One of the more frightening realisations I’ve had recently is just how little time most leaders have to think.
And not only that — because they have so little time to think, they can’t actually think about anything that’s remotely useful or valuable.
What happens instead is this: Because they have no time to think, they just do what they know. And what they know keeps them exactly where they are.
It’s a trap.
Most leaders I work with are firefighting all day. So even if I gave them the time to think, they’d admit they wouldn’t even know how. They’ve forgotten how to think outside the box — what’s often called divergent thinking.
If that sounds familiar, I want to share an article that I come back to again and again by Jason Cohen (founder of WP Engine). It’s called “Extreme Questions” - read it on his blog here.
It’s a brilliant exercise in swinging the pendulum to the extremes — asking yourself questions so bold, so uncomfortable, that they jolt you out of small thinking.
Questions like:
What if we increased our prices by 10×?
What if we didn’t have a website?
What if we banned meetings altogether?
You’re not trying to make these things real. You’re giving yourself permission to play, to explore the edges of what might be possible.
And here’s the thing: the moment you catch yourself saying “That would never work for us because…” that’s when you’ve stopped thinking divergently.
So here’s my challenge for you:
Grab a coffee.
Give yourself 25 minutes.
Read the article properly.
If something about your work has been bugging you — some ‘best practice’ or industry ‘norm’ that just doesn’t sit right take that seriously. That frustration is your cue that there is a better way.
You just need to give yourself the space and the permission to think it through.
