Why Slowing Down is Essential to Speed Up!

Why are we so quick to jump to action?

Doing something—anything—feels safer than pausing. We often see inaction as a risk rather than a thoughtful step to ensure we’re tackling the real issue.

Real speed comes from a calculated pause. Here’s how to make it work:

1. Define the Challenge
Don’t jump to solutions. Pinpoint the real issue first—like Einstein said, spend most of your time clarifying the problem, then solutions practically reveal themselves.

2. Ask the Right Questions
“What” and “How” questions spark creativity. Broaden your scope by including words like “could” or “might.” Fresh insights often surface when you invite every possibility.

3. Weigh Your Options
Use a quick 2×2 matrix (cost vs. benefit, ease vs. impact, etc.) to filter ideas without bias. Clarity beats guesswork every time.

4. Plan, Then Act
Spell out who does what—and when—before launching. This stops good ideas from vanishing in the chaos of daily demands.

5. Check, Then Adapt
Regular reviews keep you ahead of pitfalls. Fail fast if you must, then pivot before issues spiral out of control.

Take a moment to slow down. You’ll find you can move forward faster—and with greater confidence—than ever.

There’s loads more helpful content for each of these steps; follow us for more:

Posted On April 8, 2025 By Ricky Muddimer In Blog, Creative Thinking, Critical Thinking, Decision Making, Goals, High Performing Teams, Mindset, Problem Solving, Productivity, Reflection /

Improving workplace productivity, step 2: How interference affects productivity

In our last blog Improving workplace productivity, step 1: Recognising interference we looked at the different constraints within the workplace that stop individuals and teams being as productive as they can be.

We talked about how this interference can be either organisational or self-imposed, and discussed the importance of recognising interference as the first step to improving productivity.

In this blog, we’ll take a look at how important it is not just to identify these barriers, but to understand just how interference affects productivity.

Regardless of whether the constraints to productivity are organisational or self-imposed, all forms of interference have the same effect. Here are just some examples of how interference affects productivity:

It slows down our rate of work, which causes frustration
It causes us to repeat work tasks and processes, leading to inefficiency and wasted effort
It creates mistakes, meaning that valuable resources need to be used to rectify the mistakes
It causes us to avoid doing things, which means that potential deadlines can be missed and work is not completed on time
It creates stress, which can ultimately result in absenteeism
It causes a feeling of isolation and anxiety about doing the right thing, which means that we don’t achieve our best result
It can lead to poor decision-making, lack of clarity and ambiguity, all of which means that we don’t actually complete the work required to the standard that was asked of us
It causes tensions and protective behaviour by individuals within teams, leading to disagreements or arguments, and people avoiding responsibility and not taking ownership
It creates the need for more supervision or management of tasks and people, which means that the amount of management time and resource increases
It can become a talking point among individuals and teams, rapidly turning into moaning, fault finding and finger pointing – during which time less work is actually being done
It can create a perception of unfairness when a person or team doesn’t seem to ‘suffer from’ the same interferences as another person or team, which in turn creates gossip, rumour and a culture of blame

Thinking Focus works with organisations to identify and remove barriers to productivity, helping teams and business units achieve their potential. Read more here about our approach to unlocking productivity.

Posted On November 29, 2018 By Rob Smith In Productivity /

Improving workplace productivity recognising interference

Improving workplace productivity, step 1: Recognising interference

When your people are not being as productive as they could be, it can be frustrating and sometimes puzzling, both for you and for them. The potential is there but the performance is falling short – and you have no idea why.

At Thinking Focus, we sometimes find it helpful to refer to the things that stop us achieving our potential as interference. In the book ‘The Inner Game of Tennis’ the author Timothy Gallwey proposed that performance (Pe) is equal to potential (Po) minus interference (I), or Pe = Po – I. We use this equation to help individuals and teams to get an idea of just how much interference is getting in the way. As potential is always 100%, if you think you’re only performing at 70% of this, then interference levels equate to 30%.

We believe that removing interference enables people to think and work differently, gives them purpose and helps them enjoy their job. All of which leads to higher productivity, smooth transitions during times of change, and sustainable results.

