The Out of Office Reply said ‘I am in back-to-back meetings this week so I may not be able to reply to your mail immediately’. When did you ever get a message that said ‘Sorry I can’t reply to you immediately…I’m thinking’?

At some level, we think all the time. You probably spend a great deal of time in meetings – discussing, arguing, deciding and planning. Many of us do our best thinking on our feet, with one eye on the clock and under pressure to immediately communicate our thoughts to one or more people. It’s an essential corporate survival skill, and yet we often say ‘Leave this with me. I’d like to think about it’.

How much time do you take to think deeply, slowly and thoughtfully? When you don’t, your options for strategies or solutions to problems are mostly the ones you’ve used before. And given the rate at which things change, how likely is it that the way you did something last time, is the best way to do it this time around?

When you don’t take time to think, you can be embarrassed when you realize – too late – that you have not properly prepared for an important presentation. Negotiations can go against you if you don’t take time to think through alternatives and implications beforehand.

Economic and work pressure, e-mail, 24/7 internet connectivity and smart phones that turn a quiet trip to and from work into an extension of the business day, all conspire to obliterate personal thinking time and in the end the quality of our decisions and their implementation.

What should you allow thinking time for today?

No time to think? Solve the problem with Straight Talk's new workshop, Manage your Time: Save your Life.

Sign up for TIPS