As the image above notes,
“Reflective thinking turns experience into insight”
As a Sounding Board to Leaders, what I do for clients isn’t rocket science.
I take time with people.
I listen.
After listening, I reflect back to them what I heard them say, sometimes with my own insights from my own relatable experiences and knowledge.
Then? I listen some more, and so on.
Basically, time with me helps my clients turn their own experience into insights.
In the last week or two, I’ve spent time with clients on calls and in-person meetings where they have all been so busy that the time they spent with me is really the only time they take in their diary to reflect.
The only time they take to reflect is the (typically) few hours a month they spend with me on various calls and meetings.
This all reminds me of learnings from one of the greatest investors of all time and the phrase “busy is the new stupid”.
As friends and regular readers know, the first twenty or so years of my career were very much focussed on numbers, on finances, on investing, on building value in businesses.
As I constantly sought to learn, I studied deeply from Warren Buffett, the “Sage of Omaha”.
A phrase he coined is “Busy is the new stupid”.
I’ve written about his absolute focus on how he spends his time before, in “Be ruthless with your time” (in which I reflected on how I spend my time, on purpose, on the less time clients needs to spend with me to get what they need the more value they receive etc), and in “Stop the “Busyness” (in which I muse on how society seems to consider the norm to be so busy we have no time for what truly matters).
For detail, then, please go to either or both of those articles. For today, though, simply a reminder from Bill Gates of what he has learned from Warren Buffett on the value of NOT being busy. Do watch this, take two minutes from your busy day, please.