The best way to leave London is backward. Not in regret, not in reluctance, but literally—get a seat that faces the opposite direction, sit down, and watch the city fade away in slow, cinematic reverse. I realised this while traveling to visit my friend Owen in Brighton. The train ride, which was just a bit over an hour, had a surprisingly profound effect on me. Since there were no charging spots and my phone was about to die, I was forced to notice something truly majestic.

The train advances, and meanwhile, from your seat, the world is unwinding. Buildings fall back into the distance, telephone poles lean away as if confiding secrets, trees bow their heads in polite farewell. It's as if time itself has loosened its grip, unspooling in numbered frames rather than the accustomed blur.

As daft as it sounds, this small action of declining to ride in the momentum of the train flips everything on its head. It changes the texture of movement, the manner in which the world reveals itself. Instead of pursuing the future, you see the past unfold, second by second, into memory. And in this reversal, there is a quiet revelation: sometimes in order to see clearly you need to stop rushing ahead and instead let the world come to you.

The Psychology of Slowness

There is science to this slowness. Research in cognitive psychology indicates that when we're moving quickly—physically or mentally—our brain filters out aggressively, sacrificing detail for efficiency. But when we slow down, we see movement differently (such as watching the world fall away instead of speeding by), we take in more. We see texture, pattern, and subtle changes in light.

If you're a visual thinker, this is magic. The slower you go, the more you notice. There's a reason designers enjoy long walks for inspiration: walking at a relaxed pace makes you pay attention to things, and paying attention to things makes you curious. John Maeda, in his book The Laws of Simplicity, writes:

‘The simplest way to achieve simplicity is through thoughtful reduction’

But let's be honest with ourselves, you cannot remove what you haven't actually seen. When you reflect on things, it sort of makes you stop for a moment and view the world not so much in terms of what's coming next, but on the basis of what you've experienced. And when you do that, you begin to see not only with your eyes, but with your mind.

Less Striving, More Seeing

Creativity happens in presence, not panic. Graphic design at its finest is a clarification of thought. A process of considered reduction, supported by a boundless curiosity. It's a matter of stripping away the irrelevant noise until all that remains is what's significant. But in order to accomplish that, you have to first allow yourself the time to truly discern what's important. When we slow down, we observe more, so have faith that good ideas arrive when you release your grip so tightly.

‘Don't rush the thing you want to last forever.’

With no distractions, and just the gentle white-noise of the train for company, the backward-facing seat I was sitting on struck me as a metaphor. Rather than always rushing forward into the next big thing, what if we slowed down and took in what's already happened? What if getting clear isn't so much about pushing through but just stopping and embracing the world arrange itself into something that actually does make sense?

The Art of Seeing Differently

There is something poetic about watching the city disappear and understanding that you are, in fact, moving ahead. When we design, we undertake a similar process. Drawing upon influences from the past, taking from memory, seeing old concepts in a new light. The best ideas typically come from revisiting with fresh eyes, from returning to old sketches, discarded inspirations, the margins where raw, unbridled creativity first started taking shape. Or as Margaret Atwood simply put it. ‘The waste paper basket is your friend’

But it isn’t just this sense of refreshing your vision. It’s a moment in forced reflection. A moment to create space. The iconic graphic designer, Paula Scher, once said, ‘You have to be in a state of play to design. If you’re not in a state of play you can’t make anything’

But play requires this space. It requires the luxury of observation, the willingness to sit and let the world unfold. Watching the landscape peel away from a backward train seat is its own form of play. An exercise in reframing, in seeing the ordinary as extraordinary.

Try it yourself. Take a train in reverse and confront the past. Watch the streets unwind, the skyline shrink, the suburbs stretch out into green. Let your mind wander over the rhythm of the rails, the soft blur of colour outside the window. Watch the world like a designer, like a thinker, like one who'll allow inspiration to come to them instead of chasing after it.

For sometimes, the best way to move forward is to sit still and look back.
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