Get Your Head Out of That Gantt Chart and Do Some Thinking Once in a While

This post originally appeared on my external blog, “Social
Media Strategery.”

I know we’re all busy. We have deadlines to meet, emails to write/respond to, projects to work on, management issues to take care of, errands to run, families to care for, and many many other things that we do on a daily basis. To make sense of it all, we create daily routines and schedules – wake up, take the dogs out, go for a run, get the kids off to school, respond to urgent emails, get a first draft of that paper done, attend the status meeting, etc. Lord knows I wouldn’t get half of my work done with my Outlook calendar to remind me when I have to go to a meeting or make a phone call. Oftentimes, breaking our day up into more manageable tasks is the only way to maintain some level of sanity in our lives. But what do we lose when we get into routine like this? Can you make “innovation” part of a routine?

When was the last time you created an Outlook appointment to catch up on your RSS feeds? When a project deadline gets moved up, what’s the first thing that gets bumped? How many times have you said, “ya know, I really should write a blog post or comment on some other people’s material tonight, but I’m exhausted and that can wait?” How often do get outside your individual project “bubble” and make a concerted effort to just go out and learn something new?

When was the last time you just sat down and thought about your project/organization/contract/initiative and wondered? About the long-term strategy? About how to improve your team’s morale? About how to become more efficient? About how to make things better? About external issues that could positively or negatively impact your work? When was the last time you came up with a new idea that wasn’t in your job description or SOW?

I had a great conversation recently with one the senior leaders at my company and he told me that’s the one thing that separates the good from the great. The good worker will meet all their deadlines, crank out high quality products, not ruffle any feathers, show up on time, and do everything that’s asked of them. The great worker on the other hand, may miss some deadlines and may make some people mad, but they’ll also be the ones coming up with the next great idea. What was the last actual idea you had at work that wasn’t tasked to you by someone else? Did you tell anyone about it? Did you act on it?

So, take my advice and carve out 30 minutes of your day to do some thinking. This could involve:

• Catch up on your RSS feeds
• Read the paper
• Have a team meeting where the only agenda item is “what can we be doing better?”
• Go out to lunch with someone from a totally different part of the business and learning about what they do
• Be like Dr. House, find a ball to toss around and think about how to solve a problem
• Set up Google alerts for issues related to your organization and commit to staying on top of them
• Create an “If I were King/Queen for a day” list of ideas for your organization
• Do a Twitter search for your organization/brand and see what others are saying

Can you find time in your schedule to be great?

*Image courtesy of Flickr user Brian Hillegas