What Modern Corporate Workers Lack the Most Is Thinking Time

Posted on November 17, 2022 by Sabrina Sourjah, One of Thousands of Performance Coaches on Noomii.

One day, I was chatting with a stakeholder about one of the software projects my team was delivering for him when he asked me if we could crash the timelines further. Crashing timelines is project management speaking for delivering the project sooner by looking for more efficiencies and dependencies between tasks.

“Is there a particular reason for you to want the delivery sooner?” I asked.

He looked at me with a smirk as if I had no idea what my role was. As if this was the stupidest question on earth. “Why wouldn’t you want to deliver something sooner? Isn’t that your job to try to push things and deliver projects earlier than expected?”

I was stuck in the pits of the corporate trap at that time and didn’t have the guts to tell him how I truly felt. That we should be concerned about our employees’ well-being and not drive them to the ground if there was no compelling reason to do so. So, I just smiled and nodded hesitantly. I complied with the accepted corporate (non)urgency, skipping meals, working late, and defining my success by my delivery timelines.

=> Why Do We Need Thinking Time?

Thinking time is the time during the workday when we simply get to think about work. What things can we think about? How to make our jobs easier, how are we contributing to the company’s strategic goals, are we improving on things we want to improve on, are our teams happy and effective, and what can I do differently.

What we end up doing is we think of all these things at home or during the weekend because we don’t have time to think at work. We eat into our family time and hobbies, unable to switch off from work. We know how important creativity and vision are for work, and we don’t want to lose our edge. So, what choice do we have than thinking about work at home?

=> Creative vision

Becoming creative and having a vision at work requires quiet time to reflect, even for extroverts. Our brains become most creative when they’re resting quietly. We cannot always put out fires, create reports that no one looks at, negotiate office politics, and respond to show-stopper issues that keep cropping up every day. We will never get to the day when we can cross off everything on our to-do lists and close our laptops with pride.

=> Avoid mistakes

When we always work in a fight-or-flight mode in modern corporates, is there any surprise that we sometimes make costly mistakes? We implement software that hasn’t gone through the whole testing cycle, and we launch products that a representative sample of our customers has not sampled. We throw money at consultants who have no idea about the inner workings of our organizations.

If you’re still unsure what to think about during thinking time, even the simplest tasks, like reviewing product specifications, can benefit from thinking time. When I was designing some financial reports, I noticed that every time I blindly jumped into the task, I missed the opportunity for strategic design and synergies between tasks. So, before beginning to design each report, I gave myself some thinking time to brainstorm all the tasks related to the design and how best to execute these tasks. Are there any tools that I can use to make my job easier? Is there anyone on the team whose expertise I may benefit from?

A few months after my discussion with the stakeholder who wanted me to crash the timeline, I started working at a government organization — the only role in my life so far where I had enough and more thinking time. I even took a walk during lunch every other day. I felt minimal stress. I got to think through my decisions, choose vendors after much consideration, and experiment with new process changes to see what worked best. It truly felt like heaven.

=> How Can We Ask for Thinking Time at Work?

=> Activate management
When I matured in my career, I didn’t resolve to be the meek yes-sayer anymore. I learned to stand my ground and tell stakeholders that my team was tired and they had lives outside of work. I risked the displeasure of certain stakeholders once I got my priorities right and gained more confidence. Most times, this opened up the eyes of higher management and stakeholders.

If you’re having a hard time convincing your boss of the necessity of thinking time, you can use research to prove its importance. For example, research by the Harvard Business School suggests how reflection at work can boost employee performance. According to the American Psychological Association (APA), those who take time to capture new ideas, seek out challenging tasks, and broaden existing knowledge tend to be more creative. How can you do any of these things if you don’t have scheduled thinking time for reflection?

Another way to convince management is to quote from the company’s stated values and goals and link them with the benefits of thinking time. How will the lack of reflection affect the teams in the long term? What is the company’s responsibility to employees? How can we attain the company’s strategic initiatives if w have no idea how each of our tasks connects to these initiatives?

=> Schedule thinking time
I scheduled thinking time at work and informed my manager about this too. I encouraged my teams to do the same. This was a non-negotiable time that had to be protected. Of course, there were times I had to move this allocated time block to make room for “burning” issues. But I tried my best not to cancel my weekly thinking time.

If you’re a team lead, you can even collectively set a thinking block for your team so that no one will schedule meetings during this time. During team meetings, you can make time to discuss any ideas that your team had during their thinking time. This encourages your team to embrace a culture of thinking vs. the current culture of endlessly doing.

Thinking time shouldn’t be limited to an offsite brain dump once a year or quarter. Thinking time should be built into every week, at least every month. Also, offsite events don’t really work for introverted people like me, who are always not comfortable thinking in a group. I’m sure Plato didn’t come up with his philosophical thoughts while having a beer with his teammates.

Thank you for reading. How can you prioritize your thinking time this week?