It's how you think not what you know
Did your school teacher ever say to you “you better remember your times tables because you won’t be carrying around a calculator in your pocket everyday”?
Now, of course, most of us permanently have access to a calculator with our smart phones within arms reach 24/7.
Knowledge is accessible to us like never before.
Thinking seems distant with the constant distraction in our life.
In the past a leader might have been someone who had the most knowledge on a topic, the most experience and had ‘done their time’. With access to information in an instant you don’t need to know everything, now, more than ever, it's about how you think.
Knowledge can be comfortable and it's a familiar process for us after being trained to do this at school and university.
Thinking requires effort. In our fast paced, click bait, instant access to information we have to consciously allocate time for thinking. Thinking takes courage, openness and can often be uncomfortable.
Being a thinker will get us ahead in the workplace of today.
It is time to embrace the discomfort of thinking time.
Get more thinking into your day
There are many world changing thinkers that we can draw inspiration from to build our thinking muscles. When we look into the lives of the great thinkers there is one striking thing in common - they have thinking as a routine and as a practice.
Thinking is a discipline. Thinking takes effort.
I have to force myself into thinking time.
As I write this it’s the early morning and my husband has taken our son out for a walk and I am forcing myself to think and to write. I am telling myself I better do it as I am not having time with my son so I need to make this thinking time worthwhile. This is often the only way I can do thinking - when I force myself to do it! After I get into I end up really enjoying it.
Strategies to get more thinking into your day
Schedule thinking time. Stop what you are doing right now, open up your diary and schedule a recurring thinking time meeting with yourself.
Create thinking as a habit in your day. You can even ‘habit stack’ it as described in Atomic Habits - add it to another habit you have in your day that you always do like cleaning your teeth, add five minutes of thinking at the end.
Add thinking time to a meal. Put the phone down and let your thoughts wander.
Go for a run or a walk and don't write notes. A good friend Aaron once told me that whatever thoughts that are left at the end of the run are the ones worth keeping.
Just do it for ‘5 minutes’. Usually this is enough for me to get really into and keep going for longer, it’s starting that is the hard part.