Today I want to share with you a business growth strategy that might at first seem kind of lazy.
Well, it’s pretty simple. It’s just taking time every day out of your schedule to sit and quietly think.
Now, you might be saying, hey, I haven’t got time to do that. I’ve got a business to run, I can’t just sit around all day, about stuff.
Well, Warren Buffett, one of the world’s most successful investors allocates hours every day just to read, think, ponder, and write a few notes. So, if it’s good enough for him, it’s probably good enough for us, right?
Why does he do that? Well, he knows he doesn’t know everything. He needs to get new ideas, right?
We need to get clarity and when we’re rushing around every day running from here to there and looking after the business we don’t have a chance to actually get that clarity and that creativity.
Have you ever noticed that some of your best ideas come to you when you’re in the shower or doing the dishes or driving or out for a run? It’s because your mind is freed up. You haven’t got anything pressing on it, and your conscious mind can receive the ideas and the creativity that your sub-conscious mind is throwing to you.
So, taking time to think each day, write a few notes, wonder, ponder, gives you the ability to receive some of those ideas that are coming at you that you just can’t hear because you’re just so busy all the time.
What are some of the barriers to taking time to think every day?
Being over-committed is one. Not actually allocating the time in your calendar, and actually getting support from your team to leave you alone during that timeframe.
Here’s a few strategies:
- Block time to do your thinking for wherever you have the highest energy of the day.
Tell your team that you’re unavailable. You’re in a very important meeting, you’re just not available. Tell them not to knock on your door unless someone’s hurt or the building’s burning down. Just leave you alone. And it might take your team a few tries before they get it, so that’s okay, have a little patience.
2. Turn off all your notifications, turn off your phone and your email notifications. Just get rid of all your distractions find somewhere comfortable just to sit and think.
Take a notepad and a pen, and jot a few notes.
- What am I concerned about?
- What are my big picture issues?
- What do I need to be thinking about as I’m scaling up my company?
- What are some of the big things that are facing us today?
Just give 10 or 15 minutes of thought.
Jot a few notes. Just whatever comes to mind. Don’t filter it, just let it all out. You just never know what might come out.
And you know, it’s not just the thinking that you’re going to do in that moment, it’s the process of actually allowing. Allowing the ideas, allowing the creativity to land on you.
And you might find that later that day, you get the answer to the thing you were concerned about.
And it might seem unproductive at first, but the ideas that you get, the clarity that you’re going to get, the creativity that you achieve through taking some time to think each day, is what’s going to help you solve the problems that you’ve got in your business now and down the track as well and help you grow.
So, that’s it for this week and I hope and I think this will be a helpful one for you.
Let me know how you make out. Let me know some of the ideas that you come up with when you’re thinking about your business.
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