time to observe, explore, and appreciate their environment without a plan or goal.

And it got me thinking, taking more of a flâneur approach on a daily basis could be a powerful way to open up new possibilities. The unexpected encounters and observations have the power to inspire something unique or innovative - bringing forth different perspectives which will round out your thinking encouraging exploration, discovery and innovation.

By slowing down and being mindful of the world around you, watching and interacting with the people in it, you can create a more meaningful understanding of the environment and become more aware of the nuances of the world around you.

Whenever I need a breakthrough, I find switching it up useful - whether that’s something as simple as just getting up, physically walking away from the problem and going for a walk or to get a coffee. A change of scenery can do wonders to get me unstuck. However, if you can’t get away, there are of course plenty of tools and techniques you can use to flick on your flâneur - like the Lucky Cards. Based loosely on the book Go Luck Yourself, each pack contains 40 provocations designed to get your creative juices flowing and make it more likely for you to strike it lucky when developing ideas.

Brands too stand to benefit from taking a more flâneur approach. It’s an invaluable tool for Marketers to get a richer and deeper understanding of their audience and the spaces they inhabit. It’s a brilliant way for brands to gain a competitive edge by identifying and anticipating changes in your audience’s behaviour and preferences, resulting in more culturally resonant work. It’s a bit like being a super explorer - taking the time to absorb all the cool things around you and staying open and curious as to where it might take you.

With the world getting faster and there seem to be ever more demands on our time, it's becoming harder and harder to take a moment to appreciate the world around us. We find ourselves rushing to get things done, and in the process we start to gravitate towards the logical and lose the magical.

So get out there and go find the magic. Go forth and flâneur.