The first step to removing interference is to recognise it. So, what exactly is it? In the work place, it can fall into one of two categories: organisational or self-imposed.

Organisational interference

This covers any constraints to productivity that come from the organisation itself, and which slow down and sometimes even stop work processes.

Examples of organisational interference are:

Outdated processes, that could be improved or replaced
Legacy IT systems that don’t connect or integrate with each other
Silo working – isolated or non-collaborative work teams
Assumed rules or ways of working
Inconsistent leadership and management
Internal politics, due to hierarchies or individual power-play
Unhelpful competition between departments

Self-imposed interference

This refers to internal constraints that an individual puts on themselves and which prevents them from being as productive as they could be. Each person has different elements of self-imposed interference, and some have more than others.

Examples of self-imposed interference are:

Attitude, belief and mindset
Assumptions about how we work or are expected to work
Waiting for permission to do things
Expecting to be told what to do and how to do it
Lack of confidence, low self-esteem, and self-doubt

Thinking Focus helps teams and business units become more productive by identifying and removing interference. Read more here about our approach to unlocking productivity.

Like this? Why not take a look at our next blog, Improving workplace productivity, step 2: Recognising how interference affects productivity, for more on this subject.

Posted On November 14, 2018 By Rob Smith In Productivity /

Five traits you will find in all the most productive organisations

If, like us, you are lucky enough to work with exceptional companies, you cannot help but look behind what makes them the success they are. And you discover that their success is not an accident but is rather down to obsessive execution underpinned with core disciplines.

From our research and observations, Thinking Focus has identified five traits you will find in all the most productive organisations. These guiding principles can be applied by any organisation to enable their people to be productive in the right way. They also form the basis of our 5Cs Results Model, which we use in our work with a range of forward-thinking organisations to help them accelerate business growth, embed change or transform culture.

Purpose and Clarity

The most productive organisations we’ve worked with regularly reinforce purpose and clarity within all their people. A clear and compelling purpose – the ‘why’ we do what we do, aligned to what we do – is consistently shared and communicated, so everyone has a common clarity of vision. This increases effectiveness as people work to their greatest level of contribution in order to help achieve the big picture.

Take note, though, not to confuse being efficient with being effective. We have worked in, and with, organisations where people were highly efficient and executed their tasks promptly and to a high standard. The problem was, they were not working on the right things!

As a leader aiming to help your people be as productive as possible, challenge yourself: Is it efficiency or effectiveness you’re after? You are likely to have efficient people, but do they understand why they are doing what they are doing? If not, revisit your purpose and get them focused on doing those things that will achieve that purpose.

In his book Good to Great, Jim Collins shares the importance of getting the right people on the bus and the wrong people off the bus, which sounds spot on to me. However, he goes on to say that those right people are the ones who buy into your purpose, not your plan. This means that if, as is often the case, the plan needs to change, those right people will remain committed to the vision and the higher purpose that drives everything you do.

Collaboration

In our work, although we shouldn’t be, we are always surprised by how much internal politics, assumptions and egos get in the way of productivity. The cultural environment is set up to be adversarial, which is not conducive to delivering the strategy. So many senior leaders will argue that they achieve the outcome they wanted, but we often wonder at what cost to their teams. What underlying damage has been caused and what is hidden from view that challenges the definition of productivity? Is the focus on the short-term nature of business and the need to deliver results or is it on the long-term performance of the company?

If I refer back to Jim Collins, he shares ‘level 5 leadership’. Level 5 leaders build with the next generation in mind, they are ambitious and focus on the success of the company ahead of themselves. The level 5 leader is obsessed with sustained results and will do whatever it takes to get to great.

In our experience, companies whose leaders collaborate more effectively achieve more significant results, and we have seen those indicators of level 5 leadership where the focus is always on the higher purpose.

Capability

When we talk about capability, most people think of training but it’s actually much more than that as Paul Matthews, author of Capability at Work, explains:

Knowledge – do I (the worker) have the knowledge to do what is required?
Skills – am I (the worker) able to apply myself to do what is required?
Mindset – do I (the worker) believe I can do what is expected of me?
Physiology – am I (the worker) able to do what is required physically?
Environment – have we (the company) provided the right systems, processes, tools, management support and culture for our people to perform effectively?

