How much time do you get a week to just think? Not while listening to music, driving your car or during group brainstorms. Not while playing video games, doing chores or taking a shower. Just you and your brain. I’d wager that few people ever average more than twenty unbroken minutes of thinking each week. Thinking without simultaneously multi-tasking between seven different things might as well be the eighth deadly sin for most people. It’s important to do things but it’s better to do something important. Thinking Versus Daydreaming: What’s the Difference? When you look at most people who spend all their day “thinking”, it’s easy to wonder how they get anything done. Useful thinking isn’t the same as wandering around, playing a personal movie inside your head. Constructive thinking is more difficult than daydreaming, which is probably why so few people bother to do it. In order to be useful, thinking needs to be: Creating a Thinking Hour One hour, once per week is all I suggest. The only conditions are that you can’t have any noise or other distractions, you need to record any ideas and you stay with it for an hour straight. Fifteen minute chunks with the television blaring and no recording device aren’t worth it. Why create a thinking hour? Everything from quality of life to work, relationships to health are all based on the quality of the ideas you have. Before you can take any action, you first need to think that action. Until you think it, that action doesn’t exist. It only makes sense that the results you experience eventually boil down to the thoughts you have. Creating a thinking hour gives you the ability to get outside the trees and see the entire forest. As the old saying goes, “when you’ve got a hammer, every problem looks like a nail.” Similarly, when you’re spending all week hammering away, you might not even think to pick up a screwdriver. I’ve used regular thinking hours for a few years and it can be amazing how easy problems can be solved if you just spend the time to look at them. Better yet, you can solve problems that haven’t yet become problems; scratch before you feel the itch. How to Set Up a Thinking Hour Here are a few ways you can go about setting up your thinking hour:
