Mike 
How do you spend your working hours? How would you categorize the many different activities that comprise your job? I can generally divide my time into four buckets: (1) leading meetings and events, (2) one-on-one meetings, (3) administrative tasks (including email), and (4) deep thinking. Even though your job is quite different from mine, these same categories are probably applicable for you.
All four are important, but today I’m focusing on the last category. As a leader, you are charged with making important organizational and strategic decisions that require “deep thinking.” These are the decisions that can’t be delegated to someone else. My deep thinking often revolves around game-changing recommendations for a client or the next steps on a complicated project. For both of us, it’s essential that we do it well.
To do my best deep thinking, I’ve learned that three things are essential:
- Protect the time. Like an amoeba that keeps growing without boundaries, the other three categories can easily consume my day. This is especially true of emails and other administrative tasks. I may have good intentions to set aside time for deep thinking and then find that it’s been squeezed out. Deep thinking can’t be put in a microwave. If I don’t protect the time, I’ll get stuck in the shallows.
- Choose productive times. Deep thinking requires my brain to be at its best, which means that I shouldn’t schedule these times late in the day. If I’m trying to work on a key project and realize that my brain has turned to mush, I’ll put it aside until a time when I can be fresh again.
- Create transitions. Sometimes I set aside a half-day or full day to work on several projects that require deep thinking. The problem is that I cannot quickly transition from one to the next. Like a freeway exit ramp, I need buffers or activities that enable me to slow down and disengage from one deep thinking task before I go to the next.