In our experience, the organisations that develop more productive workforces and the ones who recognise that there is a need for a balanced assessment of capability. The inclusion of ‘environment’ in the list above is significant and its notable that the onus here is on the company. It is no surprise that the elements that make up the environment are key to engagement, and that the link between engagement and productivity is long since proven.

Capacity

The topic of bandwidth is a perennial one. Most teams will argue they are at full capacity whereas most leaders believe there is scope to do more. The reality probably lies somewhere between the two!

However, the most important thing here is to be clear about what we have on the agenda and why. Does the list pass the purpose test, will doing ‘it’ enable us to achieve the higher purpose? If not, it should not be on the list at all.

Warren Buffet invests much time deciding what makes this list and what doesn’t make his list. There is no ‘We will have a go if we get the time’ list or ‘Let’s spend a bit of time on it’ list. It either makes the list, or it doesn’t; there’s no half way house. Leaders are paid to make big decisions, to choose what strategy we should back and why. Indecision leads to a straddled strategy which is trying to be all things to everyone. In our experience, companies who have followed the mantra of ‘If we could only do one thing?’ are more productive and effective.

Commitment

Commitment is a set of tests or questions which should be asked on a regular basis. This provides a navigational check in the context of an organisation’s vision and strategy to see whether the current plan is going to hit the mark.

Is our purpose clear, compelling, and understood by the business?
Are we collaborating in the most effective way?
Have we developed the capability of our people to achieve our goals?
Are we choosing to focus our resources on the right things?
Are we committed to this vision (are the right people on this bus)?

These questions all elicit a deliberate Yes/No answer, with those who adopt level 5 leadership using the ‘No’ answers as opportunities to fix it on their journey to greatness.

It is worth noting that level 5 leaders show humility and are more likely to be cautious in their evaluation, rather than deluded or over-confident.

Posted On November 1, 2018 By Ricky Muddimer In Productivity /

How to make your team more productive: Start with your shadow

Productivity is one of the key issues encountered by organisations of all sizes, and it’s often one of the most misunderstood, especially by managers. Many leaders look at their teams and at the skills and experience within them, and are baffled that their productivity isn’t greater.

But what they’re failing to look at is closer to home: themselves.

As a manager, the first step towards making your team more productive is to lead by example. Your team’s productivity starts with you. This is why, when we work with an organisation on any productivity issue, more often than not we start with the leaders.

You may not be aware of it, but you are the main influence on your team. And we don’t mean in the sense of giving orders or targets. We’re talking about how your behaviour, attitude and work ethic is noticed and adopted by your people. There’s a saying that your staff leave at the end of the day with the same mood that you walked in with in the morning, and this is often true.

This concept of the unconscious influence of a manager is known as ‘The Shadow of the Leader’ which, as the name suggests, relates to the influence – for better or worse – of the leader on their team. People absorb their leader’s values, and tend to mirror their leader’s behaviour. On a wider level, a leader’s shadow may be cast so wide that it affects the culture of an entire organisation.

Your leadership shadow reflects everything you say and do. Whether you intend it or not, you cast your shadow over your team. Your people will, either consciously or subconsciously, take clues from you about their behaviour, values, motivation and work ethic. They will mirror what you do and say, and how you react to situations.

So, as a leader, ask yourself: Are you aware of the shadow you cast over your team? Is this shadow a positive or negative one? Are you displaying the behaviours that you would expect see from your people?

If you liked this, check these out:

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Posted On October 5, 2018 By Paul Hutchinson In Productivity / 20

Why a growth mindset is key to productivity

At Thinking Focus, we work with many organisations on issues around productivity. We’ve met some great teams of people with fantastic skills and experience. So why is it that their productivity levels are not as high as they could be?

Low productivity is often the result of a fixed mindset. This is a mindset that says: I have the skills to do this job so I don’t need to try, my talent is enough. If a team has a fixed mindset, they won’t fulfil their potential and will be complacent, unmotivated and unproductive.

