Something that has been coming up in sessions with many different executive coaching clients is the lack of thinking time outside of our coaching. My job, as a coach, is to not only help leaders solve the problem they are grappling with but to also help them develop self-coaching skills so that they can continue the power of coaching once I step away. I think this is what can make coaching powerful. When the impact continues long after the relationship between coach and coachee has ended.
In this article, we’ll look at:
- Why space and time for thinking is important
- When you do your deep thinking
- Where you do your best thinking
- What helps you do your best thinking
Why space and time for thinking is important
As a leader, the impact of what you do and say can have a huge ripple effect. Some of this impact can be unintended when there is a lack of sufficient thought or insight. I think we’re in this messy hybrid world of industrial era (our worth being about how much we’re producing) and the information era (our ability to think).
Through my work, I still see primacy being put on the former with our worth being determined how much we do, how many emails we respond to, how many meetings we attend. As Dr Joanne Gray says in her book, Powering Workplace Proactivity: How to build a future-focused, change-oriented culture,
“In choosing “busy-ness” we neglect creative thinking time, which has already been highlighted as critical to productivity.”
A joint project between the London School of Economics, Columbia and Harvard Universities studied how 1,114 CEOs in six different countries spend their time. In one study looking at 94 CEOs of top Italian firms and 357 corporate leaders in India, they found that 60% of CEOs’ working hours and 56% of corporate leaders’ working hours were spent in meetings, and these figures didn’t include conference calls!
If all you are doing as a leader is attending meetings, answering emails and calls, where is the time to think? I’m not talking about that reactive and instinctive thinking (fast thinking) which is important, particularly during crisis situations. I’m talking about slow and deep thinking, which is proactive, more intentional and much more strategic.
Psychologist Daniel Levitin says in his book, The Organized Mind: The science of preventing overload, increasing productivity and restoring your focus,
“Your brain is just the tool for the Information Age.”
However, to be an effective tool in this era of AI and big, gnarly global problems, it needs sufficient time and space to breathe.
Here are three questions to help you make time and space for deep thinking:
1) When do you do your best deep thinking?
This isn’t about shoehorning deep thinking in wherever you can, such as those two minutes between your back-to-back meetings. In his book, When: The scientific secrets of perfect timing, Daniel Pink says,
“There’s an optimum time to do different tasks, such as ‘deep thinking’.”
Try this:
Identify a time of day and day of the week when you know you are at your best, when you can do some good thinking. Block this out as a meeting to yourself and protect it. Some of my clients mark this as a private meeting to themselves and ask their PA (if they have one) to not book over it.
You don’t have to start big. Try 15 minutes, once a week.
2) Where do you do your best deep thinking?
Very few of us do our best thinking at our desk, with the siren call of the laptop and all those lovely emails! It can be helpful to find a specific space to do your deep thinking. This creates an association in your brain – “ah, we’re in deep thinking mode”.
One study found that walking outside can have a powerful effect on our creative thinking. The researchers compared walking outside to walking inside (on a treadmill) or sitting inside or sitting outside. Walking outside was the powerhouse. The researchers more than 80% of the participants were more creative when walking than when seated, and they were most creative when walking outside.
Try this:
Experiment with different spaces to do some deep thinking, other than your office. Notice which spaces yield which effects. For example, is there a certain space where you are more creative? Is there a certain space where you feel calmer and have more clarity?
3) What helps you do your best thinking?
Some leaders like to have a blank slate. Just thinking, with no agenda or focus, to see what comes up. Others prefer some questions to help them. For example, research looking at leadership effectiveness suggest that it can be helpful to start your day by thinking about the kind of leader you want to be. Each day, a group of leaders were asked to reflect on the following questions:
- What are some of your proudest leadership moments?
- What qualities do you have that make you a good leader, or will in the future?
- Think about who you aspire to be as a leader, then imagine everything has gone as well as it possibly could in this leader role. What does that look like?
- What effect do you want to have on your employees? Do you want to motivate them? Inspire them? Identify and develop their talents? What skills or traits do you have that can help with those goals?
The leaders (current and aspiring) who reflected on these questions each morning reported feeling more strategic, more influential and more leader-like.
Why not engage in some reflective practice about your impact as a leader? Here is an article I wrote about the power of reflective practice for leaders which has lots of other questions for you to choose from.
Try these:
- Read an article that stimulates your thinking.
- Have a notebook and pen and just write.
- Select a question to act as a prompt for your thinking. For example:
– What strategic risk am I ignoring?
– What part am I playing in the culture I don’t want in my team?
– Where are we moving too slow?
– Where am I managing detail rather than leading strategically?
Take the first step – reflect on these five questions
- When in my week do I create uninterrupted time to think about what is important?
- How intentional am I about where I do my deep, creative and reflective thinking?
- Which decisions currently need intentional thinking rather than a reactive response?
- How often do I step back to consider my impact as a leader?
- How do I get in my own way when it comes to making space and time for deep thinking?
YOUR NEXT STEPS TO BETTER PEOPLE MANAGEMENT!
I believe you’re here in my little corner of the internet because you want to be the best people manager possible. My mantra is “It starts with you” and by reading this article, you’ve made a brilliant step forward. Now here are some next steps for you to take:
Follow me on Linkedin where I share tools and tips to help people managers.
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HELP OTHERS MANAGE WITH CONFIDENCE
Know a leader who could do with making time and space for deep thinking? Send them this article to help them.
Post author: Dr Hayley Lewis. First published on the HALO Psychology website 20 September 2026.
STUDIES REFERENCED IN THIS ARTICLE