Put Your Thinking Cap On
When I was a kid anytime I had to answer a question or solve a problem, I was told, “Put your thinking cap on.” Did you ever hear that from a teacher or from your parents? As leaders, in order to be successful, we need to always have our thinking caps on. We need not just be doers but we need to be thinkers. The way we think determines the way we act, not just today but tomorrow as well. John Maxwell puts it this way, “Your life today is a result of your thinking yesterday. Your life tomorrow will be determined by what you think today.”[1] So thinking is important skill that we need to engage in as leaders, but why is it important?
Thinking leads to intentionality
I will admit that I don’t have the personality to “fly by the seat of my pants”. I am outside of my comfort zone if I have to try and do something spur of the moment. My personality lends itself to analyzing and thinking about decisions I am going to make. I like to be intentional about the things I do. The drawback is that sometimes I can over think or over analyze, but that’s whole different topic. I have noticed that when I do try to or am forced by circumstances to “fly by the seat of my pants”, the results tend to be less that satisfactory. If I as a leader take time to think before I act, the outcome very likely going to be positive. Anytime that I think about something and therefore am intentional about decisions or activities, good things tend to follow.
Thinking leads to ideas
Harvey Firestone, the great industrialist from the 19th century pointed out, “What is important is ideas. If you have ideas, you have the main asset you need, and there isn’t any limit to what you can do with your business and your life.” What sets us apart from the rest of creation is that we have the ability to think. We are able to conceive ideas. I firmly believe that God gives each of us, especially those of us who have been called as leaders, the gift of creativity of thought.
Being 42, I realize just how much the world has advanced in my lifetime. It is amazing to think of the medical, technological and philosophical breakthroughs in the last 40 years. And it was all because men and women chose to think and that thinking led to ideas that literally have revolutionized the world. Could it be that if you took time to think that you might have ideas that will revolutionize the world? Maybe not the world at large, but the your world and the world around you.
The Challenge
If you are anything like me, your every day to-do list is a mile long. It seems like you check off one thing and two more things get added. And you tell yourself, “I don’t have time to think, I have too much to do.” And it’s true. To the untrained eye thinking makes it look like you aren’t doing anything other than staring off into space. It looks like you are just procrastinating those things on your to do list. But the reality is that if you don’t make time to think, it isn’t going to happen. If you realize that thinking is not something that you close your eyes, and let your mind wander, but an intentional exercise of your God-given faculties then you will find time to think. Once you start setting time aside to think, you will recognize that it could be one of the most important things you do during your day. The rest of this month, we will be exploring kinds of thinking, how to think and places to think. But before we get there, let me ask you, “What is keeping you from thinking?”
Conversation
What are the things that are preventing you from taking time to think?
What are some strategies you can employ in order to intentionally start to think?