When people ask me what I do for a living, I tell them that I am a technology leader. When they ask me specifically what that entails in a typical day, I say that I spend the majority of my time in meetings. The response to that is often a bemoaning sentiment, such as, “All day every day in meetings? That sounds terrible and boring.”

There are people that hate meetings. I’m not one of them. They are a helpful tool for making collaborative decisions and getting work done. Meetings, however, if unmanaged, can be a monster.

While meetings are the majority of my work, I have other things I need to do too. I need to correspond with people over email, draft presentations, and work on my budget. I call this type of work “desk time.”  It is not uncommon for technology leaders to spend all day every day in meetings, only to do their desk job at night or on the weekends. I’m not one of those people. I schedule my desk time. I’ve written an entire article on the subject of time management. Please check it out here.

Is thinking work?

I’ve come to a recent conclusion that there is a third type of work required for my job: thinking. Yep, thinking. Is thinking really work? I mean, does it “count” as work? If I were paid by the hour, should I be paid to think about solving a work problem for an hour? It’s sometimes hard to fathom. We like to “look busy” at work. Running off to a meeting? That’s work. Furiously pounding out emails? You bet that’s work. Sitting at your desk, staring off into space, and contemplating your next strategic move? That looks like you are wasting time or goofing off.

Obviously, we are all expected to think as a part of our job, but when do we take the time to do it? I think about work in the shower, while driving, when I’m staining the deck, and sometimes in the middle of the night, staring at the ceiling when I should be sleeping.

Sure, it’s great to make productive mental use of idle tasks, but I find that I don’t have a lot of opportunities to do that. I have a wife and four kids at home. Staring off into space, and thinking about work while at the dinner table is definitely a bad thing. When I’m with my family, I need to be mentally present.

So, if I can’t think at work, because it doesn’t look like work, and I shouldn’t think about work at home because I need to be mentally present there, when do I think about work?

Make time to think

I’ve concluded that it’s imperative that I schedule into my work week “think time.” It’s different than meeting time, and it’s different than desk time. I’ve learned that I need time to synthesize ideas, ponder the future implications of decisions, and refine strategies.

This is core to the nature of technology leadership work. How do we know if we are working on the right things that will make the most impact on the future of the organization if we are just busy going heads-down on our day-to-day work?

Change your perception of the nature of work. Get caught staring off into space at work. When someone catches you, explain that you are harnessing the immense power of your neocortex to formulate the next big innovative strategy that will revolutionize the future of your organization.

I find it ironic that technology leaders are the first to commit massive amounts of CPU cycles to machine learning and artificial intelligence but are unwilling to dedicate any time to unleash the cognitive power of their own neocortical neurons. Don’t just make meetings, emails, and presentation decks. Make brain waves. Your organization is counting on it.