Long haul flights are my luxury by way of providing an
extended period of uninterrupted reading time. I have a 12-hour flight in a few
weeks and with it, the luxury of 12 hours continuous reading time, less a few
breaks for a nap and something to eat.
If I have a
passenger next to me eager for a chat, they will be disappointed.
For you, it
might be a visit to the day spa, coffee and cake, a fine bottle of wine or
theatre night.
Almost
certainly, a luxury we all crave and seldom achieve is “time to think”.
We lead busy
lives and not just those of us who carry significant work and business
responsibilities. Life itself has become more demanding as the activities available
to fill our leisure time and that of our children are forever increasing.
The variety
of distractions are also spiralling upwards; online, offline. Not that many
years ago our primary distraction was free to air Television, Now, an
increasing number of us rarely watch this outdated medium as streaming and on
demand viewing provides countless more options and absorbs an increasing amount
of our time.
Our
schedules are full, meetings, flights to catch, presentations to prepare,
school assignments to assist with, sporting commitments, ballet, book club, gym
class, social events, business functions and more fill our diaries.
A common
factor among those most creative, imaginative and innovative is allowing
themselves time to think, to day dream.
Steve Jobs
dreamed of mobile computing and connectivity via a wider application for the
humble cell phone.
Einstein
imagined surfing a light wave when contemplating “relativity”.
Charles
Darwin had a “thinking path” he would walk down. Literally.
Fiona Kerr
of the University of Adelaide said:
“Daydreaming allows the mind to wander. The
outcome is consistently more productive when dealing with complex problems or
coming up with creative solutions and ideas”.
Sounds like
a powerful and valuable activity, doesn’t it?
If time to think
is something we crave and need, should it be scheduled in our diary? If it is important, why is so much else
prioritised ahead of time to think, imagine and day dream?
To para
phrase comments by Zat Rana, contributor to designluck.com:
Thinking is not valued by a culture that
mostly fetishizes measurable outputs like hours worked and reports produced.
No doubt you
have an important engagement this week, it might be a specific business meeting or a
parent/teacher event. It is scheduled and is a not negotiable priority.
Try
scheduling an hour of thinking time in your week for each of the next four
weeks, and prioritise it as important and not to be overridden.
Remove yourself
from all electronic distractions. Leave your phone elsewhere, no screens and no
music or radio of any type.
All you have
is you, a notebook (paper based notebook) and a pen.
Relax and
let your mind wander. Record what comes to mind, if you want to.
Put some
questions in to your consciousness and let your sub conscious work on then.
It may be a
specific work issue or it may be more introspective such as if you are engaged
in your life or rolling in aimless motion, or perhaps what opportunities are you
procrastinating over and why?
It is hard,
particularly at first, very, very hard. Like everything worth while, it takes practice. We struggle to slow ourselves down.
However, if you schedule and execute an hour thinking time each week for 4
consecutive weeks, chances are you will want to make it a weekly habit and even
increase the time allocated.
What have
you got to lose?
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