The Power of Critical Thinking Time
Author: Scott Hallman
What we see so often with clients is that they’re working so much and they’re so busy in their businesses, especially working with hyper-growth businesses as we do, or successful entrepreneurial businesses that are growing like crazy, right? That’s positive. The negative is they get busy, They get wrapped up in busy work. I’m not saying they don’t do some strategic work as well or they wouldn’t be where they’re at, but don’t we all tend to get on that hamster wheel once in a while? It’s important to get away and take time for strategic thinking, to allow our brains to clear so we can really think about where we want to take the business.
The business doesn’t take us where it wants to go. Does that make sense?
What I find with all of our clients that come to us initially is they simply have a heck of a time carving out time to think, time to really think about the business. Think about the future. Think about their strategic positioning. Think about what they want to do with their sales funnel. Think about building a world class culture, what that really entails. Thinking about how they’re going to make a difference in the community. Thinking about how they’re going to take their business to the next level. Thinking about how they may need to pivot their business because they are looking ahead and they’re seeing the industry is going to change, and they want to take advantage of that change before it even happens.
So time to think is really critical. Do you take time to think? You carve out time to think. What I have found is that this isn’t the don’t schedule thinking time. It’s don’t take thinking time. So if you’re an entrepreneur, the tip today is real simple. Carve out some thinking time. Now what does that mean? Well, first of all, we are all the most alert, the most unstacked up if you will, in our brains in the morning. Study after study after study shows that the morning is when you’re the freshest. Your brain is not cluttered with all the to do’s you have to do and your employees coming in and sharing with you various different things in meetings and all of the turmoil we have in a business. Even if it’s positive, it’s a bit chaotic, right?
You need to be able to schedule it. So begin thinking about how you can block out times of a few hours where you’re going to focus intensely for an hour, take a 10 minute break, and then focus again for another hour. How can you carve that out two times a week? This is critical for you to have critical thinking time. Pick a topic and stay laser beam focus on that. By the way, no Facebook, no email, no texts. This is carve out time.
If you’re in an office when you’re doing this, which is tough, then you need to make sure all of your employees know this is the boss’s or the leader’s timeout. This is good for everybody. I’m not to be interrupted unless the building is burning down, right? What I find as a general rule of thumb is you’re better to go somewhere else, whether it’s your home or elsewhere, and to carve out time to be able to do this where you’re away from distractions. Again, I’m not joking. I watch businesses, I watch people and gosh, young kids now, it’s all these interruptions. You can’t think when you have that.
My friend Dave Crenshaw wrote a book years ago called The Myth of Multitasking and he runs businesses and people through the exercises to show you cannot mentally multitask. In other words, you can’t be focusing on something that’s important, especially critical thinking, and be interrupted even for a moment. It sets you back dramatically. Some say that if you have a 10 minute interruption, it can take you an hour to get back to where you were in anything that is critical thinking. So avoid the time vampires, if you will, and really set this time apart. And if you do this, stay focused on how many topics? One. One thing you’re going to focus on to get done and really get deep on. The bottom line is it takes us all time to kind of get immersed into something that’s that important and take time to do that.
It might be a marketing campaign. It might mean a new product idea that you have. It could be the video that you want to be able to do. It could be really evaluating and time to go onto the competitors’ websites and see what they’re doing and see what you can gleam out of what they’re doing that could be applicable to you to give your team, to be able to work on. You know it, not me. I don’t know what it is for your particular business, but take time for critical thinking. If you don’t do this now, which 98% of the businesses don’t, and certainly entrepreneurial businesses, this will be a game changer for you and your company. Carve out the time, schedule it. Literally schedule it first thing in the morning when you are bright. You can do it after you do your morning ritual of course, but carve it out and begin to do it.
If two hours is just too much at a time, start with an hour. You need at least an hour, 50 minutes of solid brain time to be able to make any progress and that you can pluck away and go on to the next one. Just a quick lesson, and by the way, the reason that I shared this lesson today is because I fall into the same trap as maybe you do. I find myself slipping off. I find I get sidetracked into some busy-ness that takes me away from my critical thinking and I don’t want that to happen to you. So let’s together set a goal today that we’re going to carve out some critical thinking. We’re going to stay with that and we’re going to take our businesses to the next level.
To your success,
Scott
