“We live in a time of perfect mediocrity and confused ends.” ~ Albert Einstein

Over the past couple of nights, when I get home from work at 10:30 or 11:00pm, I am too wound up to go straight to bed. So I have been reading John C Maxwell’s book “Make Today Count“.

“Drawing from the text of the Business Week bestseller Today Matters, this condensed, revised edition boils down John C. Maxwell’s 12 daily practices to their very essence, giving maximum impact in minimal time. Presented in a quick-read format, this version is designed to be read cover to cover in one sitting or taken in as brief lessons in a few spare minutes each day. It covers such topics as:
– Priorities
– Health
– Family
– Finances
– Values
– Growth
Readers will learn how to make decisions on important matters and apply those decisions daily to put them on a path to more successful, productive, and fulfilling lives.”

It also covers the topic of Thinking. And I have been thinking about Thinking for several months now. Several of the books that I have read lately have dealt with this topic, whether in a fiction novel or non-fiction history book. So last night I made some notes:

As you can see, listed on the left side of the page are 12 kinds of thinking, from Focused to Big-picture. Maxwell observes that not everyone (and probably not anyone) does all of these types of thinking well.

I was able to glean 8 tools or tips about how best to handle this fact:

1. Maximize your strengths, staff your weaknesses. Now, not everyone has the funding for hiring people to cover all of their weaknesses. Or even some of them. But I believe that everyone can learn to stop re-inventing the wheel and look to books and the internet to find solutions to the obstacles that they face. Go on Twitter and just ask for help, people love to help.
2. Find a place to think. This is certainly true for me. I do my best thinking sitting at the other desk here in my office, the one that has no computer or other distractions. Since I got my new work table, my desk has become the place where I sit down to be creative and do my real thinking. My lovely bride thinks that I am crazy to have two desks, but it works for me.
3. Set aside time for Thinking every day. This is one of my goals for 2010, to create a little space in my calendar for each day. Even if it isn’t very long, incremental improvements can mean powerful results.
4. Find a process that works for you. See the Place to Think tip, above. This is a work-in-progress as well, and likely something that I will be writing about later.
5. Capture your thoughts. A very important piece of advice, I cannot stress this enough! Whether you use a notebook, a scrap pf paper, or a smartphone, grab those ideas and record them.
6. Put your thoughts into action quickly. Or, at the very least, put them into your project calendar. Another of my goals for 2010 is to start fewer things so that I can finish more. I am notorious for getting a half-baked idea and then running with it. This year I am going to let these ideas finish baking.
7. Work to improve your Thinking every day. Go ahead and make mistakes, get all of the ideas out of your head so that you can discard the bad ones and get on to the good ones.
8. Intentional thinking is not commonplace. So many of the people that I talk to recently are just scrambling. Working as fast as they can and being busy all of the time just to keep afloat. We need to work a little smarter everyday, just a little, so that we can get ahead of that overload and start to whittle it down. Then we can really start Thinking and making bigger, and better, improvements that will have successively greater impacts.

What are a couple of things that you have been thinking about that could make successively greater impacts in your life?

For me, it means daily exercise, daily creative work, a daily wrap-up of what I accomplished – and a firm commitment to Weekly Reviews.