Too Busy To Think?

Are you like me? More often than not, I get too busy to think.

I’m painfully aware that an hour of effective thinking is worth a month of hard work. Are you? Then why is it most of us don’t spend enough productive time thinking and planning? Is it because we just get too busy? I have concluded that the answer is “Yes”.

Remote Control Minds

That’s a pity — and inexcusable. I know better, and so do you. So, why do we persist? Routines might be one answer. Routines suppress thinking and idea generation. We get stuck in comfortable remote control modes. Interruptions are another answer. How many times a day do you instantly react to someone or something that interrupts your schedule? If you think about it, these are moving parades of stress creating events. Imagine how much easier and less stressful the rest of our lives would be if we took time out for regular, private focused thinking.

Most of us don’t though, and entire industries are built around this human weakness. Consultants abound to think for us. Let’s take a look at estate planning.

Profit Plan for Life, Not Death

We typically spend more time planning our death than planning our lives. That’s because planners do it for us because we are too busy. There are big profits here. They call themselves financial planners, retirement planners, estate planners or life insurance salespersons. They get our attention by pointing out the big benefits to us from their planning. Our estate taxes are reduced, our assets don’t get tied up in probate, our loved ones get taken care of, our favorite charities benefit, and our businesses are protected.

But, how about us? The success of all this thinking and planning depends on our dying. Well, that sucks.

In all fairness, many of these planners perform good services. I just want to obsolete them, that’s all. Most of them are clever and resourceful, and they can find other lines of work as society evolves. And evolve we will. I see a whole new industry springing up that plans for our longevity enhanced lives. Wouldn’t it be more rewarding to help someone plan their long life than their death?

Now let’s get back to thinking. Thinking takes work. But it also saves a lot more work. Try this for one month:

Mind-Storming A Mindset For Life

Set aside a half hour a day, or at least two to three times a week, to sit in a quiet spot where no one and no thing will disturb you. Shut off your phone and email. Close your door, and give instructions to everyone in your household or office to not disturb you except for extreme emergencies. Better yet, find a quiet peaceful place away from your home or office.

Take a tablet and a pen, and write your most pressing challenge or your biggest goal at the top of the paper. Then open your mind to any and every possible idea, solution or plan you can think of. There are no bad ideas. Write them out as fast as you can think. About the time you think you have exhausted your ideas, you will come up with your best solutions. That’s because we usually write down the obvious at first, a lazy way of thinking. So, stretch a little.

How about taking some time to plan what you want to do in fifty years or longer? You are not too busy to think and plan the next 5 decades of living. When you get into this mindset, you’ll tend to start laying out steps to help ensure you live fifty more years. These steps could include your changes in your diet, fitness program and more.

Now here’s a critical key: After you finish your mind-storming, review your list carefully. Isolate your best ideas and immediately ACT on them. This is the step that makes your hour of thinking worth a month of hard work.