A growth mindset, on the other hand, says: There is always more I could learn, it’s up to me to develop my skills and abilities, I’m open to new ideas. This way of thinking enables people to push the boundaries, become more creative, try things, and do the best they can. People with a growth mindset do not fear a new challenge, and view a mistake or setback as an opportunity to learn.

So, if a productive team needs a growth mindset, how do you help your people to adopt one?

How to instil a growth mindset in your people

The first step is to look at yourself. As leaders, the mindset we get from our people is the mindset we create ourselves. People mirror the actions and behaviours of their leaders, as we discuss in our blog about The Shadow of the Leader here. As a role model for your people, if you display a growth mindset, it’s likely they will adopt one, too. While it can take work to develop a growth mindset, fixed mindsets can be contagious, so if you have one, they will probably have one to.

Help your team identify a goal, and focus not just on what you want them to do but also where the boundaries are, so they have some scope to develop their own ideas. Think of the goal as the pins at the end of a bowling alley. Your role as a leader is to point out the pins and the direction the ball needs to go in, then put up the lane guards on either side of the lane (normally used for small children and me!). But to create a growth mindset, you should neither tell your people how to throw the ball nor throw the ball for them. Trust the strengths, knowledge and skills of your people. Give them guidance, set the direction and the purpose, but don’t identify the ‘how’.

Leaders with a growth mindset inspire their people to do the best they can, and promote a culture of learning and freedom. Praise your team for effort and learning, not talent and experience. Encourage them to adopt a have-a-go attitude and even to take risks without fear of the consequences should there be a setback or a mistake. This is where the boundaries are helpful, as it ensures that if they do fail, they fail safely. Help them accept that things don’t always go to plan but, with a growth mindset, they will learn from setbacks and mistakes. This will instil confidence, ambition and innovation in your team.

Behave in a consistent manner and act in a way that is consistent with the culture and ethos you are trying to achieve for your organisation. Understand what motivates your team and ensure that it’s aligned to your organisation’s objectives.

So, set an example to your team by displaying a growth mindset yourself, and helping them adopt one too. By demonstrating that you have made mistakes, and used them to help you grow, you can help your people feel safe and allow them to learn, have a go at new things, push boundaries, and become better at what they do. And that, ultimately, will create a more productive team.

Posted On September 27, 2018 By Paul Hutchinson In Productivity /

The Purpose Principle

I was recently visiting a former client’s office: a company I have not worked with for quite some time but where we still have a good relationship and keep each other informed of what’s going on in our respective businesses.

It was great to catch up with people and see some old friends.

The business in question operates in a very competitive market place and as such, over the last five years or so, has managed its people very closely. So I was surprised to hear that they have decided to remove all local management teams. They now have a matrix structure right across the European business.

“How’s that working?” I asked of a few people that I bumped into. Time and again the answer came back: “It doesn’t work, we get no direction, we get conflicting information on what the priorities are and I don’t know who my boss is any more!”

One particular person went even further and said, “Everybody is miserable!”

It raised the question for me: “Why are you here then… Why are you doing it if it makes you miserable?”

Finding our own purpose

Clearly there are many reasons as to why we do the jobs we do or have the careers that we have, but how many people actually stop and ask, “Why am I doing this? What is the purpose for me being in this job?”

Getting to the bottom of our own purpose is enlightening and helps keep us going when times get tough. There can be no right or wrong answer here either.

So, on a personal level: “Why?”

Is it just a job, a task…? For the money, it pays the bills?

There is nothing wrong with this answer. We all need money and have bills to pay. If that is the case then let’s be clear about it: let’s value the money that the job brings and let’s make decisions about how much we are prepared to put up with or give in line with what we earn.

We also need to acknowledge that you could in theory earn money somewhere else. So, does it really matter what the business does as long as it pays well enough?

Developing your career

It could be more than that though. It could be about having a career in a specific industry: working your way through several experiences within that industry and perhaps working your way towards a particular role that you have always wanted to do. Ambition starts to come into play here. Long term goals, stepping stones and learning as you move towards the desired role can all be important.

This can be really exciting because, if you love the industry you are in, you will regularly feel the buzz that it brings you. It might also give you options to move around the different companies that occupy different parts of that industry. So, if it gets a bit miserable at one company or the culture doesn’t work for you, then have obvious places to look within the industry for a fresh challenge.

