The blog

From time to time, espe­cial­ly when things are hec­tic and you have a lot on your plate, it can be of great val­ue to sit down and reflect. 



When we reflect on things and write down or sketch out what we need to reflect on, we get what­ev­er is spin­ning around in our minds out of our sys­tem. Every­thing that we more or less con­scious­ly think about is allowed to take con­crete form and we can observe it from a distance. 



We get some per­spec­tive on our thoughts and get a feel for how much inner space and ener­gy some­thing is demand­ing. We sim­ply get to emp­ty our minds, and at least to me, this feels incred­i­bly good. 



Reflect­ing sim­ply gives me inner peace. 

A tool wor­thy of the toolbox

But, for us who want to do what we need to get done with as lit­tle effort as pos­si­ble, reflect­ing is some­thing more than a ther­a­peu­tic and relax­ing tech­nique. Reflect­ing can be an effec­tive way to take quan­tum-leaps towards where we are striv­ing to go with­in our busi­ness, in our career or in a project. 



But in order for this to hap­pen, we need to put a twist on the reflec­tion, since it is in the twist the reflec­tion real­ly can take off. 

Take the thought one step further

To be con­crete: when you are reflect­ing or brain­storm­ing freely, when­ev­er you come to think of some­thing you need to do or get start­ed on, make it tan­gi­ble and con­crete by defin­ing new to-do-tasks, by adding new projects to your project-overview and by not­ing what is ref­er­ence-mate­r­i­al or –infor­ma­tion.



If you do not do this, the insights you have gained from reflect­ing will stay in the sketch you have made or on the brain­storm­ing-sheet. How­ev­er, if you do make prop­er note of it, you will make use of what you just real­ized by reflect­ing and will move from a notion of some­thing, to a con­crete thought, to action and there­by to progress. 

Do this

1. Find a time when you aren’t able to do any­thing else of all the things you need to do. This is what I refer to as ​“free time”. 
   For me this might be from the moment I sit down on a train until I need to show my tick­et or from when I take my seat on an air­plane until the ​“Fas­ten seatbelts”-sign is switched off. 
   It could be when you are wait­ing for some­one who is late for a meet­ing or when you are in the back­seat of your colleague’s car while he gives you a ride to the con­fer­ence-loca­tion. It can be when the sys­tem is down or when you are wait­ing to be logged into the numer­ous pro­grams that ini­ti­ate as you start your com­put­er in the morning. 
2. Notice what you think about then, what comes to mind and fills it spontaneously. 
3. Sketch or draw freely in a note­book or on a new, emp­ty sheet in your notepad. Write down what­ev­er comes to mind in a Word-doc­u­ment or cre­ate a mind-map over what is float­ing around aim­less­ly in your mind. 
   Write what­ev­er you want in the Buster Ben­son ser­vice 750​words​.com (which will also pro­vide you with a sim­ple visu­al analy­sis of what you have writ­ten) or draw cir­cles, box­es and oth­er fig­ures to illus­trate how it all con­nects on your white­board at the office. 
4. When­ev­er you think of some­thing you could do, add it as a task on your to-do-list. 
5. If you sketch out some­thing that will take more than a day to do and com­plete, add it as a project on your project-overview and define the first step as a to-do-task (which you then add to your to-do-list).
6. If you come to think of some­thing you want to do lat­er on at some point, scan the sketch or take a pic­ture of it with your iPhone and save it amongst oth­er doc­u­ments con­cern­ing the same subject. 
   Or alter­na­tive­ly, add it to your wiki for ref­er­ence-infor­ma­tion or cre­ate a new post on Sim­plenote (which hap­pens to be my cur­rent tool) or in Evernote. 

Your reflect­ing and brain­storm­ing has now turned thoughts into con­se­quence and progress. 

Let your mind fly and reach new realms of success

If you bring a twist to the time you take to reflect and brain­storm by con­cretiz­ing to-do-tasks, projects and ref­er­ence-mate­r­i­al, you will get a whole lot more out of think­ing out­side the box. 



Those bril­liant ideas are allowed to take form and it is eas­i­er to real­ize them. What this might in turn mean to you and to your busi­ness, we might only imagine. 

What’s your way?

In what sit­u­a­tions are you giv­en ​“free time” to reflect? A pen­ny for your thoughts…