#ThinkfullyHabit: Waste time
When was the last time you wasted time? When did you find the space to start thinking about something, not knowing what will come of it? From our research of UK workers, nearly a third of employees believe it to be a waste of time playing around with ideas if it's not clear where they will lead.
George Shultz, United States Secretary of State in the 1980s, was well known for taking one hour, once a week where he blocked everything out, shut his door and sat with a pen, paper and his thoughts. Only his wife or the President of the United States were allowed to interrupt him if urgent. Otherwise, the world could wait.
“You waste years by not being able to waste hours.”
WHY?
Establishing a 1 hour time discipline gives the brain the permission and the possibility to think bigger and more strategically; creating space for new ideas and new thinking. To be clear, this is not about finding time to daydream; which is more spontaneous and harder to plan for (daydreaming is best when left to occur organically within the pockets of unstructured time, the free spaces between tasks and during those activities where your mind naturally wants to wander - such as taking a shower, driving or going for a walk). Instead, what we are talking about here, is finding the time to step back, collect your thoughts and reflect on them.
For Shultz this was about setting 1 hour aside every Friday afternoon to reflect on the bigger problems and create fresh strategies. It was his hour of solitude. Business and behaviour writer Daniel Pink’s rallying cry is for us all to take a ‘Shultz hour’*, with no people, no meetings and no phones, in order to think more strategically and across the bigger picture.
The idea behind it is simple. There’s little point spending time collecting new information if you don’t leave enough time to actually make sense of it. It’s about finding the space to do some sense-making around the bigger problems or opportunities. It's a way to get to more meaningful ideas.
We may feel it’s more productive to use our time for more task based activities; however, in reality there may be no time to waste in finding the time to play around with ideas to see where they may lead.
What are you doing in an hour’s time?
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