Passion for your work

For some people, though, it is not about the money or a career within an industry, it is about a vocation or a calling – a passion for doing something that you believe in. Coincidentally, I met a friend on the same day who told me that she had just been interviewed for a new job with an online pharmacy business. Her current role is focused on customer experience within casinos.

She said, “I could really get out of bed in a morning believing that I am helping someone get the medicines they need rather than encouraging someone to gamble.”

The bottom line here for her is that there is a clear connection to an organisation’s purpose and a belief in what they are doing.

Short-term goals and long-term purpose

For the old clients I visited the lack of local management is resulting in people that have lost sight of the bigger picture and purpose as well as the short-term goals that gave them their energy and helped them feel like there were moving the business forwards. They just don’t know how the dots join up anymore.

For some of them it all feels a bit vague.

If individuals feel lost, then of course teams can feel lost, not understanding what their focus should be, what they are having an impact on or even what they are supposed to be delivering.

Finding your purpose

Whether you are doing the work you are doing because it is a job, a career or because it is a vocation doesn’t really matter; each of these reasons have their own purpose for the individual for that moment in their life.

However, if you are leading a team or running a business ask yourself these simple questions:

What is our purpose as a business? Why are we doing this?
Do our people understand the purpose of the business?
Does the businesses purpose align to the personal reasons people have for being here?

In my experience when you ask people “why are you here?” they don’t always know the answer straight away.

For many, it is not something they think about that often. Digging down and discovering our own purpose (whatever it is) can only be beneficial for everyone. It will ultimately allow people to make better decisions and be more resilient when times get tough.

If leaders can articulate the businesses purpose clearly and often, then even teams that are managed remotely and with a light touch can engage with the organisation’s Purpose Principal.

Posted On September 5, 2018 By Richard Armeson In Productivity /

How to increase productivity by getting your team to engage

How to increase productivity by getting your team more engaged

When it comes to productivity, employee engagement is vital: only employees who have bought in to your ‘why’ will be giving their all to help achieve your aims.

When engagement and productivity leave something to be desired, it’s tempting to blame the employee: they haven’t understood, they don’t care enough, their motivation is lacking. However, based on our experience working with businesses across many sectors, we know it’s usually down to management’s failure to help them to engage.

Why are my employees unproductive?

If you’re struggling to get your team to produce the volume or level of work you know they’re capable of, you need to examine their motivation – and the biggest factor in that is their engagement.

When you set tasks or targets, you base these on your ‘why’ – the ultimate aim you have in mind for yourself and for the team or the wider business. You can see a clear link between the work being done and the end goal. Where many leaders fall down is in communicating this with the team they need to achieve it.

It’s true that, to some extent, people are self-motivating: the best employees will want the satisfaction of doing their job well. However, if they can’t understand the part they play in the bigger picture or appreciate the ultimate aims of the business, self-motivation will not be enough to keep them working at their most effective.

In order to buy in to your ‘why’, employees also need to trust you – and to feel that you trust them. If you let them down, go behind their backs or demonstrate a lack of loyalty to them, they will never trust you and will therefore never engage with your aims. Building that relationship of trust is vital, and trusting them to understand and buy in to your aims is part of that.

What can I do to help my employees engage?

This is one of the questions that comes up most frequently in our work, no matter what the situation we’ve been asked to help tackle. While there’s no one-size-fits-all answer, there are some simple steps any leader can take to improve engagement and lay the foundations for better engagement.

Honesty: Leaders often feel they’re doing the right thing by protecting their team from difficult situations and not sharing the full details of a challenge. Generally, the opposite is true. Employees are quick to realise when they’re being kept in the dark and it undermines their ability to trust their leaders. Wherever possible, share as much as you can with them about the wider picture – good and bad – and encourage their input in your plans for the future.

Be on their side: What people want from their managers is to feel they are supported and backed up. Managers need to listen and really hear what employees are saying, then act on it, even if that means taking issues to more senior management on their behalf.

