I’m going to tell you something you know but you haven’t really thought about: No matter how advanced you get in your career, you cannot get access to more time. Rich or poor, educated or not, seasoned or youthful, time is consistent for all of us. With this in mind, today’s post is about thinking about the limited time we have a little differently than usual.
A colleague recently asked me how we can get anything done when all we do is attend meetings and respond to emails. How do we do our own work? How do we find time to think and problem solve?
Her question made me realize that I often do my best work thinking at home—when I have time and space to reflect on situations. Ask my boss. I often go into his office in the mornings saying, “I had an epiphany last night…” and then I present my best ideas on a situation we had been struggling with for days or even weeks.
So how do we put this thinking time back into our workdays so that we can preserve our time away from work?
https://unsplash.com/@thoughtcatalog (Photo of a table with notebook, polaroids, coffee, glasses, books and a laptop)
My colleague and I are going to try an experiment. We’re going to start scheduling “thinking meetings” and holding each other accountable to them. But instead of meeting with each other, we’re going to meet with ourselves—away from our desks. We’re using the “meeting” structure in our calendars because meetings are respected in our office. This way others won’t book our time and we’ll have an allocated hour to think about our work independently, develop strategies for advancing our teams, and who knows what else! I’ll give you an update on how our experiment goes but in the meantime I think you should try out some kind of time allocation to just think. Tell me what works for you.