Deep Thinking
Today I heard someone suggest we not confuse overthinking with deep thinking. It’s an interesting point.
In our productivity focused workplaces, we place much emphasis on speedy decisions. We quote taglines of famous sporting brands to inspire an action orientation.
We often associate thinking with other behaviours and work processes that slow things down. We don’t want to make time for people and teams to think as it seems so unproductive. Any level of thinking is labelled as overthinking and is seen as a negative trait in our teams.
The paradox is that for most of us work has become more complex and dynamic. We need to think about things more and when we allow thinking time, not only can we can achieve the quick results and efficiency we seek, we get richer and better solutions and decisions.
It’s never as simple as
thinking = slow = bad
versus
doing = quick = good.
As with most things, it’s an “and” not an “or”.
I’m curious, how does your workplace support deep thinking?