I’m off the grid this week, holed up in an adorable little cabin in Martinborough, finishing up my second book, From Action to Impact: The Strategic Leader's Guide to Doing Good Sh*t. I’ve worked on this book for months, but working in the cracks only gets me so far. For the final push, I needed uninterrupted time, a change in location, and the headspace that comes with that.
“It’s only by concentrating, sticking to the question, being patient, letting all the parts of my mind come into play, that I arrive at an original idea. By giving my brain a chance to make associations, draw connections, take me by surprise” - William Deresiewicz
Our daily lives are designed to make it hard to focus. This is why strategic offsites are so popular. Big-picture thinking requires time, headspace, and physical space to generate insight and perspective.
Even more than this, it requires a pattern interruption to provoke us into a different headspace or tap a different part of our brain to make connections between the things we didn't see before.
Expecting to do important, different work within the same constraints, environments, and attitudes that we do everything else in doesn't make logical sense—that's not how we're wired.
The flashbulb moments that change how you think about a problem, while they can’t be manufactured, can be nurtured by the right conditions. That’s often travel – I have my best ideas on a plane. J.K. Rowling is said to have drafted the first Harry Potter book on a four-hour train ride.
We know this, yet when we ask people how much time they spend thinking, the results are disappointing. Warren Buffet might manage a regular Think Week, but most of us don’t. On average, 70% of leaders spend less than one day a month on the big picture, and 85% of leadership teams spend less than an hour per month discussing strategy.
It’s not enough. Expecting to do important, different work inside the same constraints, environments, and attitudes is a fool's game. If you want insights that matter, you need the space to make it happen. Otherwise, you’ll keep doing the same old stuff. And who wants that?
Are you making the space for thinking?
Where do you have your best ideas?
Alicia McKay