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March 23, 2006

Scheduling Unstructured Time to Think

One of the first people who I ever worked for (Kelley Murphy, a partner at The Parthenon Group at the time) used to mandate something of his employees which I’ve rarely seen done since, though it significantly impacted me as I thought it was (and is) incredible valuable. He used to periodically ask everyone to take time to think. His team members would block off time during a critical juncture in a project or undertaking, and leave time for unstructured individual contemplation of the larger current work situation at hand. Requiring that people briefly pause from the action-oriented workday not only gave employees a brief respite from the pile of to-do’s, it more importantly provided an opportunity for everyone to take a step back to gain a broader (and fresh) perspective. It amazed me how many great ideas came out of doing “nothing,” as opposed to the normal workflow, or even structured brainstorming. In the frenetic pace that is startups (and venture capital), I suspect that if every so often everyone stopped (even if for an hour or two) to think, a lot of good would come of it.

Posted by on March 23, 2006 2:59 PM | Permalink

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Comments (3)

Otis Gospodnetic:

I find it that traveling _always_ gets my creative life juices going. Same thing.

Posted by Otis Gospodnetic | March 24, 2006 11:35 AM

Posted on March 24, 2006 11:35

mike:

This might sound silly, but I'm curious, how would you step back and think? Was it through time out of the office? A retreat? Some physical activity?

I've found that my mind is much more productive while doing certain tasks than just sitting at a desk. For me, they are often a combination of some activity that doesn't require my complete attention, like driving (half-paying attention I'm still not as dangerous as other Boston drivers).

Posted by mike | March 24, 2006 1:13 PM

Posted on March 24, 2006 13:13

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