From the course: Creating an Adaptable Team

Managing time is critical thinking

From the course: Creating an Adaptable Team

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Managing time is critical thinking

- Have you ever gone out to eat after a long and stressful workday, and you groan when the waiter hands you a giant catalog-sized menu? Ugh! 48 pages of choices. It's too much. You don't have the bandwidth to decide what you want to eat. You don't even know what you want to drink. This was supposed to be a fun and relaxing time, but your brain is quickly tapped out. When things come at us fast, it's difficult to process everything. The velocity creates confusion and fatigue. Too much, too fast, leaves us overwhelmed. So how do we reserve the brain power for critical thinking? In this video, I want to share three things you can do to recharge your mental bandwidth and engage in critical thinking. The first is to manage your time to allow for recharging. Just like your cell phone needs charging, so do you, and you can't rush it. The harder you push during the day, the more drained you are likely to be. So just like your phone, after intense use, it will require longer time to recharge. Schedule in some time in your day to recharge, breaks from screen time, time to walk, time to break for a healthy snack. Then you will have energy to do critical thinking, which requires lots of energy and focus. Next, know what restores you and what doesn't. What factors help your brain operate at optimum performance? You might restore through conversations, or you might restore better in solitude, so know what works best for you. Also, know what and who is a drain. Try to minimize your exposure to draining tasks and people if you are trying to restore your brain for critical thinking. Finally, remember that critical thinking is meta. It's thinking about thinking. It's difficult and requires discipline, energy and focus. Take the time to be curious. Ask difficult questions like, "Do I really want to know what I don't know?", requires honesty and time. Critical thinking requires courage to challenge your assumptions, so don't rush it. Be patient and embrace the process. Reflection is a lost art, but a necessary one for you to develop optimal, critical thinking.

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