Every few months I revisit a favorite essay on thinking well, William Deresiewicz’s “Solitude and Leadership.” Originally an address given at West Point on the brink of the new millennium, Deresiewicz explores the substance of leadership and reveals what truly makes a person a thinker.
Graduating from academic institutions and thinking well are not synonymous. Plenty of programs are built, not independent thought, but on memorization of facts. If academic success doesn’t necessarily indicate strong thinking, then what exactly is thinking? Thinking, to paraphrase Deresiewicz, is spending enough time with a topic to develop your own ideas and conclusions about that topic. Thinking isn’t concerned with memorization, but contemplation. Then, from these distilled thoughts, we can produce good decisions.
Slow Down
“I find for myself that my first thought is never my best thought. My first thought is always someone else’s; it’s always what I’ve already heard about the subject, always the conventional wisdom. It’s only by concentrating, sticking to the question, being patient, letting all the parts of my mind come into play, that I arrive at an original idea.”
…
“You do your best thinking by slowing down and concentrating.”
Great decisions are made by slowing down. The first step in thinking is to make time for your mind to work. The simplest way to do this is literally blocking time to think on your schedule, a common practice among high achievers. Bill Gates took his yearly “think weeks;” Warren Buffet famously spends his days reading and thinking; countless CEO’s block hours on their weekly calendars for creative thinking. There is simply no another way to guarantee devoted time to thought. Schedule yourself a few hours to think, just yourself and a notebook. I’ve chosen to make this a weekly practice by blocking off two hours every Friday morning as my “Think Hour,” where I reflect over the past week. This time is dedicated to quiet contemplation and goal setting, as well as working through essay ideas, logistics, and future planning. Those few hours bring such a focus and clarity to my entire week, the Think Hour has become non-negotiable.
Shorter snippets count, too. While blocking hours to think all at once can be a great option, your thinking doesn’t necessarily need to happen at one specific time. Set aside fifteen minutes to consider possible solutions for your conundrum at work, or use ten minutes after lunch to think back over the reading you did this morning. The point is clearing space in your day for good thinking.
Multitasking
“Multitasking, in short, is not only not thinking, it impairs your ability to think. Thinking means concentrating on one thing long enough to develop an idea about it.”
Thinking is not multitasking. Multitasking is not thinking. Multitasking is switching between tasks, costs you time, and actually reduces your capacity for deep thought. We improve our thinking by focusing on one subject at a time. Contrary to many a college study setting, hanging out in a group while Jay-Z blares through Air Pods, as you scroll Instagram and look over your notes is a great way to prevent deep thinking. Instead, keep your dedicated thinking time and down time separate. You’ll end up with more time saved by focusing and coming to decisions, and still have time for your breaks from deep work. Good thinking demands your full attention.
Solitude
“But it seems to me that solitude is the very essence of leadership. The position of the leader is ultimately an intensely solitary, even intensely lonely one. However many people you may consult, you are the one who has to make the hard decisions. And at such moments, all you really have is yourself.”
To think well, you need time alone. Solitude is where old and new ideas collide, fitting together in novel configurations, culminating in something entirely unique. Sitting alone in an empty room isn’t the only form of solitude, however. Deresiewicz recommends two additional sources of solitude; books, because they are more detailed in form and informed by the author’s own solitude; and deep conversations with trusted friends, which will open up new perspectives, present new ideas, work through the implications of those new ideas, and generally allow you to “think out loud.”
Deresiewicz opens his address commenting on how contradictory his title must seem; how could one possibly lead if they are by themselves? Leadership is the ability to think for yourself. As he concludes, solitude is where we think deeply, which prepares us for the rigors of leading. The best decisions are made in solitude, marked by introspection and far from social media and the latest headlines.
You can’t make good decisions without good thinking and good thinking takes time.
