Clarity of Thought!

There was a king who had twin sons and nobody else. Obviously, he had difficulty in choosing the right one. He called his sons and asked each one of them on how the twin princes would rule the country after he denounce his throne.

The first one said "I will work with my brother and mother and serve the people to the best of my capability........bla ...bla...bla".

The second one said "I will rule."

In my 16 years of professional experience, the most successful people, I interact with fell in the second category. Unfortunately, I believe clarity of thought is like an art and not everybody is equally born with this skill. However, I think we can conciously develop clarity of thinking and avoid lot of clutter in our minds. Here are a few pragmatic ways and means I was able to improve my clarity of thinking:

1. Arrest Information overflow: Information is powerful when it is optimal. In today's world, we have so many options and choices, we get confused with too much information and the decison making becomes harder. For example, when I get 1 million hits for a simple search in the Google, how do I know which information is correct. As long as you have information as to not to reinvent the wheel, you are good to go.
   


2. Don't be a Gadget addict: Use gadgets only to improve your efficiency. For example, checking email every 5 minutes is counter productive. One best practice I try to follow is to check emails only 3 times a day. It's easier said than done but believe me, you have so much free time and can be extremely productive @ work. Try this for three days and you will realize how addicted you are to the emails and how much free time you will have if you follow my approach. If someone wants to talk to you immediately, they will call you. Also in the same lines, close that browser when you don't want it. Email, internet and Cellphone combined will hamper your thinking and eat most of your productive time.
   


3. Frameworks Help: There are a number of techniques and frameworks available and accessible to help your decision making. SWAT analysis, Root cause analysis etc., are tools many of us are familiar with now a days but ask yourself how much are you using these tools for your day to day activity. One tool I find extremely useful for my work is to divide my activities into four categories: 1) Urgent but not Important 2)Important but not urgent 3)Urgent and Important 4) Not urgent not Importent. Category 2) is the place you should try to put as many hours as possible and make sure nothing is pending in this area. Because if its Urgent and important you will do it anyway. If it's Urgent but not important you will do it or you will probably delegate it.


4. Chose Best times for thinking: Pick your best times for work which involves thinking. Early mornings for me are usually very good to be productive at my best. Some times late nights also work better for me.


5. Postpone decision making: I have experienced many a times that simply postponing my decisions has solved many problems. I am not saying you should postpone all decisions. But many a times, postponing a decison will actually buy you an option at minimum or no cost. Consider this as an alternative options very similar to non-of the above options in GMAT.