If you can’t help feeling like your concentration and creativity has been hijacked in recent weeks/months, then you’re not alone.
The brain fog of lockdown is real, and it means much of our days are being spent fighting distraction...to the detriment of both professional AND personal wellbeing!
From this stance, there might be some mileage in ‘doing a Bill Gates’, so to speak, and taking some self-allocated THINK TIME.
The Microsoft founder is renowned for taking several weeks every year to be alone with his thoughts (in a cabin in the woods, no less), and while this might be beyond the realms of possibility, especially right now, don’t rule the idea out completely just yet !
In essence, ANY amount of time modelled on this ‘disconnect to reconnect’ framework has got to be worth a punt, if the benefits are to be believed!
So, even if the best you can stretch to is a ‘think day’, or even just a ‘think hour’...grab those precious minutes with both hands!
The advice, though, is to be intentional in how the allotted time is spent. Read a book, research a topic, draw a subject, but above all else, have a plan in order to maximise what’s known as ‘active pondering’ - something to which many of the technique’s benefits are owed.
As for the everyday how-to, which - let’s face it- could be a struggle...why not try blocking out this time-bound period of solitude with something tangible?
It might be the closing of a door, the switching off of a phone... even the sporting an actual ‘thinking cap’, perhaps!? #whoknew
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