How much time do you spend just thinking? Take a guess – how much during any given day, week or month? I’m don’t mean the kind of thinking you do while driving in your car, commuting on the train, during your morning run, or even in the shower. I’m referring to the kind of thinking you do ensconced in your office, or your den, or perhaps your garden. You are not reading a book or a magazine, nor watching TV, nor listening to music. You are simply thinking.
How much time do you spend doing that? Most of you will answer little to none. Many people consider spending time “just thinking” to be a luxury. After all, you have real problems – customers, employees, investors – all wanting some of your time, all wanting you to do something. And in our action driven society, we need to be doing something – much of the time we seem to be doing two or three things at once. But thinking?
It seems silly to rhetorically ask why this is so important. Thinking is the process by which companies and people create intellectual capital and knowledge. Thinking is the way we actively develop new ideas, rather than reacting to our...