I have a secret. I love to daydream.
Daydreaming has a bad name. It implies aimless and useless wandering of the mind. It conjures images of a wistful soul more interested in dreaming about things rather than doing them.
But I think that daydreaming has got a bad rap. Used properly, daydreaming can be a very powerful tool as you endeavor to transform both your IT organization and your career.
First, let's think about what it means to daydream. Daydreaming is really just imagining a potential future for yourself. Daydreams can range from the fanciful to the almost practical, but in either case it is really just allowing your mind the freedom to imagine possible futures. And that is very good.
THE MIND IS A POWERFUL THING
When you allow your mind the freedom to imagine future possibilities without being constrained by all of today's practical realities, amazing things can start to happen. For me, I enjoy taking the time to play out future possibilities in my head - normally 2-3 years out. Mind you, I am not "planning" per se. I am just letting my mind wander down the roads that I foresee playing out in front of me. I imagine where they may lead and what I might do should that circumstance materialize.
The vast majority of these imagined futures never become reality. But two things tend to happen when I do this. First, it conditions my mind to "think big" and imagine possibilities without constraint. This translates into creative and unique solutions because I have been training my mind to explore.
Second, every once in a while, a situation that I have imagined - or at least something close to it - actually occurs. When it does, I am well prepared to respond because I gave my mind the chance to explore the options and plan a response long before the decision was required.
POSSIBILITIES WITHOUT CONSTRAINT
I believe that allowing your mind to daydream - to explore future possibilities without constraint - makes you a better leader, a better manager and even a better person. Because you are training your mind to explore and to free itself from the fear of why something cannot be done, you will make better decisions, you make them more quickly and you will make them with more conviction and confidence. People around you will "see something" in you - they may say that you seem to have "vision" or that you "know exactly where you want to go."
The truth will not be that you have necessarily created this grand vision for your life, but rather that you have created a mental environment for yourself in which your future is something that you are constantly imagining and therefore feel that you can control. You will be constantly imagining what those futures may be, which will give you the ability to react and respond to whatever life throws at you because you will have lived this future - or something close to it - once already in your mind.
It is a powerful tool that will serve your career, your transformation effort and your life, very well.
What might your possible futures look like? Let your mind wander down those roads and see where they may lead you.
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