Innovation sometimes appears between the lines
In today’s world, we are bombarded with people telling us that we need to be productive all the time. We need to have a perfect calendar and perform meetings very effectively and the list goes on and on.
All of this is very important. There are many hours during the day that being productive can improve your outcome and save you many hours of work.
The question is what do you do with the time that is left. If you are productive all the time it leaves no time to think. I have even heard of people that put the exact time in the calendar for thinking. But unlike other tasks innovative thinking cannot always be rushed. There are things that take time to blossom.
For a product manager, leaving some time to stare at the wall and get bored is very important.
Hectic Life
Today’s world is very hectic. Our senses are bombarded from every direction and in any media. Everything is short and fast both inside your work as well as outside in the social networks you are exposed to. And it is impossible to disconnect from it all, because all of these mediums also contribute to your work, contribute to you staying up to date and on top of the markets and trends.
And if you add to that our feeling that if we don’t produce something we feel very unproductive, it leads to product managers that work only on tactics. Because while working on tactics, it is very easy to feel productive and usually you have an outcome you can feel and see.
Boredom and Laziness
If you run yourself down trying to always be productive, you might miss the long game. It will be hard to work on strategy and new ideas. Working on strategy requires time. It involves a lot of thinking and many days in which you might feel that nothing new was produced as you go back and force entertaining ideas and researching them. Real innovation is even more tricky. You cannot force a new idea to just pop up. You need to free space in your mind for them to get unannounced. For that, you may need to allow yourself to get bored and be lazy. Not plan anything. Don’t work on anything. Just allow free time of uncontrolled thoughts. You may be surprised by what comes
Of course, if that is all you do, you will get nowhere, but I think you got the idea. And if you find it hard to release some tasks, feel free to read Make yourself Redundant.
Summary
It is very important to be productive and efficient because the number of hours and days is limited. But don’t forget to allow yourself time for dreaming.
Dare to Dream