I hope you’re having a nice weekend. Here’s this week’s 200 word idea thanks to Essentialism by Greg McKeown on Linkedin, Susan Heathfield on Humanresources.about.com (as a part of what seems to be Bill Gates weekend at ALearningaDay)..
Bill Gates has a bi-annual ritual called “think-week.” As Microsoft CEO, prior to each think week, Gates has his assistants collected papers “from every corner of Microsoft,” according to what they thought his priorities should be.
He would then spend a week in a cottage in the woods where friends and family were banned. And, he’d spend his days reading papers on proposals from Microsoft’s employees, studying technology and thinking about the bigger picture. The week was then followed by a flood of e-mail messages to his colleagues and employees about new ideas, old ideas, existing projects, and proposed ones.
He started this in the 1980s and stuck to it through the height of Microsoft’s expansion. No matter how busy or frenetic, he created time and space to seclude himself for a week to do nothing but read and think about the bigger picture. Today, he still takes the time away from the daily distractions of running his foundation to simply think.
As author Greg McKeown points out, “whether you can invest two hours a day, two weeks a year, or even just five minutes every morning, it is important to make space to escape in your busy life.”
Source and thanks to: www.EBSketchin.com
‘I think that if we spend a little bit of time every day cut off from the noise – it could be walking, sitting in meditation, journaling, exercise, or just staring at the sky – just a little bit of time reconnecting with you without your title, your obligations, your responsibilities, the things that plague you all day long, that would enable you to build a foundation and then work your tail off.’ – Jerry Colonna on RealLeaders.tv
A Learning a Day 