Thinking is underutilized.
My best thinking is done when I walk around the office as if I am in a daze. The wheels are almost always turning so the dazed-look is well deserved and hard-earned. When, during this process, I come to some conclusion, the dazed look will disappear and I am back to digging and doing.
I really should do more thinking in an environment where people don't view me as milling around. Maybe I am sending the wrong message because I am not in the figurative ditch, feverishly thinking. But the process of thinking is extremely valuable and productive. When I think I can come to reasonable conclusions (hopefully) and make a decision to either draw a line or get help. Either way, the thinking leads me to some meaningful action and discourages the, ready-fire-aim, knee-jerk reaction.
A good and very successful friend goes in an hour early, every day, just so he can think!
Thinking is underutilized, "I think" is over utilized.
Here, we teach that there is room for opinions in our business discussions, but not much. What you think is not helpful, what you know is invaluable.
People really don't care what you think and I am high on that list. People care deeply about what you know supported by what you can prove. Sure, people will be nice and considerate when you espouse your opinions, but they have their limits, so don't waste their time or yours.
"Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak and to remove all doubt.
— ABRAHAM LINCOLN.
Passion will take you to performance. Performance will not take you to passion. Passion is a choice, performance is not. There is a clear difference between passion and performance. A difference that if you don't have passion, you will not notice. Nor will anyone else. If you have passion the difference is breathtaking!
Passion is hot. Set yourself on fire and people will come from miles away to watch you burn.
Performance is dry and cold and without passion. Passion will drive you to take action and increase your levels of activity in order to reach the next milestone. Passion requires love for what you are doing. Passion is not risk averse.
Performance will never be enough to make you stand out and be remembered. Performance is a has-been. Passion is a will-do.
Passion will get you out of bed in the morning and have you running headstrong into the issues and opportunities you will face during the day. Performance will expect you to get out of bed but will only suggest that you move. Performance will not fan the flames of accomplishment.
Passion will have you demonstrable, to a point of lunacy, when you experience even the smallest victories or learn something new. Performance will plod along stepping boringly through the labyrinth of ho-hum tasks that must be done to get something, anything done.
Passion is absolutely necessary in order to be extraordinary. Performance is ordinary. If you want to be extraordinary, you have to first, stop being ordinary and passion will drive you to that place where you are not like everybody else. Let everybody else be like everybody else.
The common illusion is that to be extraordinary you have to work all the time and fully devote all of your energies to the endeavor. That is not the case. What you have to do is make the most of the time you have when you are working. Don't think of reasons you can't so something, rather think of reasons you can, and passion will lead you to that kind of thinking.