Consistency: Following through what you say you will do is vital. Of course, it’s not always possible as circumstances change, but when that’s the case you need to go back and explain it to your team – taking us back to that point about honesty again. Consistency also means treating employees fairly and ensuring they know where they stand. There’s nothing more frustrating than a manager whose reactions are completely unpredictable.

Recognition: When team members perform well, make sure they know it has been noticed. We’ve all been in a position where we have slogged over a project and then felt our efforts haven’t even been seen – it certainly doesn’t inspire us to put as much work in next time. From a quick word to acknowledge individual effort to a team reward for a job well done, there are plenty of simple ways to make employees feel valued. Even the smallest acknowledgement can have a significant impact.

Development: Supporting team members to achieve their career goals is an important way to increase their engagement. Helping them develop skills in areas that will move them towards their ultimate aim, or putting them forward for opportunities that arise elsewhere in the business, will make them feel you are as invested in their future as they are. It’s a hard thing to do when you have a great team member as it may mean they move on to bigger things, but ultimately you will get more from an employee who feels you value them enough to support their future.

How can I get my managers to improve employee engagement?

Of course, it’s one thing to increase engagement with your own team, but getting managers at other levels to do the same with the people around them can be a bigger challenge.

There are ways to encourage managers to develop a more engaged workforce through training and development – and one of the most effective we have found is to use real-life scenarios. Asking managers to consider different ways of motivating their team and boosting engagement gets them to look at their current approach and consider whether it could be improved.

To support HR and L&D teams to do this, we have developed What Would You Do?, a game-based learning tool that can be used by any business. By posing challenges based on the real issues they may face in their day-to-day life and asking them to debate the merits of different responses, the game helps them not just to behave in the correct way in a training scenario, but to adjust their mindset and influence their thinking in the long term to give better results.

The result achieved through this approach have been impressive and the list of major companies turning to it as a training tool is growing by the day.

If you’d like to know more about how game-based learning could help your managers to develop a more engaged workforce, click here and read about What Would You Do?. To find out more about how it could be used in your business, contact us.

Posted On September 5, 2018 By Ricky Muddimer In Productivity /

How to be productive in quiet spells with the Urgent vs Important square

Important vs urgent: How to have a productive quiet spell

No matter what industry you work in, chances are you have periods when you have less to do.

For a lot of us, those quieter times occur routinely over the summer and at Christmas. These are typically the periods when many businesses are focused on covering staff holidays in the short term rather than embarking on longer term goals such as beginning new projects or making contact with potential suppliers. As a result, businesses across all sectors experience a quiet spell.

It’s common to panic at this point: having spare time is an uncomfortable feeling when you know how closely it relates to your bottom line. There’s a temptation to chase after short-term work just to keep busy, regardless of whether it fits your long-term aims.

But there’s a much better way you could continue to be productive during those quieter weeks.

The Eisenhower Matrix

The Eisenhower Matrix, also known as the Urgent vs Important square, is something we look at regularly with clients when we’re talking about productivity. It looks like this:

More often than not, our time is taken up with work in the top left of the board – it is important and it is definitely urgent. Examples might include responding to clients’ needs or customer complaints, picking up new enquiries, giving instructions to your team or sorting out broken equipment. If you don’t complete them, there will be swift consequences: more complaints, a loss of business or unproductive time for your team.

Our natural instinct is to focus most of our time on this side of the square. The sense of urgency skews our perception of what is important and our workflow ends up being crisis-led: we’re constantly firefighting, rather than working strategically.

Often, when things are quieter, the urgent side of the square is taking up less of our time. Our first instinct is to turn to the bottom-right square: the non-urgent and unimportant tasks. Browsing the internet, wondering if you should get a new laptop bag or reading a magazine could all fall into this area. We don’t need to do them now, they’re not contributing to our productivity, but in those rare quiet periods it’s tempting to do something mindless and allow our brains to switch off.

Focus on Important but not Urgent

Instead, try turning your attention to the top right of the square: the important but non-urgent tasks. These are all the things which make a difference to productivity but for which there are no immediate consequences if they aren’t completed.

For example, strategic thinking and planning are often in this square – along with things like going to the gym. They are important to the business, or to your ability to work well, but there is no direct impact if you don’t do them. As a result, they are often put to the bottom of the list.

