There’s so much going on you need to have a strategy for tuning into what’s important. It’s important to make a plan for withdrawing from the business of day-to-day inbox firehoses and the everything is on fire urgent needs of clients to get room to think above the noise.
You ever you step back from it all you also step up the way you think. I always find when I retreat from the noise, my thinking generally becomes more strategic and big picture, even if I end up pondering a specific case.
It’s easier to align with your purpose and plans without a distraction pulling you in different directions.
Practice and Perfection
If I’m honest I don’t get away to ponder as much as I should. And when I do often the first thought I have it “I should do this more regularly, fortnightly! weekly! no… DAILY!”. The reality is that the hunger for perfection in pondering soon gets tangled up with the other demands on my time. I think in practice the best outcome I try to work toward is to build a rhythm similar to seasons. This lets me work on the inbox, ship the projects, be there for my team, then recharge and realign for a spell before doing it all again.
There’s some upper limit to the I can spend time grinding on tasks before I start to feel burnt out, which makes sense. Trying to game finding the optimum cadence for taking a step back before the dip in my mood and energy keeps me balanced.
I often feel guilty knowing that Warren Buffet has multiple days per week dedicated solely to thinking time. I don’t know if that is the source or consequence of his success. I think depending on how able I am to retreat I reframe which of those is true. 😅
Thinking on purpose
While I get a huge amount of satisfaction from seeing a project ship or an empty inbox, it doesn’t really compare to the feeling of running in the right direction. I’m currently in a quieter ebb of work before the next peak lands. (Probably why I’m able to write this) and it feels good.
If Autonomy, mastery and purpose are three pillars of happiness, there seems to be a tension between demands on your time that your autonomously can respond to, and stays inline with the purpose that those demands either call you toward or away from. Mastery is likely is the mediator between the two: developing deliberative and delegation skills to keep everything flowing together.
The irony of pondering how long it’ll be until I ponder again certainly isn’t lost on me! Maybe more time time thinking on this will help… fortnightly! weekly… no daily!!! 😂