Why is it helpful to spend an hour a week thinking and how to do it

George Schultz, US Secretary of State from 1982 to 1989, would retreat in his office for an hour every week and contemplate. He only took paper and a pen with him. The purpose of this exercise is to take your mind off your daily routine and just think. To do this, you need to let go of your consciousness, not try to control it.

This activates the network of the passive mode of the brain. She is responsible for processing and understanding the events that have occurred, identifying connections.

Let your mind take a break from specific tasks. This is more useful than driving him into a rigid framework of concentration.

The essence of the exercise is to detach ourselves from the two main stressors that rob us of our productivity:

a constant stream of external stimuli (calls, messages, urgent tasks);
forced concentration (when we force ourselves to concentrate and get things done).

How to organize such an hour of reflection

1. Put your thoughts on paper

Throughout the week, we push some thoughts into the background so we can focus on work and other things. But they will not disappear by themselves. They appeared for a reason. If this reason is not dealt with, thoughts will come back again and again, and this will distract and waste our psychic energy.

In psychology, this phenomenon is called non-constructive repetitive thoughts. These are negative thoughts that arise frequently and involuntarily, distracting from other mental processes. According to some reports, their frequent presence leads to a decrease in the cognitive abilities of The Effects of Stress on Cognitive Aging, Physiology and Emotion.

The first stage of the exercise is to draw out as many repetitive thoughts as possible from consciousness and transfer them to paper.

Just sit down and try not to think about anything, as during meditation. You will inevitably have thoughts and feelings. Write them down, but don't get hung up on one thing. Continue for 5-10 minutes, or until thoughts stop coming to mind. Most likely, the first time there will be a lot of them. Don't be intimidated by this.

2. Consider your relationship

Most of the recurring thoughts are related to some kind of relationship. They are of two types: attitude towards oneself and interpersonal relationships. Anyone can cause stress and reduce productivity.

At the heart of every relationship is desire, expectation, and commitment. We want something from ourselves and from others, and they want something from us. We expect something from ourselves and others, they - from us. We make promises to ourselves and others and believe that others owe us something.

Analyze your earlier notes in terms of relationships.

Which person in your life do these thoughts relate to?
Do they express desire, expectation, or commitment?
Rate your feelings the same way. Be honest with yourself.
Anything that is not related to these three categories, put aside for a while.

Consider whether desires, expectations, and obligations on both sides are aligned in every relationship. When there are inconsistencies, relationships become tense.

3. Build a hypothesis and test it in action

So, you threw out obsessive thoughts and feelings on paper, looked at your relationship in general terms. Now it's time to put it all in order.

Don't look at your to-do lists, don't remember the projects you've started. Focus only on the thoughts that you wrote down in the first part of the exercise. They reflect what's important to you. Such cases usually don't make the list because they scare us too much. We dismiss them, we don’t think about how they relate to our values. This part of the exercise is just for pondering them.

For example, you have discovered a misunderstanding in a relationship with someone, a discrepancy in desires and obligations. Think about how you can change the situation. Turn on your imagination, imagine several options for the development of events. Formulate a plan of action for the next week.

Your plans are hypotheses that need to be tested in action.

If the plan didn't work, then you misjudged the situation. Next week, think about what you missed. Build a new hypothesis. Repeat this process over and over.