Funny how introverts are viewed from the outside. While he may appear to be doing “nothing” much of the time, those who aren’t of a research-oriented nature don’t realize that he obviously had a rich inner world, where his mind was always questioning, experimenting, hypothesizing.
People who pretend to be busying themselves with (over-)scheduled calendars are often the ones who don’t accomplish much, but those like Darwin who are curious and pondersome are constantly working out problems in their head, which to the casual observer doesn’t look like much.
EXACTLY !. My grand father, uncle and brother all write/wrote poetry. They, none of them, sat down at a desk and said “I am working now, here at my desk, this is me writing the poems, only here at the desk mind you”.
I can speak specifically about my brothers work, we spoke about it a lot when we were younger.
He would read a vast amount of things on the topic he was working on. He read other poems. He would go for long walks, thinking about the poems ideas. When he was doing things like cutting firewood, mowing lawns, fishing ? brain working at poem. Sometimes something he would encounter in the days tasks would kick off a train of thought on a new poem.
Five will get you ten that Darwin was thinking through the next days work, every moment he was on his “loafing” walks.
