- Do you find yourself overwhelmed with the day-to-day grind that you don’t have time to think about the bigger picture? Do you feel your career is not progressing according to the amount of work you are putting in?
- Do the questions like “what is due tonight and this week” always take priority over “where is your career going”?
- Do you not have time to think about questions like “what is the team trying to accomplish in 12 months” because the current sprint is running behind and you gotta get that done at all costs?
- If that is the case, you might be hurting your career and life more (in the long-run) than you are helping by getting stuff done in the short run.
- Movement is not progress
- Progress requires a direction, a strategically defined long-term direction. If you don’t have a direction, you might make progress accidentally, but more likely than not, you have the risk of feeling empty in the future.
- Here is an exchange in Alice in Wonderland:
- Alice: Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?
- The Cheshire Cat: That depends a good deal on where you want to get to.
- Alice: I don’t much care where.
- The Cheshire Cat: Then it doesn’t much matter which way you go.
- If you are not trying to get anywhere, any path will get you there. And you won’t be very content when you end up there.
- Why don’t we spend time on strategy work and long-term thinking? Here are a few reasons that I have seen in my coaching practice, the reasons people tend to avoid deep strategic work.
- Lack of time. This is a surface-level issue. Just a symptom. Most likely not a real reason. We always have time (especially if we are talking about 5 minutes, or even 1 minute.) This issue turns out to be the issue about priorities, or difficulties, or other reasons below.
- Lack of clarity.
- “We are kept from our goal not by obstacles but by a clear path to a lesser goal.” — Robert Brault
- The clarity of what to do in the strategy work is usually not there. It is creative work, by definition. So, we keep doing what is clear. Clear work, like checking emails, responding to phone calls, and keep avoiding the messy work. Creative work.
- Long-term vs short-term rewards.
- Doing strategy work is (typically) not beneficial in the short-run. Responding to a few more emails makes us feel productive, and it actually is. If you were to spend some time on strategy work, it might very well be unproductive. But the usefulness of strategy work and long-range thinking builds over time.
- If you have faith in the process, trust many successful people who do strategy work each day, and each week, then it is easier to do this kind of work without seeing immediate rewards.
- Some ideas to spend more time on strategic thinking
- Ask a question from yourself — e.g., what are the team’s goals for the next one year, or what I would like to do in my career in the next 5 years, or some such question. And try not to answer it right away. Let the question simmer in your mind and heart over time.
- And look for any ideas that come up while in meetings, or talking to people.
- Our brain processes a small fraction (about 5%) of the raw sensory input from our environment. Whatever is considered not important is not processed. (See reticular activation system.) By having an intention or question (even without having any idea how it will be answered or even if it will be answered) is uncomfortable, but lets your brain seek information that might be relevant. If you have a conscious intention to start a business, your brain has a higher chance of paying attention to such an opportunity that might show up in daily conversations, for example.
- Start with a process goal, not an outcome goal. For example, spend 5 minutes of the first thing in the morning. Write a big question or problem on the top of a sheet of paper, and sit with it. And write down whatever comes to your mind.
- You might not come up with anything. It is okay. Just spend 5 minutes being unproductive. That is difficult to do but important for this process to work.
- Start with a short enough span of time that you can “afford to waste” in your mind. Be honest here. If you say you cannot afford to waste 5 minutes of your time on something that has a potentially high reward, dig deeper within yourself, and reflect if that is really the case. Is it really true? (See Katie Bryant’s four questions from her book The Work.)
- Keep a diary or piece of paper with you to write down your ideas/thoughts.
- I have a lot of ideas for writing blog articles throughout the day, but when I sit down to write, the blank page is scary! And in that “stressful moment”, I tend not to get any ideas.
- But I also keep a set of ideas in workflowy, and I also keep a paper sheet with a pen with me most of the time. I tend to write my ideas there, and it is quick and easy to refer to those ideas when I want to write.
- Give yourself the gift of ideas when you need them, by honoring ideas when you have time. Write them down!
- Ask a question from yourself — e.g., what are the team’s goals for the next one year, or what I would like to do in my career in the next 5 years, or some such question. And try not to answer it right away. Let the question simmer in your mind and heart over time.
- In his book Deep Work, Cal Newport outlines how difficult deep work can be, and how it has to be protected from seemingly productive but shallow work.
- Strategic thinking is deep work, and it is not going to be easy. It never really gets easy. It is a high effort, high reward business.
- The trick is to start small so you can do difficult. You don’t need it to be easy for 5 minutes or 15 minutes or whatever time you have the capacity for to start.
- And do it each day in the beginning. No exceptions. No weekends off. No holidays. It is only a few minutes a day.
- Later in your practice, you can spend 2 hours or 4 hours in one day, and that might work fine. (Many people tend to do this.) But don’t scare yourself in the beginning.
- If there is any resistance, ask yourself what is the resistance? Imagine sitting down for 5 minutes with a blank page a big idea. What do you feel? Where in the body do you feel resistance? What exactly do you feel? Writing it down can give you insights that will be helpful in getting you unstuck!
- Go for it! What are you waiting for to get started?