We need white space to think blue thoughts.

Mr. Judkins spends his day moving around the agency’s offices, which are in a converted elementary school. The former gym, now filled with couches and tables, is a good place for creative thought, he said. The “rocket sculpture,” an abstract piece in a central hallway that has a bench inside it, is a favored spot when he doesn’t mind colleagues stopping to chat. There are hidden corners and crannies where no one can interrupt (best for writing).

What Mr. Judkins is doing is looking for “white space,” a term creeping into the language of work to describe a place where the actual work gets done. Desks suffice for answering phones and filing forms, but when it comes to the creative or introspective aspects of a job, desks can be uninspiring at best, or formidable obstacles at worst.

So we leave those desks. Because we can. We take our laptops and seek shelter (and WiFi) either elsewhere in the building, as Mr. Judkins does, or farther away in libraries and bookstores.

The term “white space” implies a place set apart, physically and mentally. It is not only used by graphic artists to describe the empty space in a layout, but also by time managers to explain the minutes frittered away between appointments on office calendars.

Andy Hines, who studies the future of work at the Washington office of Social Technologies, a global consulting firm, said white space is “what we are looking for when we have thinking to do.”