Thinking should be a priority, not a day-off activity

When was the last time you had time to think that wasn’t just squeezing in a few minutes between meetings or rushing on your 30-minute lunch break? You’re probably still thinking of your answer—and that’s a problem. We need deep, uninterrupted thinking time if we want big breakthroughs.

Days spent doing, not thinking

For the typical employee, days are filled with busy work—like drafting time-consuming reports, attending meetings with repetitive information, and responding to emails that are seemingly unnecessary. Busy work like this is the enemy of success because it sucks our time. It’s just an illusion of progress that clutters our calendars and distracts us from real progress.

Deep work—and thinking—on the other hand is where real change happens through focused attention on a problem. It allows our teams to lean into their skills to create fresh ideas that drive improvement. It’s when we carve out distraction-free time to solve complex problems, strategize for the future, or develop new solutions without Slack notifications, last-minute office round-ups, or unexpected interruptions.

According to a report by Asana, we’re spending 60% of our workdays on “work about work.” This means we only have 33% of our days left for skilled work, and a pathetic 9% for strategic work.

We’ve created a work culture where thinking feels like a daring act. Consider this: If you caught someone in their office just staring out the window, how would you react?

Most people I ask this say: “They’re slacking off,” “they must not be that busy” (meaning: they aren’t valuable), or “Get back to work!” Likewise, why do so many of us put fake meetings on our calendars to block off precious time to do important work? It’s because having thinking time feels, well, selfish. If we’re not busy, we must not be productive.

But organizations are waking up to the fact that being busy isn’t a badge of honor and, without time to think, minimal innovation can be achieved. All too often we push our deep thinking time to the “I’ll get to it when I get to it” parts of our lives. This has to stop.

Creating a culture for deep work

A study by the University of California, Irvine found employees allowed to work uninterrupted for extended periods are more productive with significantly lower stress levels. To truly solve our innovation problems at work, we need to eliminate unnecessary distractions and prioritize more thinking time. Here’s how:

Minimize meetings, maximize thinking: How many of your scheduled meetings are actually necessary? It’s time to audit your calendar and get rid of zombie meetings that have outlived their time. Encourage your team to do this as well, and discuss where you can eliminate pointless meetings altogether to make room for deep thinking time across the board.

Say no more often: Protect quality time by blocking it off on your calendar, silencing notifications, and closing your door. This should be distraction-free time, which means saying no to everything else.

Redefine productivity: True productivity isn’t about how many tasks you can check off or the hours you clock in. It’s about the quality and impact of those hours. If we’re focused on pointless tasks instead of skill-specific deep work, how are we improving as a company? With your immediate team, align on your big picture projects, overall goals, and ultimate mission so your teams can spend their time on work that truly moves the needle forward.

Mandate thinking: At my organization, Futurethink, we mandate that people carve out half a day each week for deep work. This sends a signal that time for uninterrupted work is a priority and they are empowered to protect that time.

Thinking matters

Here’s the reality: Many of our eureka moments happen when we are alone when we can quiet our minds to create solutions without stress. By prioritizing deep thinking time before strategic meetings, we come to the table with well-developed questions and potential solutions, making our collaborative efforts more powerful and our discussions more meaningful. If thinking time is treated like a luxury, true innovation will always be out of reach. But when we make it a priority, everybody wins.