In art schools, they explain that learning to paint is actually all about learning a new way to see - to see negative spaces, to discern the full color palette, to free your mind to see in new ways. However, trapped in your cubicle, it's hard to avoid getting into a visual rut, simply because you see the same thing every day, 365 days a year.

I'm an innovation consultant, and to help my clients get out of a rut, one of my innovation prescriptions is to create dynamically reconfigurable workspaces, and keep changing locations and improving team layouts. Another prescription is to build an innovation oasis for the company, where things are not so regimented - a free thinking zone. We often help build what we call “thinkspots” - special multi-function workrooms filled with innovation toolkits, brain toys, sounds of nature and falling water, and these cool networked digital whiteboards that help you free your mind.

However, the best way to get out of a rut is to take a proper vacation, long and deep enough to really recharge your batteries. I just got back from a “proper vacation” in sunny Thailand. It was an amazing trip, four weeks long, just like they do in Europe. I gotta tell you… two weeks in paradise is nowhere near enough time to renew yourself at your core. Our brethren in Western Europe have learned how to adjust their work schedules to mitigate the impact of 4 week vacations - half the company takes off July, the other half August.

In the Land of Smiles, I spent a week doing a detox, during which I dropped a dozen pounds and flushed out all sorts of toxins. Then I spent two weeks traveling with a dozen friends who joined me, all likeminded in our pursuit of renewal through a kind of inner pilgrimage. We not only visited Wats (i.e., Buddhist temples) for dharma talks, but lit Chinese lanterns for our New Years wishes, rode elephants and petted snakes, and went out drinking together, into a night life paradise so wild and robust that it puts Las Vegas to shame. The most deeply etched memories are those of two hour Thai massages that only cost $15 - accepted with gratitude and a deep bow, swimming in the ocean and drying off in the sun like a lazy cat, and delicious but simple dinners of barbequed fish, made in a local fashion.

In the muggy heat on a remote South Thailand island, I finally found the time to read a cheap novel - a remarkably satisfying murder mystery that had languished at my bedside for over two years. I finally found the time to relearn the tai chi set I'd mastered and forgotten; it all came back to m at once like an amnesiac's lost memory recovered. After my friends who could only do two weeks departed, all wishing they could stay another week, I spent my last week in a beach hut on a remote island beach, blissfully alone and with absolutely nothing to do.

And then something wonderful occurred – my brain finally reset, as if finally detoxing like the rest of my body. I suddenly found great creative energy, enough to pull out the laptop and in a single day, finish a rewrite for a screenplay that had been nagging me for over a year. After this, a flood of really new and fresh ideas emerged for improving a patent we filed while I was away, requiring a last minute rewrite of the application. And now that I’m home, I can see some persistent problems with a new perspective – generating new solutions that weren’t obvious when immersed in the soup of same old, same old.

The sad reality is that life in America, especially the high tech world, is profoundly exhausting. Very few of us can find the time to indulge in a truly effective vacation - one that renews, revitalizes and re- creates you… a true brain flush and mental detox, takes time and the courage to detach yourself from the phone, laptop and iPad.

So my sincere business advice to you is to give yourself four weeks to undergo both a physical and mental detox, to flush out not only your liver and small intestines, but your brain as well. Four weeks is just enough time to recover from the profound stress of modern life, and to begin wanting to come home again, filled with gratitude for your life and ready to get back again into the ring again and collaborate and innovate at a higher level.