Sit Back and Think
March 2003
The Little Brown Book of Anecdotes credits the Wright Brothers with growing weary of explaining the principles of flight and telling curious onlookers that, “The airplane stays up because it doesn’t have the time to fall.”
This describes the business world today perfectly for me. I think it has been this way for a long time, and I also think it’s continuing to get worse in many areas. Our paradigms have been shifted a few too many times; we’ve been down-sized once too often; our management or environment has changed direction yet again and we find ourselves running twice as hard to fall farther behind. This makes it hard to have effective days at work. At least it does for me.
When we are struggling to keep our chins just a little below water, there isn’t a whole lot of time for strategic planning and big-picture thinking. But strategic planning and big-picture thinking are very, very important. You really cannot know what to do next if you don’t know where you’re going.
This month I challenge you to give me - give yourselves, actually -one hour a week. Just one hour. Establish a no-call, no-interrupt time for one hour each week. Depending on whether you are an early-bird or a night owl, it could be one hour at the beginning of the day, or one hour after everyone goes home, or any hour regularly set aside to absolutely shut your door and let the machine get it.
Spend that hour thinking or reading. Skim some of those trade magazines you’ve been meaning to get to, a management book you’ve had in the office for a few months now. Keep a notebook at your side while you do. Jot down any ideas, questions or resources that come to mind
You could use the time to make lists. Think about how you’d like all of tomorrow, or next week, to go. How would you schedule your time to best effect if you really could? Allocate a week’s worth of hours in a couple different ways and see how it looks. What makes for more efficient use of you and your time, your resources? You could streamline your car trips for efficiency of fuel and less driving time?
Grab a stack of papers. Go through it and file things. Do your level best to emulate the masters: when asked, large numbers of top executives only handled each piece of paper once. Even if you don’t have a full-time assistant at your beck and call, you can do the same thing. If there isn’t a file for it, make one. Where’s there’s one piece of paper, more are sure to follow. If you still have time in your hour, grab another stack. There are probably a few things in there that might end up in your little notebook of ideas as well.
Sit back, relax, and think about how you’d like things to be going in a year. Or a month. Or five years. What would people be saying about you if you succeeded in whatever success means to you? If you and your business/group/organization had a story printed about you in the Pulse next June, January, what would the headline be? Jot some things down. What steps would need to be taken? What kinds of things might you do to work towards those steps?
Doodle. Think about your next deadline and doodle. It helps the neurons in your brain absorb the other material better (most “right-brained” activities do) and lets the bright solutions come out as well. Whistle – although whistling is an activity I believe should always be limited to times and places when no one else is around. Put on NPR while you think. Tap dance.
The idea here is to relax while you’re letting the problem simmer. And when you’re doodling, the pen is already at hand for when the ideas or fragments come up, and you can just doodle them in.
Getting the picture? It really doesn’t matter which way you go about it, the goal is simply to spend one hour per week thinking about your bigger picture. It could be tomorrow’s bigger picture, or next year’s. But you have to make the time to see it. And when you spend this time, you will start to get a return. A day will go smoother for the planning. When a week is well-ordered, and all of your appointments are on two days, and the other three are in-office, suddenly there’s room for the emergency that pops up on Tuesday. And so on. Some days you even find yourself leaving on time!
This is how we build more time to think about larger issues and work on progressively larger and larger projects and ideas. You have to start somewhere, and just an hour a week can do it. Try it for a month. No phone calls - take them only if someone’s bleeding or something’s burning - and no interruptions. Be rigorous. It’s good business.
Because the next thing you know, it will be next June or January, and the article in the Pulse could be about you or your business. What do you want it to say? Think about it. For an hour a week.
Ramona Abbott helps businesses maximize their efficiency, effectiveness and group dynamics. She utilizes proven techniques that are fun and affordable to help you improve your workplace in a variety of ways. She welcomes inquiries at 360-398-2606 or ramona@EssentiallyProfessional.com
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