I was talking last week to a friend who runs his own (non-coaching) business about taking time to think. He was explaining that things were going really well but that he was so busy he never felt he gave enough time to thinking about the strategy.
We talked about how the brain tries to avoid thinking (see earlier posts / David Rock: "Your Brain at Work") and also about the often-suggested idea of setting aside just 10 minutes each morning for some quality thinking. He said he'd tried that, but once he'd set aside the 10 minutes he hadn't known what he should start thinking about.
Hearing him talk, I had the sudden realisation that the way we talk about thinking doesn't communicate very well what we should be doing to improve its quality. Because the most powerful thinking isn't with the conscious brain, it is with the unconscious. And, in fact, you have to quieten the conscious brain to allow yourself to hear the creative thinking your unconscious brain has been working on. There's a great chapter in the recent book ":59 seconds" by Richard Wiseman which describes an empirical experiment to demonstrate this.
So 10 minutes quality thinking is really about 10 minutes quality listening... to yourself. Sometimes a coach can help with that listening process, especially if they understand the power of simply paying attention (see Nancy Kline: "Time to Think"). But the individual can also do it themselves. All it takes is regular practice! It may be another reason why practices such as mindfulness mediation, yoga, Tai Chi etc are growing in popularity. These practices are adopted not just for health or spiritual development, they can also help you think better.
So that is my thought for the day: quality thinking time should be renamed quality self-listening time.
