Nothing dramatic, no sudden crisis — just a subtle, persistent sense that my workflows weren’t working, my environment wasn’t energizing me, and my space wasn’t matching anymore the way I work today.

At first, I shrugged it off. But the feeling didn’t go away. So I took a closer look — and realized that my home office had quietly turned into a museum of my professional past. The “exhibits” were familiar: shelves stacked with outdated travel guides, drawers stuffed with business cards, cabinets full of paper files and old creative project documents I hadn’t touched in years. All these things had once been indispensable. Now they were dead weight.

As I began clearing out these relics, my eyes wandered to the adjacent storage room — another space filled with items I hadn’t touched in years. That’s when I realized this wasn’t just about tidying up. It was a chance to rethink my workspace entirely. So I tore down the wall between that room and my office, enlarging the space. Now it houses a small library and doubles as a video recording area, designed to support both learning and content creation. The expanded space also gave me more wall surface — which I kept free for creative work — in bold, energizing Thinkergy orange and sunshine yellow, so that documents, maps, and sketches pop visually when I pin them up.

And that’s when it hit me: this wasn’t just about office furniture or dusty books. It was about something much bigger. It was about the need for leaders, especially creative leaders, to regularly shed the old so they can make space for what’s next.

From Paper to Pixels — and Beyond

When I began setting up this workspace roughly twenty years ago, my needs were completely different. I relied on printed city maps and Lonely Planet guides for travel, bulky dictionaries for translation, lexica for quick references, and stacks of paper documents for work.

Today, all of those are a tap away on my phone. Travel guides and maps are digital. Dictionaries update in real time online. Instead of keeping stacks of business cards, I now rely on LinkedIn — my living, self-updating address book where contacts keep their profiles current. Even my once-busy printer now collects dust while my Fujitsu scanner does most of the heavy lifting.

The paperless office my former banking mentor once fantasized about? It’s here. And with it, entire categories of office furniture and equipment have become irrelevant. Filing cabinets. Drawer units for storing documents. Paper clips and hole punchers once used daily now live in a drawer, rarely touched.

The Macro Shift: From the Fifth to the Sixth Wave

These little changes in my home office mirror something much larger: the transition from the second half of the Fifth Wave to the first half of the Sixth Wave of technological and economic development.

The Fifth Wave — powered by the internet and information and communication technologies — revolutionized how we work, connect, and create. But the Sixth Wave will be even more transformative and accelerated, driven by three spheres:

• Digital technologies (AI, automation, IoT, blockchain)
• Sustainable technologies (green energy, circular economy innovations)
• Human-centered technologies (health tech, personalized solutions, experiential design)

To thrive in the Sixth Wave, leaders can’t just add new tools on top of old systems. They need to actively let go of outdated practices, assumptions, and mindsets that no longer serve them. Just as I had to let go of furniture, tools, and processes that once felt essential, organizations need to shed the legacy baggage holding them back.

A Core Genius Journey Principle: Letting Go

In the Genius Journey, a crucial step to open the channels to peak creativity (the process of incubation) is the courage to let go of old ideas and preconceptions, the need to control things, and conscious striving — and to surrender to the timing of subconscious and superconscious creativity working their magic.

Letting go is not an act of loss or giving up, but one of faith, silence, and a deliberate clearing of mental space to invite new ideas and, ideally, a creative breakthrough. Letting go is a creative act.

It’s like pruning a tree so it can grow stronger. It’s removing noise so the signal can be heard clearly.

In my case, letting go of paper files, oversized desks, and redundant books wasn’t just about tidiness — it was about creating an environment that matched my current reality and future ambitions: a spacious creative studio right at my home. The same is true for leaders: if your workspace, workflows, and even your thinking are frozen in time, you’re not ready for what’s coming next.

Five Ways to Let Go and Level Up

Here’s how creative leaders can apply this principle:

1. Audit regularly – Every few years, take stock of your space, tools, processes, and assumptions. What is still useful? What is still needed, yet less frequently? What haven’t you touched in years?
2. Release without guilt – A tool’s past usefulness doesn’t justify its present existence. What can you sell, give away, or donate that isn’t of value to you anymore but might be for others? As the German novelist Hermann Hesse noted: “Some of us think holding on makes us strong, but sometimes it is letting go.”
3. Reinvest in adaptability – Choose flexible, movable, scalable solutions instead of rigid, one-size-fits-all systems. Invest in quality, functionality, and beauty — not in quantity. Less is more. As Bruce Lee put it: “It’s not the daily increase but daily decrease. Hack away at the unessential.”
4. Watch the signals – Your environment often reflects whether you’re evolving or stuck. Are you clinging to a past that no longer exists? Is your workspace cluttered with outdated items, or does it invite lightness, ease, and flow into your work and life?
5. Make space for the future – Physical and mental space is fuel for creativity. Emptiness invites your mind to play and fill the void with beautiful ideas and perhaps even creative breakthroughs. As the American author A.D. Posey noted: “Creativity requires space to breathe.”

Clearing the Path for the Sixth Wave

The Sixth Wave isn’t waiting for anyone to catch up. The leaders and organizations who will thrive are already making space — in their minds, their workspaces, and their strategic plans — for what’s coming next. As futurist Peter Diamandis noted in 2020: “In the next 10 years, every industry is going to be reinvented.”

Letting go isn’t about loss. It’s about readiness. It’s about recognizing when something that once served you is now holding you back. And it’s about trusting that what you clear away today makes room for the breakthroughs of tomorrow.

So, what’s gathering dust in your world — physically, mentally, digitally, or metaphorically? What could you let go of this month to level up your creativity and your readiness for the future?

In my next post, I’ll explore the creative magic that happens when you don’t just let go, but fully embrace the empty space that follows. That’s when the real breakthroughs begin.

• The powerful principle of letting go awaits you at the final Stop 11 of the Genius Journey, our creative leadership development method. Check out our Genius Journey Booklet and the Genius Journey website. 
• Creative leadership and the Genius Journey method are also discussed in Chapter 7 of my new book: Unleashing WOW: The Creative Leader’s Guide to Breakthrough Innovation.
• Care to experience the transformational power of the Genius Journey for real? Travel the Genius Journey yourself in one of our training programs. Contact us to design the perfect Genius Journey format tailored to your team's and company's needs, time, and budget.

© Dr. Detlef Reis 2025. In the coming weeks, the article will be co-published in the Bangkok Post.