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Are you feeling stretched thin? Too focused on your to-do list, and not enough on where you’re actually going?
You need a Think Day.
The concept of a Think Day is a more actionable adaptation of the Think Week practice first popularized by Bill Gates in the 1980s.
Gates would seclude himself in a remote location, shut off communication, and spend a week reading and thinking. It allowed him to exit the demands of an average day on the job and train his sights on the bigger picture.
In other words, it was a ritual to create space.
Related: Check out Sahil Bloom’s new book, The 5 Types of Wealth: A Transformative Guide to Design Your Dream Life.
If you’re like me, you don’t have an entire week to dedicate to thinking, but you can adapt your own version with a similar core vision.
Pick one day each month and carve out a few hours to step back from all of your day-to-day professional demands:
- Separate yourself from your normal environments (mentally or physically). Ideally, you’d place yourself in an inspiring space, such as a house in nature or a big, open coffee shop.
- Bring a journal, pen, and open mind. No fancy tools or devices required.
- Shut off all your devices. This forces you to shut off the constant stimulus drip. This is important.
The goal is to spend the time thinking and journaling. By doing this, you create the free time to zoom out, open your mind, and think creatively about the bigger picture.
Start with a two-hour block for your first one and work your way up from there if you enjoy the process.
To spark your thinking, here are five question prompts to start with:
1. If I repeated my current typical day for one hundred days, would my life be better or worse?
The zoomed in perspective makes it difficult to assess the quality of your daily actions.
This question forces you to zoom out:
- How would your actions from a typical day compound in your life?
- Would they be driving you forward in the direction of your goals and vision?
- Would they be steering you off course?
Remember the 1-in-60 Rule: A 1 degree error in heading means a plane will miss its destination by 1 mile for every 60 miles flown. Small errors in heading are amplified by distance and time.
Course correct early and often.
2. If someone observed my actions for a week, what would they say my priorities are?
There are two types of priorities in life:
- The priorities you say you have.
- The priorities your actions show you have.
For many of us, there is a significant gap between 1 and 2. The goal is to identify the gap and adjust our actions to close it.
3. If I were the main character in a movie of my life, what would the audience be screaming at me to do right now?
We’ve all been there: Watching a movie and the main character is clearly veering off course.
We feel that urge to scream at them:
- “No, don’t open that door!”
- “Don’t let her leave!”
- “You can do it, don’t hold back!”
You are that main character in the movie of your life—and your audience would be screaming something at you right now.
What is it? What’s obvious from the outside that you’re too zoomed in to see?
Perspective is everything. Ask this question to detach yourself from your situation and see it through someone else’s eyes.
4. Am I hunting antelope or chasing field mice?
Antelope are the big, important problems. Field mice are the tiny, urgent ones.
Are you focusing on the big important tasks that provide sufficient reward for your energy? Or are you too busy chasing tiny wins that won’t move the needle?
Always hunt antelope!
5. What are my strongest beliefs and what would it take for me to change my mind on them?
The most successful people realize that finding the truth is much more important than being right.
They embrace new information as “software updates” to their brain.
What new information would be required to change your mind on your most strongly held beliefs?
Your entire life will change the moment you realize that the growth you’ve asked for is on the other side of the space you’ve been avoiding.
In a speed-obsessed world, the benefits of creating space are extensive:
- Restore energy
- Notice things you missed
- Be more deliberate with actions
- Focus on the highest-leverage opportunities
Remember: Slow is smooth and smooth is fast.
The Think Day can help. Give it a shot and experience the benefits of intentional space.
Want more? This essay is excerpted from Sahil Bloom’s new book, The 5 Types of Wealth: A Transformative Guide to Design Your Dream Life.
