1. Find a Place to Think Your Thoughts
If you go to your designated place to think
expecting to generate good thoughts, then eventually you will come up with
some. Where is the best place to think? Everybody’s different. Some people
think best in the shower. Others, like my friend Dick Biggs, like to go to a
park. For me, the best places to think are in my car, on planes, and in the
spa. Ideas come to me in other places as well, such as when I’m in bed. (I keep
a special lighted writing pad on my nightstand for such times.) I believe I
often get thoughts because I make it a habit to frequently go to my thinking
places. If you want to consistently generate ideas, you need to do the same
thing. Find a place where you can think, and plan to capture your thoughts on
paper so that you don’t lose them. When
I found a place to think my thoughts, my thoughts
found a place in me.
2. Find a Place to Shape Your Thoughts
Rarely do ideas come fully formed and completely
worked out. Most of the time, they need to be shaped until they have substance.
As my friend Dan Reiland says, they have to “stand the test of clarity and questioning.”
During the shaping time, you want to hold an idea up to strong scrutiny. Many
times a thought that seemed outstanding late at night looks pretty silly in the
light of day. Ask questions about your ideas. Fine tune them. One of the best
ways to do that is to put your thoughts in writing. Professor, college
president, and U.S. senator S. I. Hayakawa wrote, “Learning to write is
learning to think. You don’t know anything clearly unless you can state it in
writing.”
As you shape your thoughts, you find out whether
an idea has potential. You learn what you have. You also learn some things
about yourself. The shaping time thrills me because it embodies:
Humor: The thoughts
that don’t work often provide comic relief.
Humility: The moments
when I connect with God awe me.
Excitement: I love to play out an idea mentally. (I call it “futuring” it.)
Creativity: In these moments I am unhampered by reality.
Fulfillment: God made me for this process; it uses my greatest gifts and gives me
joy.
Honesty: As I turn
over an idea in my mind, I discover my true motives.
Passion: When you
shape a thought, you find out what you believe and what really counts.
Change: Most of the
changes I have made in my life resulted from thorough thinking on a subject. You
can shape your thoughts almost anywhere. Just find a place that works for you,
where you will be able to write things down, focus your attention without
interruptions, and ask questions about your ideas.
3. Find a Place to Stretch Your
Thoughts
If you come upon great thoughts and spend time
mentally shaping them, don’t think you’re done and can stop there. If you do,
you will miss some of the most valuable aspects of the thinking process. You
miss bringing others in and expanding ideas to their greatest potential. Earlier
in my life, I have to admit, I was often guilty of this error. I wanted to take
an idea from seed thought to solution before sharing it with anyone, even the
people it would most impact. I did this both at work and at home. But over the
years, I have learned that you can go much farther with a team than you can go
alone. I’ve found a kind of formula that can help you stretch your thoughts. It
says,
This combination is hard to beat. Like every
person, every thought has the potential to become something great. When you
find a place to stretch your thoughts, you find that potential.
4. Find a Place to Land Your Thoughts
Author C. D. Jackson observes that “great ideas
need landing gear as well as wings.” Any idea that remains only an idea doesn’t
make a great impact. The real power of an idea comes when it goes from abstraction
to application. Think about Einstein’s theory of relativity. When he published
his theories in 1905 and 1916, they were merely profound ideas. Their real
power came with the development of the nuclear reactor in 1942 and the nuclear
bomb in 1945. When scientists developed and implemented Einstein’s ideas, the whole
world changed. Likewise, if you want your thoughts to make an impact, you need
to land them with others so that they can someday be implemented. As you plan
for the application phase of the thinking process, land your ideas first
with Yourself: Landing an idea with yourself will give you integrity. People will buy
into an idea only after they buy into the leader who communicates it. Before
teaching any lesson, I ask myself three questions: “Do I believe it? Do I live
it? Do I believe others should live it?” If I can’t answer yes to all three
questions, then I haven’t landed it.
Key Players: Let’s face it, no idea will fly if the influencers don’t embrace it.
After all, they are the people who carry thoughts from idea to implementation.
Those Most Affected: Landing thoughts with the people on the firing line will give you
great insight. Those closest to changes that occur as a result of a new idea
can give you a “reality read.” And that’s important, because sometimes even
when you’ve diligently completed the process of creating a thought, shaping it,
and stretching it with other good thinkers, you can still miss the mark.
5. Find a Place to Fly Your Thoughts
French philosopher Henri-Louis Bergson, who won
the Nobel Prize in literature in 1927, asserted that a person should “think
like a man of action—act like a man of thought.” What good is thinking if it
has no application in real life? Thinking divorced from actions cannot be
productive. Learning how to master the process of thinking well leads you to
productive thinking. If you can develop the discipline of good thinking and turn
it into a lifetime habit, then you will be successful and productive all of
your life. Once you’ve created, shaped, stretched, and landed your thoughts,
then flying them can be fun and easy.
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