Hold Your Horses

Marty Sklar, a Disney executive and Imagineer says: “Don’t try to solve a problem too quickly. Let it evolve. Simmer.” One of my business principles is: nothing is ever as bad – or as good – as it first appears. Most every time I react too quickly to something, I wish I’d waited and thought about it a little.

You do want to be decisive. But not impulsive. Or stampeded into action before you’ve had time to weigh options, pros and cons. When you rush to judgement, you don’t give what Dr. Maltz called the “creative mechanism” an opportunity to work for you. It’s sort of like eating too fast and gulping your food. You don’t give your magnificently engineered digestive system a chance to do its job. It lets you know with indigestion.

Your “creative mechanism” is also beautifully engineered. It includes your subconscious mind’s unlimited memory and retrieval system, its navigation system locked on your goals, and its innate ability to process confusing and complex collections of ideas and information to a point of clarity, sometimes felt consciously as a “blinding flash” or a fully formed “idea out of the blue”.

Thomas Edison made a point of telling his subconscious all the information he knew about a problem, then going off and doing something completely different and relaxing…sitting on his pier with his fishing pole, taking a walk, or taking a nap…to give his “creative mechanism” sufficient time to provide him with the answer. If that sounds a bit mystical, you ought to know that this is how most of the inventors, advertising writers, and entrepreneurs I know actually work.

— Dan Kennedy

Dan Kennedy is an author, consultant and business coach. Additional information at www.FreeDanKennedyNewsletter.com