What’s your matrix?

When the quiet times hit, your first task should be to create your own Urgent vs Important Matrix. Focus on the Important side of the square and use it to be productive in areas that you often overlook because urgency pulls your attention elsewhere.

If you catch yourself saying, “I’d love to do that, but I never have time” – now is that time. Prioritise the tasks you never get around to but which might make a significant difference to your productivity during busier times. Using quiet spells to lay the foundations for a more efficient workflow or a tightly focused strategy will help you reap the rewards when the busier months return.

Posted On August 17, 2018 By Rob Smith In Productivity /

Why you need a summer holiday to boost your productivity

Why you need to take a summer holiday

As leaders and managers, we all sometimes fall into the trap of thinking we can’t take time away from work.

We worry about what might happen in our absence and we look at our ever-growing to-do lists and decide it would be better just to keep at it. With other team members taking their own holidays, we often feel it’s down to us to provide consistency to the business by staying at work.

Yet there are sound reasons why taking a summer break is not only good for you, but could actually lead to a productive breakthrough that will accelerate your projects and goals.

Change the setting

Research into problem-solving and innovation has shown that we have our best ideas and breakthroughs when our brain is able to make connections between different things. Great ideas are not really ‘a-ha!’ moments; they are more like the collision of different contexts or worlds.

Yet often, when we are trying to see the world differently we do it in the same old environment, surrounded by the same old things. This conditions and limits our thinking to the known; not the best place to make a break through.

To get new ideas, take a break from your normal environment, go somewhere different to spark different thoughts and memories. The more different the location, the more chance the environment will help you see the world differently.

Unleash the subconscious

We also know that our subconscious mind is at its most intuitive when our conscious mind is occupied by a task that is not too taxing. When we are doing something that requires focus, the subconscious focuses on supporting what we are doing. Conversely, when we are not really doing anything, then the subconscious mind is not allowed to wander, as our conscious thoughts become distracting as they wander.

To create the best conditions to allow your subconscious to focus on breakthroughs, new ideas or problem solving, occupy your conscious mind in something engaging enough to keep it occupied, while not too demanding. This is why you have your best ideas in the shower, out on a run or diving the car! So, chilling in the pool, or spending some time playing on the beach with family or friends could be just what you need.

The great outdoors

There is a whole area of psychology that focuses on our relationship with nature. Open natural spaces, especially where there are lots of green and fractal shapes (think plants and trees) create a restorative environment, helping to restore us to our baseline levels.

That sounds a bit technical, but basically the evidence indicates that being in these spaces allows us to reduce stress and recharge. Yet where do we spend most of our time? In man-made spaces, focused on neutral colour tones and straight lines.

In a nutshell, if all you can do is get out of the office and go for a walk in the park, it will make the world seem better. If you can take a few days out to explore more of the natural world, even better.

Accessing positive emotions

On top of this, positive emotions, such as happiness, joy, gratitude and even serenity, enable us to think more widely and see connections and new possibilities. By contrast, negative emotions act to focus our thinking on the problem at hand, limiting the scope of ideas available. This concept of positive emotions was developed by the psychologist Barbara Fredrickson in her ‘broaden and build’ theory which shows how positive emotions help us thrive.

Continuing with the same old routine isn’t going to bring new, positive emotions into our lives. Staying at work day in, day out will just serve to keep us focused on the same old problems. Instead, getting away, doing something different that brings us positive emotions – whether that’s heading out onto the golf course or taking the kids for a day at the beach – will open up our minds to new opportunities.

So if you are thinking that you don’t have time to take a break this summer, that you are too busy, or up to your neck in alligators, then it might be time to think again. Some time in a different environment, especially a natural, restorative space, that gives your subconscious the time it needs to process the challenges and goals you are facing is probably just what you need.

In fact, you probably can’t afford not to go on holiday. If nothing else, it will make you smile, and that alone may be enough to create the breakthrough you need.

Posted On August 16, 2018 By Paul Hutchinson In Productivity /

Purpose and Clarity

Collaboration

Capability

Capacity

Commitment