A Tall Order?
The year is more than half over! What do you have to show for it? This message is not about goal tracking but the vital practice of periodically investing time to think and generate ideas leading to difference-making actions.
The level of contemplation required cannot be accomplished when our minds are smothered with an avalanche of family, social, and work responsibilities compounded with the content delivered through our misnamed smartphones or Netflix binge. We must step aside and set aside the day’s distractions.
Compare it to halftime of an athletic contest. Play is suspended so the coaches can assess what has transpired and determine what they want to change. The game’s structure acknowledges that a proper assessment and course correction cannot occur during the urgency of the game’s action.
But you cannot pause your life like halftime in a game or in a movie where the characters are frozen except for one that can move around. While we cannot stop the world, we can remove ourselves from it.
How do you reconcile the need to pause with life’s relentless pace? You cannot make time; you must allocate the time you have. Initially, allocating time to reflect feels burdensome. However, when you learn the return far exceeds the time invested, pausing to think becomes necessary, and necessity overcomes the difficulty. Otherwise, you are the boss too busy to hire someone to do the work that keeps him too busy.
As a practical matter, you “make” time when you have a flat tire and are delayed getting to work by an hour. If you must accept it involuntarily, you can intentionally devote time to fruitful contemplation.
Part of removing yourself from the day’s responsibilities is removing yourself from your regular home or work environment. A corporate retreat location is unnecessary; go to a conference room, your backyard, a park, or any place you will not be interrupted by colleagues, tempted by a screen, or distracted by a pile of dirty dishes.
I’m here; What do I do?
A simple but accurate description I recently heard on a podcast was “daydreaming.” My business mentor told me just get away and think. My life coach recommended a personal board meeting with an agenda and fictional attendees like the “Council Meetings” in Napolean Hill’s legendary book, Think and Grow Rich.
Do not be preoccupied with structure; practice will determine what works for you. Start with one hour each month. If you need a prompt, consider how your activities align with your standards and values.
Do you need separate meetings for your personal and business lives? Yes, if they operate in silos without one affecting the other.
What Do I Get?
When your mind is separated from daily undertakings, it gravitates toward essential, big-picture matters, and great ideas percolate from those thoughts.
Your thinking may reveal you spend too much time (i) on low-yield tasks done out of habit (half of the newsletters you read have duplicate or insufficiently meaningful content), (ii) laboring alongside colleagues instead of coaching them to do it on their own, or (iii) contemplating past or unimportant issues that could be released (the equivalent of having too many windows open on your browser).
Oftentimes, thinking clarifies a need and provides the impetuous to implement a solution you already have.
“Sally” called me regarding a decision to add staff she had been considering for some time. Our discussion revealed that she had carefully accounted for every relevant factor. Without anything to add, I simply suggested she step back and think about her business. Ten days later, she informed me she was interviewing candidates. The catalyst? Quiet reflection generated the clarity needed to commit to the decision.
Thinking time awakens knowledge in your possession that leads to action returning multiples of the time invested. One minor observation eliminating ten minutes spent each week reading unnecessary newsletters saves 520 minutes annually – an 8.5X return on one hour of pondering.
Thinking time does not merely produce time-saving productivity hacks. The true virtue is reducing or eliminating detrimental conditions and promoting activities contributing to peace, joy, and accomplishment.
How can you resist thinking?
