Time To Think

Dave Pollard is musing about our lack of time to think: to think deeply …

Not only are too many of us becoming too unpracticed at thinking, I believe many of us no longer have the breadth of useful information, or the generalist experiences and competencies of our ancestors, or the diversity of experiences, or the introspective, meditative, peaceful, uneventful moments, or the unhurried and pensive conversations to draw on, all of which comprise the raw material that effective thinking depends on.

There are a couple of reasons why this post piqued my interest:

1. It calls for us (the royal we) to become more generalist. Now clearly here is a voice of reason!
2. I’ve also advocated for a long time, the move towards business models that are more open and cooperative and for organisations to treat their staff more like adults than angst-ridden teenagers (inspired by Ricardo Semler).
3. I’ve recently been implementing GTD (more on that later). There is some real synchronicity here. From my reading of the book, what David Allen advocates is a method for dealing with the ‘firefights’ and everyday issues SO that we DO have time to think. Is that not the whole point of GTD? From my own experience facilitating strategy and planning sessions, this bottom-up approach to planning is essential. You are never going to achieve the required level of introspective thinking or any productive thought unless the day-to-day is under some level of control.

I agree with Dave’s postulation that the solution lies in approaching management with a completely different mindset–one that empowers individuals to take responsibility, encourages them to act and most importantly, treats them like human beings.

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