Why You Should Make Time for Deep Thinking

Leaders are busy people — responsible for managing, guiding, training, coaching, and supporting their teams to ensure alignment, growth, and success. That's not even mentioning their day-to-day individual responsibilities.

This busyness can leave leaders feeling like they have no time for deep thinking, even about their own work.

But you must find the time! Deep thinking elevates your leadership effectiveness, improves your problem-solving abilities, and helps you better handle the stressors of being a leader.?

Here are four ways you can make time for deep thinking that elevates your leadership and performance:

• Align Your Deep Thinking Time With Your Energy Peaks: No one can be at the top of their game 24 hours a day. As Daniel Pink wrote in “When,” people have peaks, troughs and recovery periods that affect their output and the type of work they can excel at. Take an Analytical (Blue) approach to identify your circadian rhythm and schedule deep thinking around that.?
• Schedule Time for Deep Thinking: What gets scheduled is what gets done. So be Practical (Green) about scheduling time for deep thinking.?Go a step further and make this block of time visible to your team.?Model this behavior so they feel safe doing so, too.
• Communicate Your Needs: Deep thinking is a reflective activity, but tell people about this effort, whether that's your team, peers, or a mentor. Be Relational (Red) by creating an understanding and supportive environment to motivate you — and minimize interruptions.
• Shift Your Mindset: Get Experimental (Yellow)! If you default to action, for example, you might discount deep thinking because it seems you’re just sitting there, doing nothing. Shifting your mindset to recast thinking time as a planned, energy-intensive activity can align with your thinking preferences while helping you understand deep thinking's value.

Your Whole Brain? Reading List

• How to Become an Adaptive Thinker
• Thriving in a VUCA World
• To Solve a Problem, First, You Have to Define It

[Webinar] What Teams Need as Work Shifts Back to the Office

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Key Takeaways

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Who Should Attend:

• CEOs, presidents, and managing partners seeking to support their teams’ transition back to the office
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About This Newsletter

Are you bringing your Whole Brain? to work?

We created this newsletter to help employees at all levels decode and harness their cognitive diversity through the Whole Brain? Thinking Model. Each issue highlights actionable tips for better understanding your thinking preferences — and other people’s preferences — so you can unlock better thinking, performance, and results in your flow of work.

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