Ideas spring forth like flowers in the foliage, but you’ve got to give them time to blossom I’ve just been copied in on a Linked In coaching discussion about how ‘multi-tasking’ might be damaging our brains. One of the contributors, Alan Wingrove said: “[Being busy] is something society should be worried about and a good book to read on the subject is ‘Brain Chains’ by Theo Compernolle. He explains how our ‘addiction’ to multi-tasking leads to poor decision, by taking time away from reflection and thinking; which has challenges for the coaching profession.” I am encountering significantly higher numbers of clients who are stressed and close to burn-out; all commenting that they are ‘too busy’. Many of them have, what I am starting to call, half-attention deficit disorder (HADD) whereby they will be talking to you and subconsciously be aware of their devices ‘calling for their attention’.”

I was ‘lucky’ enough to be working with one of the multitude of headquarters overseeing the West’s response to the civil war in Syria. Fortunately I had a bit of spare time so I made time to cogitate. I loved the idea in Benedict Carey’s book ‘How We Learn’ that we have a ‘doing’ brain and a ‘daydreaming’ brain. As long as there’s something ‘to do’ the brain will focus on that, but you need time to ‘daydream’ (hence the benefit of yoga, mindfulness etc) to make proper rounded decisions. Military headquarters, probably like most of the corporate world, like to spin e-mails and random communications around, using the ‘strike rate’ as some sort of measure of efficiency. This keeps the ‘doing brain’ really active but does rather mean that the imagination barely gets a look in when making important plans. That’s why soldiers mostly climb out of their trenches and walk very slowly towards the enemy: their ‘leaders’ haven’t given themselves enough time to think the problem through properly. And why wars are often won by civilians because they approach the perspective from a different angle.

Do you give your daydreaming brain time to work problems through? You can probably achieve more in an hour’s thinking time than spending 4 hours giving the e-mail vortex another spin. That’s why some top executives feel they can justify their exorbitant salaries and still spend time on the golf course. An old colleague of mine was good at getting this balance right. Given an extremely short notice task first thing on a Wednesday to give a presentation that afternoon, he made a couple of notes on a post-it and then disappeared to honour an appointment he had on the golf course. The presentation went well and was probably improved by the sense of perspective gained. That wouldn’t work for me as I would be mostly using my ‘doing’ brain looking for the ball in the rough…again. But I have plenty of time to mull things through when out with the dog or, when I was on operations, on the bike ride from our accommodation to the headquarters shed.