Almost a year ago I visited Hong Kong for a week. Amazing, bustling place where East meets West, but people still seem to find time to relax during their busy day – for example, doing Tai Chi in the evening in the public gardens around the base of a high-rise building.
I bought an indoor garden water fountain in a ceramic jar in a district of Hong Kong (still near the centre) full of garden and plant shops, because it looked good and was a bit unusual. It sits in our kitchen and was largely ignored for a while. However I’ve now found an interesting way of using it to make some time at the start of a busy day to think and reflect. At breakfast, instead of rushing and watching the (mostly depressing) TV news, I put on the water feature instead of the TV and listen to its small fountain bubble away while I eat. It reminds me of Hong Kong and lets me think more calmly and put the day ahead in perspective.
Finding this thinking time is a challenge when we are bombarded in our professional working life these days with information, work requests, news, professional updates, advertising and promotion of all sorts by phone, email, IM, Facebook, LinkedIn, WhatsApp, Instagram and so on.
Don’t get me wrong I think these are all potentially valuable services and I use many of them, but they create a sort of continuous background roar which can make it difficult to navigate through the complex issues that arise in any working day.
And there are many ways to find strategic thinking time – once the need for it is consciously acknowledged – this article by Laura Vanderkam, the author of several time management and productivity books, suggests some ideas for busy people to do this.
It also does not have to be time spent alone. I recall one deadlocked negotiation in a central London hotel where the lawyers were at loggerheads and their clients in total disagreement. The chief executive of our client called a halt and took his opposite number for a half hour walk in Hyde Park. This change of scenery gave them time to calm down, consider the problem from a different angle – and come up with an innovative solution both sides were happy with – but which we would never have thought of in the heat of the negotiation battle.
Gary Kasparov the grand master sums it up nicely in the context of chess. The worst enemy of the strategist is the clock. Time trouble… Reduces us all to pure reflex and reaction, tactical play. Emotion and instinct cloud our strategic vision when there is no time for proper evaluation.
I bought an indoor garden water fountain in a ceramic jar in a district of Hong Kong (still near the centre) full of garden and plant shops, because it looked good and was a bit unusual. It sits in our kitchen and was largely ignored for a while. However I’ve now found an interesting way of using it to make some time at the start of a busy day to think and reflect. At breakfast, instead of rushing and watching the (mostly depressing) TV news, I put on the water feature instead of the TV and listen to its small fountain bubble away while I eat. It reminds me of Hong Kong and lets me think more calmly and put the day ahead in perspective.
Finding this thinking time is a challenge when we are bombarded in our professional working life these days with information, work requests, news, professional updates, advertising and promotion of all sorts by phone, email, IM, Facebook, LinkedIn, WhatsApp, Instagram and so on.
Don’t get me wrong I think these are all potentially valuable services and I use many of them, but they create a sort of continuous background roar which can make it difficult to navigate through the complex issues that arise in any working day.
And there are many ways to find strategic thinking time – once the need for it is consciously acknowledged – this article by Laura Vanderkam, the author of several time management and productivity books, suggests some ideas for busy people to do this.
It also does not have to be time spent alone. I recall one deadlocked negotiation in a central London hotel where the lawyers were at loggerheads and their clients in total disagreement. The chief executive of our client called a halt and took his opposite number for a half hour walk in Hyde Park. This change of scenery gave them time to calm down, consider the problem from a different angle – and come up with an innovative solution both sides were happy with – but which we would never have thought of in the heat of the negotiation battle.
Gary Kasparov the grand master sums it up nicely in the context of chess. The worst enemy of the strategist is the clock. Time trouble… Reduces us all to pure reflex and reaction, tactical play. Emotion and instinct cloud our strategic vision when there is no time for proper evaluation.
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