I know you are slammed. Your sched­ule is packed, your Inbox over­flow­ing and the big project is due tomor­row. And I want to add one more thing to your sched­ule — time to just focus in and think.

Focused think­ing is a for­eign con­cept for too many pro­fes­sion­als today, and I want to encour­age you to make it a daily non-negotiable dis­ci­pline. Most of the time, we have the answers to our ques­tions and the solu­tions to our prob­lems, but we strug­gle to find them because we just don’t have the time to think about them.

Here are four tips to improve your think­ing.

1. Find your think­ing spot. I have two chairs in my home that are great for this. For longer times of think­ing, I enjoy a get­away place at the coast. Thank you John Maxwell for this tip in your great book, Think­ing for a Change.
2. Force your­self to think about just ONE issue. It could be a meet­ing, a chal­lenge, an oppor­tu­nity or a project. Keep­ing a notepad or recorder close by is help­ful. If you get thoughts that are off topic, write them down or record them and focus in again on the ONE issue.
3. Jour­nal what you came up with. You can do this either dur­ing or after you’re done with your Think­ing Time. Cap­ture the new thoughts, ideas, pos­si­bil­i­ties, ques­tions to be answered or solutions.
4. Share what you learned with whomever you need to in order to build momen­tum if appro­pri­ate. Does the solu­tion need the atten­tion of your sales man­ager? Does the chal­lenge need some think­ing from your CFO? Or does the idea need more of your think­ing time? If so, sched­ule that time.

The world is not slow­ing down. It has access to us every moment of every day. At our Exec­u­tive Coach­ing Com­pany, Build­ing Cham­pi­ons, we call this think­ing time On Time. Carv­ing out this incred­i­bly valu­able time is not easy, but it is so nec­es­sary if we are going to become the lead­ers we need to be in the years ahead.

Here’s to real­iz­ing that it’s time to think. Good Luck!

Related posts:

1. 7 Steps to Man­ag­ing Through Unex­pected Change

Tags: Disciplines, Leadership, Non-Negotiable, Time

This entry was posted on Friday, March 30th, 2012 at 7:59 am and is filed under Strategy and Planning. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.